Your bottom drawer

While I was growing up I was periodically given tray cloths and a table cloth to embroider which I think was meant to be for my bottom drawer.

NotAGran55 Yes, I had gone off to university at 18, returned home for a year after graduating and then lived in a shared flat and then on my own for three further years, so like you I had all the basics.

We had a small quiet wedding so not much in the way of wedding presents, we didn't even have a wedding list. So what we had acquired for ourselves, was what we had.

Ellianne, if the sheets you had were anything like the ones DD and I snap up at Depots de Ventes, then they are beautiful and out last those that possessed them.

I lived on my own from the age of twenty , five years before I married and had everything I needed of my own.

We lived together for eight years before getting married by which time we'd bought our second house and had a five year old child. I've never been conventional.

M0nica

Never even thought of having one. I associated bottom drawers with girls brought up in homes where marriage was seen as being the biggest achievement of a woman life and I so did not grow up in a home like that.

It was my then fiancee's mother who suggested it, not mine.

A layette

M0nica

Never even thought of having one. I associated bottom drawers with girls brought up in homes where marriage was seen as being the biggest achievement of a woman life and I so did not grow up in a home like that.

The same. I never thought it applied to me. My husband and I chose things together, as we needed them. We had both lived independently, so had a lot already. If there had been a ‘bottom drawer’, it would have been just as likely to be his.

Had a big engagement party, so the pressies from that constituted my bottom drawer (actually stacked all around my parents flat.
Every day, my way to work I used to pass a hardwear store which had these lovely brightly colour, unusual shaped egg cups in the window Eventually I went and bought them - half a dozen . In the matter of the early sixties, all different colours and in plastic.
These are still in use and have been the only egg cups I have ever had.

Oh my goodness. I had a trousseau in France in the real sense of the word. I lived in a convent and the nosey nuns kept wanting to see what I was acquiring along the way!
Loads of sheets, tablecloths etc.

I loved my Pyrex bowl set and only gave it away when I moved here. I was given carving sets and linen table cloths and silver coffee spoons. All still unused.I remember being a bit miffed when my mother added more expensive bits after I had saved to buy some things.

Never even thought of having one. I associated bottom drawers with girls brought up in homes where marriage was seen as being the biggest achievement of a woman life and I so did not grow up in a home like that.

A Colourcast cast iron frying pan and milk pan set. Cost what was a lot to me then. I kept them under the bed in my bed sit for two years and when I got married and triumphantly pulled the boxes out - the milk pan had got rust in it!

We had collected some things as my Mum tended to put things she no longer needed aside for me as she was desperate to get rid of me I imagine but I also bought a quite expensive Polish enamel wares range which is just decorative really, which I still have!

I didn’t start one but my grandfather made me a rolling pin (still in use) an apple corer, egg cup and spoon, bread board for various birthdays as a child.

I, of course, was never grateful for them, wanting dolls etc but now I’m glad to have them as a sign of his love.

No bottom drawer for me, we bought what we didn’t have after the wedding presents were unwrapped.

I was advised that every girl had to have a bottom drawer so I started dutifully collecting cutlery.
I amassed about 3 soup spoons, 3 dessert spoons and three forks, three knives. Then the romance came to an end and so did my collecting.

I still use the spoons most days. Don't know what happened to the knives and forks.

I had a dinner service and cut glass serving bowl in mine.

We lived together before marriage so just bought what was needed beforehand.

A seven piece pyrex set which I thought was amazing. A set of dinner plates dessert bowls etc that were matching. A fantastic Breville sandwich toaster that cut the bread as it toasted the original. Nothing in my parents house matched so all these goodies were greatly admired.

I didn't have one - didn't really have time to amass one.