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DH grew up in a small farmhouse in northern IA. Four small rooms downstairs and two upstairs. They raised seven boys in that house. The eldest got his own bedroom which meant the others slept three to a bed.
DH said it was so cold in the morning that he'd awaken to his curtains frozen to the windowpane.
We used a couple of 1930s era kerosene heaters to warm a bedroom or the bathroom. I remember Mom boiling water and bringing it upstairs to pour into my bath if the water heater wasn't up to speed. I know this is small potatoes to the generation which came before me.
They put a rug beside my bed so I wouldn't have to step barefooted on the cold floor. And Grandmother and the Great-Aunts would sew these heavy woolen quilts made of scraps from men's suits. They'd tuck you into bed with one of those monsters weighing you down and you couldn't even move!
Edited to add: We didn't get a TV until I was in third grade and usually watched it as a family. But I remember really enjoying when we'd have a snowstorm and the electricity would go out and we'd sit around the kitchen table and play cards or board games.
Mom talked about her pioneering ancestors and how nearly always one of the parents had a musical skill. In the evenings there would be time for music and catching up on hand sewing before bed. Thank goodness for music and its sustaining ability for the human spirit.
I grew up in a small town that had a lot of Italian and Irish Catholic families. At least two of them that I knew had 12 or 13 kids. One of the kids described the situation when what we now call norovirus hit her family—with ONE bathroom. She said they were lined up in the hallway, I assume with pails and trash containers in hand. As the oldest daughter, she got to play nursemaid and janitor. Ugh.
Most homes were small, probably 1000 to 1400 sf, with many smaller than that. One car per house, typically two or three small bedrooms and one bathroom, one income earner, large broods, one TV, one telephone, no “media room” or “children’s living room” or wine cellar or fitness room, although basement dens were not unusual. Eating out happened *maybe* once a week.
My family lived in such a house. With only one brother, I felt very privileged when we moved out of the little apartment and I got my own bedroom. We spent nearly every summer day playing outdoors from morning till bedtime, literally. During the school year, there was homework and outdoor play time and library time. In winter, I shoveled snow, just as I still do now. I read a lot, and my brother tinkered with his hobbies. We both played musical instruments, which meant learning the disclipline of regular practice.
And that was pretty average life, not poverty or “underprivileged.” Yes, people somehow survived it...imagine that. When organizations later began promoting funding for ski trips and horseback camps for “underprivileged” children, I thought, Wow, to think that being unable to afford downhill skiing and fancy summer camps is underprivileged.
We had 4 of us in a small house, 2 bedrooms and a den actually, which was used as a 3rd bedroom. Kitchen w/ eat in dining space off to the side. Smallish living room. 1 full bath and one 1/2 bath. We did okay. I look back with joy when there were no smartphones, computers, etc.
We had 2 TV's, 2 phones and a big yard. We had a freezer full of food all the time. No credit cards and everything paid off. Better off than most.
My mother always felt we grew up in luxury as we had 8 people in 1100 square feet with 1.5 bathrooms... there was a TV that sometimes worked in the later years. Her point of reference was how she grew up with 14 people in a cold-water flat with one bathroom with only a toilet and one sink in the kitchen, hot water made on the stove and an icebox only good when someone could afford ice. In relative terms I now live better than a king.
I spent the majority of my childhood in Montana. Small town kid, a brother and sister. Mom and Dad were both orphans during the GD. They had it tough.
Dad was a mechanic, first for the Great Northern railroad then with his own garage. Our house actually had more rooms than we could use. Kitchen, living room 5 bedrooms with one of them a laundry / store room. A 2 barrel wood stove in the living room and an oil furnace in the basement.
Mom stayed home mostly, she only worked part time if she had to.
My parents were frugal to an extreme. We had one car. We went to the store every 2 weeks. Mom had fruit trees and a garden. I was real young and broke my arm falling out of the cherry tree. I hated weeding the garden.
My childhood was idyllic when it came to freedom. Nothing like the prisons children live in now. It's a wonder I survived those summers in the wilderness. More than once I almost didn't. There were hard times. My dad had to go to the oil fields in the early 70s. Mom worked full time at a bank . We ate a lot of potatoes and one year didn't have a Christmas.
I need to add that we never had a TV until 1976. Just a radio. Mom and Dad said it would make you stupid. It certainly encouraged getting out and about. I was the only kid in school with a 3 story treehouse.
We lived in what today would be deemed inhabitable. But back in the 40s and 50s no one said anything, we just did the best with what we had.
Thankfully our weather was mild for the most part so not having heat or a/c didn't matter. It was a three bedroom home, one room had a bathtub (no sink), another small room off the porch had a toilet that sometimes worked, but more often than not didn't. None of the bedrooms had doors, that would have been a luxury. Kitchen consisted of a stove, icebox, sink, and the small counter was rotted wood.
We did have a clunky tv however, and as long as someone would keep adjusting the antenna we could watch most shows.
So what did we do to amuse ourselves? We either stayed outside, except for sleeping, read books or played board games.
And we could have another depression like event and if folks our age are still alive, our wisdom of how we used to live and get along could be really invaluable. Just no electricity would throw everyone into a very different and stark world. Anyone a solar expert?
I grew up in a tiny farmhouse, 2-3 kids per bedroom, with no bathroom for many years. Using an outhouse in the middle of the night in rain, snow, ice, fog, always with a child's perceived monsters lurking in the dark nearby, was quite something to survive. Not to mention the Sears Roebuck catalog in the outhouse that was used for toilet paper---single ply, stiff paper.
With one TV and three channels to watch, reading books was the way to occupy my time back then.
I was talking to a friend of mine from childhood, she's 66, I'm 68, and we got to talking about our both growing up, across the street from one another in MN, in a small 800SF 2 bedroom house, with no basement.
Back then, one TV set in the house, so if Daddy wanted to watch Westerns, then you have no choice to watch it as well. Only one bathroom in the house, in my house shared by 5, in her house shared by 4, but no shower just a tub for bathing. And the biggest mystery of all, those long winters, where one January in the early 60's, it barely went above zero for the whole month, nighttime lows of 30-40 below, and there we were, trapped inside a 800SF prison. In her case, she slept with her sister who peed the bed until 4th grade! And for telephone, there were the Party Lines!
I'm still pondering it and always will, how on earth did I survive it all those years and what did we do to occupy ourselves during those long winters with no Smartphones, cell phones, Internet or even a TV in the bedroom?
How about you, do you ever ponder that, how you survived it without going Kookoo.
Of course this post wouldn't have much relevance if you grew up in a roomy middle class home.
I didn't grow up outside of Mankato or whatnot with 20 below zero F winters. If I never set foot in MN, it will be too soon. I see it's a balmy 29F there right now as I type, not bad at all compared to usual.
I did grow up in suburbia SE Michigan, not far from Birmingham, so the education, way of life, and etc. would these days be called upper or just middle class. No mean streets of five kids in a tiny house, either: house was not big, as many were not built to be in the mid-century, but my parents built an addition in the early 1970s that added a bathroom and created a family room. Just me, ma and pa kettle, in the wilds of Birmingham (yeah, right). Two bedrooms, two baths, and a nice full basement I claimed as my own pretty darn fast when I turned 14 or so.
My parents were older than most and had little time to entertain some kid. I learned real fast the best entertainment was my imagination and math tables. I wasn't great at the latter, to my father's chagrin, but was at the former. I remember playing with trading cards (Star Wars, other similar) we'd get from Topp's, being outside as much as practicable and building things in the backyard, then being on a bike and exploring from c. 12 to c. 16 and meeting other kids from miles away, other side of the tracks we might say. Got beat up once in awhile, and put the bang shang-alang on other punks a few times myself, being an average sized kid but no little nance either.
We played video games a few years there, when they were new. Loved those, definitely a Golden Age though we didn't know it then. They do now.
Wish I'd had siblings, might have learned to get along with others. I never did. That to this day makes life...interesting, and I will not be cooped up with other people, period. Humans are not kittens, we're not imprinted from near-birth but still I revert to the solitude I learned to love as a kid. That my dad loved to take us glamping in the 21' trailer as often as possible didn't hurt, either, in terms of seeing the outdoors. 100% of vacations growing up were glamping, one side of the US to the other. Again, to this day, I don't hesitate to get on a plane, just 'go' somewhere, and explore.
Like San Diego, about now...mmm. Might have to do that next couple days.
We got by. Very little TV, no Internet until I was in 20s and on the very forefront of it as of 1998. Might have been better off without it.
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And for telephone, there were the Party Lines!
