Things your parents/grandparents wouldn’t understand, and what would they use in their place.

My mother used AirWick - a glass bottle filled with liquid, with an actual wick attached to the lid. Not to create an ambience or to enhance our lifestyle but to rid the house of the smell of kippers/haddock/other smelly food.

disinfectant and bleach ,my mother was very houseproud and cleaned non stop .The house always smelled clean.

I hasten to add ,I dont take after her although my sisters are definately her offspring where housework is concerned

Well moving away from housekeeping, my grandparents certainly would not have understood computers or the internet (they died in the mid 1960s) and would probably been horrified that I chat online with people I do not know and probably never will meet in the flesh.

They wrote letters and used the public library if they needed more information than the daily newspaper, a couple of magazines and the radio could give them.

Yes, and on the same topic grandtante, my parents would not have understood the concept of everyone having their own phone and taking it with them everywhere!
They would have used the landline - well actually, it wasn't called a landline then, it was just 'the phone' - which was fixed to the socket so they had to stand in the hall while talking to anyone. If they were out and needed to ring anyone, they'd have to find a public phone box. And quite often queue up to use it.

And, to be fair, the whole phone topic is, of course, very familiar to my generation. Can't imagine now ringing any close friend or family member and asking if I can speak to them - I always ring their personal phone!

Funnily enough I was just thinking today about landline phones. Since my DH retired a year ago now our landline phone hardly ever rings. My DD doesn't even ring now, we use text or messenger on F/B. My friends keep in contact mainly by text although there is one friend who rings occasionally. I have an aunt whom I am very close to and we ring each other every week but apart from that, that's it now. My mum always phoned me every Sunday at 11.a.m and how I miss that phone ringing I can tell you even after 15 years. I feel sad about not keeping in touch by landline every other way seems just when you have time and I think that's because most people now have such busy lives. The way of the world now it seems.

Buying bottled water, and carrying it around with yourself be completely unknown to my parents and grandparents

I am sure my granny - who brought up 9 children - would have looked in wonder at me popping dirty clothes into a big square machine and taking out clean ones an hour or so later. I am also sure that she would have loved to have owned one and I wish I could go back in time and buy her one (can someone out there please invent a time machine?)

Definately a washing machine for my grandma, a husband and three sons coal miners

A hoover for my grandmother I think instead of sweeping the rugs and yes, a washing machine also. She did not have a phone at all. My parent's phone was in the hall so one had to stand there to receive or make a call. They died in 1979.

My parents lived in the country so takeaways would never have been heard of or microwavable meals because they had never heard of microwaves.

Being able to download a film to your phone or iPad. Our parents went to the cinema. I don’t know whether my grandmother ever went to the cinema. Similarly, sic streaming and being able to have a wireless speaker in every room! We had a wind up gramophone and 78 records for years!

MUsic streaming!!

Definitely a vacuum cleaner. When I was first married we didn't have one just a carpet sweeper. I borrowed my mother in law's vacuum cleaner a couple of times a week.
I finally bought a Hoover constellation machine from the tally man which caused an horrendous row with my husband.

My Granny would not have had fitted carpets and would have had rugs (probably some were rag rugs) on the floor. The rugs went out on the washing line to be beaten.

She would not have understand a rotary clothes line - or a washing machine or tumble drier - the line was stretched down the garden and she used a dolly tub.

Supermarkets - Grandma would have gone to individual shops and most vegetables would have been grown in the back garden, where they also kept the pig and hens.

disinfectant and bleach
My mother used Dettol, Ibcol and Parazone
The washing powders were Rinso and Persil - she would not recognise the liquids or gel tablets available today.

On line shopping and having everything delivered to one's house- my mother would not understand that. It was only lately she learned to drive- before that it was the bus and there were very few each day.

Paying for things by using a card either contactless or by punching numbers in. Nor would they have unstood a cash machine.

When my Nan died we found money under all the corners of all the carpets. She did have a bank account but not a cheque book.

Before an aunt died she had pinned £20 notes into the sleeves of coats- luckily I was aware or otherwise whoever bought the items from a charity shop would have thought that it was their lucky day. She also had piles of notes in a knicker drawer because what man was going to rifle through a ladies knickers!

Eating food in the street !!

Say back in the 1970s, I can remember trying to explain microfiche and micro chips to my granny. I remember her shaking her head slowly in disbelief! Heaven know what she would have made of 'tinternet, email and Google!

I scent my home exactly as my grandmother and great-grandmothers did - with bunches of dried lavender and lavender bags made from dressmaking left-overs.
And whilst buying bottled water would have seemed odd, carrying a bottle of water drawn from a safe well, or refilled at the municipal drinking fountain was standard. I was brought up in a village famous for the quality of its water. When visiting my great-gran 2 miles away, she would request a bottle of water be brought for making the tea as it was so much better than hers!
I also like to think my grandfather would give me at least a B+ for my compost heap!

I bought my mother a scented candle ,when I asked,some weeks later ,why she had not used it she said she prefers to have the light on.
Bottled water would be hard to understand, I do not understand why people cannot do even short journeys without having a bottle with them.
I think the concept of paying for your children to be looked after while you work and putting elderly in a home would seem odd as families used to look after each other.

My mother was a very good trained secretary and shorthand typist. She would be astonished at the way I can produce documents on my laptop and copy or mail them to the recipients, without having any typing skills whatsoever.

I was brought up in an area where women traditionally worked, in small local factories, or from home. The women of my family(going back 5 generations) would get together with their neighbours and 'mind' each others' children for a few hours whilst they did some work. 'Paying' as we know it now was not usual, but 'sharing' the money you had made, or keeping a tab on hours given or owed was common. There was also an informal system of loaning: I knew one of my grandmother's neighbours well, as the woman who didn't take her 'share' one week so my grandmother could pay the doctor's bill for my mother (who had an ear infection)