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

A loo which flushes - inside the house (my grandparents, not my parents!).
Theirs was down at the end of the garden.

annodomini, I’m reminded of taking my wee auntie to buy a mobile phone. Despite being told she only needed a very basic one, she chose a tiny cameraphone. On leaving the shop, she asked the salesman where she could ‘ buy the spools’ for it!

Of course, the phone was never used.

Digital cameras and camera phones. My dad had one of the first Japanese cameras (Asahi Pentax) imported in the 50s. It took wonderful photographs and he loved to display the slides he took on his travels. And, of course, the younger generation wouldn't know about slides and the equipment needed to show them. I still possess my GF's lovely old German camera - the image is upside down on the viewfinder. I used it to take b&w pictures when my DSs were little. As for selfies! They would have been inconceivable even 25 years ago. My dad would have loved all these technological innovations!

We had a menage ( pronounced menodge) in my last job. Everybody put in £20 on payday and the person whose ‘ turn’ it was got the money collected, ( £240, as it ran for a year). ‘Turns’ were allocated by drawing lots, and then swaps were arranged between members.

My granny, and then my mother, organised one years ago, and the ‘drawing of the menodge’ was a social occasion, with tea and cakes for all. When it was your ‘turn’ you gave the organiser one week’s contribution, so they got a free ‘turn’. ‘Couldnae run a menodge’ is still an expression used in these parts to describe a disorganised person.

Central heating. Not my parents but my great grandparents.
It was just being rolled out towards the end of my grandparents life.

Menage is used in German to mean "cruet". Now that's something our grandchildren will have no concept of!

I lived in Hull and my mother in law belonged to a similar scheme, it was known colloquially as a 'diddlum'.

The only Ménage I had heard of is Ménage à trois

We use t'internet without a thought; my GPs would have used the library...

Have never heard of "Menage" before but what a boost to the finances it would have given when it was your week to benefit - to have something spare was a rare occurence back in the sixties. In most households every penny was accounted for!

Menage were common around Glasgow and the West of Scotland ,neighbours and workmates would start a sheet and collect from everyone for a few weeks before the payouts started .I remember they used to draw tickets to take their turn at the money .Haven't heard of these for decades

Yes Jamila I too took my mum's Co-op order book in every week so mum could have her shopping delivered.

Home deliveries would be familiar
Corona and Beer at Home Means Davenports!

The weekly food order got taken into the Co-op (usually by me from the age of about 8) then everything was delivered.

Home deliveries would be familiar as the milkman's and baker's carts went regularly and butchers and grocers bought telephoned orders.
They would not recognise the two/three car household, the lack of public transport - remember the railways pre Beeching? - and a nation perpetually grumbling about congestion on the roads and in city centres. Plain daft they would call it.

My Nana had a washhouse in the yard behind her house. She had an old fashioned dolly tub with all the tools, wash board, tongs, mangle etc. She also had a single electric washing machine. She would be delighted to see my utility room, actually in the house, where I have my automatic washing machine, tumble drier and iron.
The house my grandparents brought their children up in no longer exists. In its place is a supermarket, something my Nana had never experienced.

Oh but yes, of course, every week the person who's turn it is would 'clear the pot', so there would only ever be the 9/- contributed that week, doh! Sorry, having a senior moment here

Surely you didn't 'clear the pot' though grandtante? Because that would leave nothing for the person who's turn it is the next week (except, of course, the nine shillings that have just been contributed).
Perhaps I'm just misunderstanding, and you took out 9/-d, leaving the rest for the others to take out their 9/-d on their ninth week?

When I went to work as a 17 year old in a restaurant kitchen in Glasgow in 1969 there was a glass jam jar with a screw top lid that all nine women in the kitchen put a shilling into when we got our week's wages. Every ninth week it was my turn to clear the pot - it was called a menowsh - I have no idea how it was spelled, or whether it came as my father thought from the French word ménage - meaning household.

I doubt a similar system exists today.

Thanks for all the memories this thread brings back.

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)

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 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.

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!

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!

Eating food in the street !!

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!