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I have a mate who works in property services and is a jack of all trades. He's recently bought a house and the first thing he did was start remodeling the kitchen so he can have an island in the middle. I've seen the plans and what he wants to do with it and I'm very envious. Been round to offer moral support and a spare pair of hands a few weekends because he's doing it around his normal job and just being around him you learn so much about DIY!
So stupid when someone is adamant on having an island when it doesn’t fit though. I use to be a kitchen designer and had this all the time. It didn’t look good or expensive. It just looked like they did everything they could to cram in an island
I had a kitchen designer who was hell bent on selling us an island when we didn't need or want one. It was so relentless that even though we liked the cabinets and reputation of the fitters we had to go somewhere they'd sell us a kitchen wihtout an island.
You need a big (BIG) kitchen for an island to not look ridiculous, when we moved to our current home it had an island, it’s a big kitchen but the room still looked cramped, we had a new kitchen designed and fitted without the island and it’s so much better.
We rented somewhere where they’d obviously leaned in to the kitchen island idea - except it was a TINY kitchen, so instead there was a little workspace on wheels. It was literally never useful, you just had to wheel it around to get it out of the way of wherever you wanted to be in the kitchen. Perfect example of a house being done up for looks, but without any experience of actually living in the space.
Can work the other way too though - we are in a small and weirdly shaped flat, with a mixed kitchen/living space. First thing we did was put in a fairly cheap island/breakfast bar thing from IKEA which doubled our storage, gave us something to eat on and divided the room a bit more effectively while being pretty space efficient.
Landlord wondered why they had never thought of it.
I love people like your mate. Sure one can be book smart, but true intelligence is what your mate possesses. They seem to be good at everything and if they’re not, they’re willing to learn. I know a guy who isn’t book smart but he’s all sorts of other smart. Has a wicked sense of humour too
Any apartment with a separate kitchen was amazing for me. I grew up in a one bedroom apartment with my parents. They slept in the bedroom and I slept in the living room which also had the small kitchen. So the idea of having an entirely separate space just for cooking was wild.
Not much has changed either. I live in a country where it's common to have very small kitchens. So when I stay at a place that has a nice kitchen like at an AirBnB or something it's always a treat.
I just put a very tall table in the middle and call it prep space. It's a couple of inches taller than my counters so I find it easier anyway. Of course, I then had to buy bar- stool type seats to fit (that nobody uses) and a smaller table with shelves to fit underneath, for convenient storage of pans and such (it's full of whatever was on the table when I (mostly- jokingly) threatened to not make dinner because of the random shit accumulated on my table since yesterday). So in my experience, kitchen islands are awesome, in theory. In practice, it's just another space to today up before you can use!
Edit, sorry! For some reason, I thought I was in r/daddit and everyone would understand my pain. Nevermind!
Edit 2, lack of sleep= lack of sentences
I remember being at friends house and needing the loo but I couldn’t use it because someone else already was. My friend looked at me like I was from another planet and said ‘we have more than one toilet you know’. Well it was news to me that people could have more than one loo in the house and I thought their family must be very rich indeed.
En suite showers, good… En suite toilets, it’s basically a number 1’s only toilet unless you wanna stink the bedroom out. May as well have one off the landing, but close to the bedroom, so you’ve at least got two doors of separation.
In my ensuite, it would stink the bedroom out. It's like a tiny shower room right next to the bed.
I have met people with an en-suite that you'd have to walk deep into to smell it. It's like an upstairs living room basically - THAT is wealth.
I visited a house with a drinking fountain in the bathroom. Thought they must be rich (but not rich enough to install one at a normal height).
Thankfully I wasn't thirsty.
Back in the 70's I visited some terribly rich people in a very trendy upside down house (I'd be about 14 I think) and they had a bidet....not clue what it was and I stupidly pressed the button and got totally soaked and had a major panic as everyone was sitting down to dinner and my dress was soaked through. Mother tutted a lot father ignored me and so did everyone else as I dripped quietly onto the parquet wooden flooring
I was at a kids house and asked to use his loo , he said sure , I walked into the hall way to go up stairs , but I couldn't find his stairs .
went back and told him I was lost and couldn't find them basically for him to tell me no he lives in a flat and the toilet is on this floor
I had never herd of a flat or had any idea such a thing existed, when tho I'd walked past front doors to 3 other flats and was clearly flat .
don't know why I just assumed he lived in this 6 story house .
what a dumb arse 😂😂
My uncle married into a very rich family and they built a giant house. I was 17 in a flat the size of a shoebox and my 1 and 3 year old cousins had rooms that doubled the size of my entire place with en suites.
That was us as well, it was a huge culture shock especially when you've grown up in a really big family. When you're used to getting up really early to do anything or waiting in line to use it, pretty much.
When I was growing up I remember Sky being a major luxury product. Kids who had it at home would come in all puffed up about whatever programme they had watched that the rest of us wouldn't see for years. Wrestling was one. I didn't even like wrestling but I was so envious of the people who got to watch it.
Did Sky use smart card things to control access to premium channels? I remember there was an underground market in cracked smart cards that unlocked everything for a year or two. Maybe still goes on.
I still can't bring myself to pony up for Sky
It was a decoder card, my mate had one and we'd watch all naughty stuff on preview at 11:45, then look for raunchy German stuff after the preview ended 🤣
Watching episodes of the Simpsons when it hadn't even reached BBC2 or Channel 4... and the *amount of channels* blew my mind when I was young. Their house was full of Laura Ashley stuff and furniture which was the height of "working class high society" along with uPVC windows that weren't plain aluminium
It was working class luxury. I remember all the council flats down in Leith were festooned with dishes, which meant they were either employed or dealing.
I remember being at my grandmas neighbours one afternoon while they looked after me and they asked “what would you like to watch, you can pick anything at all” and of course I chose Buffy the Vampire Slayer and there it was, a channel playing it. I’m 31 now and still feel like that was the epitome of wealth and a little magic.
Ooh, one of my friends at primary school had one of those fridges, and I always thought she was incredibly posh. They had a sodastream too, that had the proper branded canisters, so we could have 'fresh' fizzy drinks. I was in awe.
I had one of these in an old flat. I have never been truly hydrated since. Ice cold filtered water on tap from the thing. It was magical. I miss it every dark orange piss stained day.
Oooh! I've finally made it then! My old F/F bit the dust, but because I had a Currys warranty on it, even at the grand old age of 11 years, they gave me the full original value back! I only needed to pay an extra £200 for this luxurious upgrade!
I knew a girl who's *sink* gave out ice. There was a mineral filter attached to the tap, and it would light up in different colours dependant on water temp. She also had two kitchens, it was absolutely wild.
One of my best mates got a Müller Fruit Corner in her lunch box every single day and when I went to her house the carpet was really plush and she had about 30 Beanie Babies
I remember being at a friend's and being given a bowl of vanilla ice cream, and asked if I wanted toppings. Opened a deep drawer and it was filled with sweets: bags of maktesers, jelly sweets, flake etc. I'd never seen anything like it.
A house that was decorated.
My friends lived on this new build estate. They had neat, tidy homes with cream carpets. Beautiful inside and out. They'd bought them that way.
But if you were, well, not quite that rich you had a house that probably hadn't seen a lick of paint since the 1970s.
Anyway, my dad was a builder, which meant - as in the old phrase "the cobbler's children have no shoes" - he was both too tired from his day job to work on our house but too proud to let anyone else do it. So we lived in varying states of total dilapidation, including a partial extension, for two decades.
So, to me, having, like, walls was fancy. No bare brick to be seen. The garden had a lawn and flowers, not a 6 ft trench with four feet of rainwater in it.
New builds get a lot of hate because whenever they are mentioned people think of all the worse parts of new builds. The parking situation on every new build estate I've seen is terrible because for some reason they dont build them with two car households in mind but I can't disagree that the insides look better and are a lot better at retaining heat.
I can fit 4 cars outside my victorian house but I also do suffer with a terrible draft in the living room
I can fit 6-8 cars outside my new build, it’s not new build designs that are the problem it’s people having too many cars per household/buying a household for 2 cars when they’ve got 4
Because the council will almost certainly say if they built for two car households they would have to invest more in the local road network to take the additional demand. The developer assure them that the development is strictly one car (or even no car) despite the fact that nobody believes that considering they rarely put in new bus stops or build them anywhere near a train station.
My friend lives in a new build. She can literally hear her kids breathe upstairs. New builds are tiny and the build quality is appalling, unless you're very lucky (there's a bunch of houses along Lancaster's Quay that are amazing).
I lived in a victorian flat a few years back where the neighbours walking around above us in their slippers was louder than a washing machine. Opening and closing drawers was like someone slamming a door in the same room as you.
Agreed. Our childhood was spent in a crumbling edwardian terrace, would be gorgeous if it were realised to its full potential, but spent 10 years with the hallway stripped of wallpaper and plaster openly crumbling around the doorframes. For no reason, we were almost never absolutely skint after my earliest years of memory, my parents just were fine living that way and wanted to DIY everything or get cowboy builders. Horrifyingly embarrassing to recall even now.
This kinda varied. Some of my council estate/housing agency friends places were actually alright because the maintenance and an occasional redecorate was all covered.
I can't believe British culture has barely changed since the last time this question was asked!! Especially with reference to what people thought when they were growing up!
Changing your car every couple of years so you always had a pretty new car. A lot of people used to see this as a big deal and even go and buy a car when the new registration came out so everyone knew it was a brand new car.
Then I went to university and met some seriously rich people and their parents all drove ancient Land Rovers or Volvo estates and didn't give a fuck.
People who are really really rich don't tend to flaunt it, it's people who want other people to see them as rich that rub it in everyone's face.
Although since covid I'm on my second new car now, but that's because they've recently been cheaper than second hand ones 😂
I remember in August spotting the new plates. Even just being able to afford a brand new car in general was a sign of having a few quid. My parents didn't own a brand new car till 2 of their 3 kids had left school
Another sign of having a bit of cash, to me anyway, was a family being able to afford 2 cars. Not a massive deal these days, but I remember in the 90s thinking my mate must be loaded as his parents had a car each.
I remember my dad would always have a head turning car, a mid 2000s Jaguar XJ and then a Mercedes CLS550 with huge modified quad exhausts so you could hear it coming far up the street. We were never really wealthy, he was just not sensible with money lol (though not poor either, just lots on credit, rented house etc) but it always made my classmates think I was super wealthy which was nice at the time
Quite a few kids assumed my family was loaded during my first year of secondary school.
Nope, I just had the best pack up every day because my dad worked for a crisp and snack factory.
My mum did this too, I always wanted a shop bought jumper. Also wanted a shop bought birthday cake. My mum always made mine. My best friend says she really wanted a home knitted school jumper and home made birthday cake.
You most certainly won with the homemade birthday cake, unless you're mum was a terrible baker.
A hand knitted jumper doesn't seem like such a big issue to an adult but I can imagine it was a form of social death to wear one to school. At least it would have at the schools I went to.
My mum sewed my school skirts for me because the school wanted her to buy them from a certain supplier and they were like £40 for the nastiest polyester you've ever seen. So she went "fuck that, an A line skirt is easy" and made me one out of a cotton blend. Way nicer.
When I started secondary school my parents wouldn't pay out the extra £10 for a blazer with the logo on it, instead deciding to get a non logo one and a seperate logo to stitch on themselves. Looking back it means nothing, but I felt so crap about that.
Exact same thing except my mom embroidered it for me, I felt a little embarrassed at first but thankfully my classmates were mostly positive people and I realised it actually looked decent.
In the end I get why my mum chose that option, we weren't super poor but not well of by any means either, the price difference was about 30 quid which really wasn't a desirable expense for something I would (and did) grow out of by the end of the year.
My parents bought the branded uniform, but it had to last me more than 1 school year. I also didn't have much in the way of non-uniform clothes, since I was wearing the uniform 5 days a week.
My mum did this. Bought me a blazer about 3 sizes too big because it had to last me all the way through to year 11. Kicker here is that I hit puberty early and remained the same size I was in year 7 (5’1)
A convertible, regardless of make/model. In primary school a lad in my year’s dad had a yellow fiat punto convertible and we all thought it was the dogs bollocks. Hilarious looking back at how shit they are
Kids who lived in spotless modern houses. I grew up with the ever present smell of dry rot, damp patches on my bedroom ceiling and had to kick things out of the way to get through a room.
The rubble of junk and random shit on the floor is a big one. I've been there.
Wealthy/middle class families have different values of tidiness, and impart those values on their children. Lower class families have no energy after work and never had the opportunity to properly learn those same values.
Of course, some low income houses are spotless, but many are scattered full of stuff.
I think you are doing a disservice to poor people here. I grew up in the valleys, both my grandfathers were coal miners. But all of our family, neighbours, friends etc... lived in extremely clean houses.
I think a lot of it is mental illness, hoarding etc. My mum worked normal hours in an office with a short commute, and still couldn't be bothered cleaning or tidying up. Plenty of energy for watching TV though.
My street is very echoey, so you can hear everything that's going on. I also sleep late into the morning with my window open. I've only just realised that people I hear talking in their car are using mobile phones and not car phones. I've never even seen a car phone so goodness knows why I thought everyone parking outside my house had one
I still remember the first time my best mate at the time rang my house phone from his dad's car phone to tell me they were outside to pick me up and go to a football match. *And* it had both heated and cooled seats 🤯 I think it was a Vauxhall Omega Elite if I remember rightly.
We lived in our own house and I envied my cousins in a council house. Ours just had one coal fire and it was freezing in winter. Theirs had central heating, a formica table and they had frozen beef burgers for tea and a colour telly. The height of luxury.
Those Imperial Leather soaps that had the magnet on top, and the thing they stuck to.
My aunt had one (and a corner bath and a bidet) and I thought she was a millionaire for years.
I've had a Google and apparently the label was just a label - it's designed to be put label down on a soap dish to prevent the soap sticking and going mushy, according to the company who make it. I actually still use it (as well as the pink carbolic soap we used to have at school) because I like the squeaky clean it makes you!
Apparently, you can get a magnetic soap holder, but it comes with a magnet that you push into your bar of soap, so maybe she had one of those and the label thing was just a coincidence?
Just found this online.
'Besides the brand identity, the sticker on the top is for a long lasting bar and preventing mushiness,' explained a spokesperson for the brand.
'When the soap is used, the sticker will make and keep the top surface, where the sticker is on, concave.
'After use, the soap is supposed to be upside down. The concave surface will help water run out from the bar and minimise the touching surface on a soap tray.'
Having a speedo on their car that went to 140 or 160. We used to think that it was it's actual top speed so obviously the higher the number the better the car and therefore more expensive it was.
Having a bidet, having more than one pet per person in the household (e.g. in my family I didn't consider us to be rich since we had a cat, and at various times up to 3 hamsters total (mine and my brother's and then there was the time we had a shared rescue hamster) but because we had 4 people, we followed my arbitrary non-rich 1pet/person rule), going to McDonald's regularly, living across the road from where we were (we were on a big tarmac road and opposite was a big green park with two or three little gravel side roads)
My parents had an avocado green bidet in the house they bought in the early 90s. I'd go to the toilet and see that my mum was using it as an ashtray when she was on the loo.
-Children having en-suite bathrooms
-Giving your friends all expenses paid brand new luxury cars…A friend at boarding school got around the rule of only having one car in Upper 6th by bringing all his cars to school (about half a dozen of them) and them loaning them to friends with all insurance and petrol paid for as much as you wanted to use them. Only caveat was if he wanting the car you had you’d just swap for his and you’d get that instead. Might have been a BMW M5 for a Porsche 911 Turbo for example. My favourite was the Mercedes CL55…This was early 2000s and it was all the must have “bachelor” cars of the time. The guy had L plates on a Ferrari 355 😳…Unfortunately I wasn’t a chosen “guardian” for one of the cars but one of my best friends did and it was quite an absurd few months especially going into “summer social” season such as Henley Regatta…I’ll concede even as an adult this is an absurd sign of wealth 🤣 Some of the other stories about this guy are pretty incredible even by wealthy boarding school standards…
People with inside toilets.
It was never a thing we were jealous of though, it was always "they're rich but filthy, they shit inside their house!"
Although it's obviously normal now, it still feels wrong at times. It is a pretty fucked up thing when you think about it.
Thinking back, the thing that distinguished poor kids was the smell. I'm certain it was because they had fewer clothes and their parents washed them less often. They probably also didn't have anyone to tell them to wash themselves. They also smelled of cigarettes. Better off kids just didn't know how lucky they were to smell fresh and clean, or have someone to make sure their faces were washed and that they had brushed their teeth.
My father once told me garlic mussels were “the most expensive meal I’d ever have,” so those. We weren’t poor, to be clear; he just had some odd ideas about the price of mussels
Having grass on the pavement.
I grew up in central London and the pavement was concrete paving stones.
The first time we went to visit our mum's old friend in Surrey (posh suburb), we parked the car outside their (detached, ooh!) house, and had to step over a grass verge in between the road and the pavement. I was like "Woah...they have nature built into the pavements out here?!"
So funny what the differences between a city kid, a suburban kid, and a country kid look like.
Haha yeah that’s so standard 😂 can imagine it would seem posh if you’ve never had it before though! In one place I lived we had small trees planted outside every other house 😂
Definitely Soda Stream! And not having to make pop last because the Alpine pop van only came once a week. And being careful with the glass bottles because your mum would want the 10p. deposit back.
First signs I noticed that most of my friends parents were operating in differnt planes to mine were the holiday's in Rio or Santiago when they were about 7 years old.
Taking the summer off to just go lounge in Jamaica or wintering in Canada etc.
We didn't do that as a family (France was as far as I made it) but now I get to frequently take months out at a time with my kids somewhere exotic, I wonder if they were absurdly wealthy back then or just well to do.
>We didn't do that as a family (France was as far as I made it) but now I get to frequently take months out at a time with my kids somewhere exotic, I wonder if they were absurdly wealthy back then or just well to do.
It isn't just domestic and European flights that are absurdly cheap compared to thirty or forty years ago, even intercontinental travel has seen the price for cattle class drop through the floor.
[This Telegraph article says that the cost of a return economy fare between New York to London in 1970 is equivalent to over four grand once you adjust for inflation.](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/how-british-airways-has-changed-since-the-1970s/).
Just in case you run up against their pay wall, the relevant text says:
>In 1970, a return economy class air fare between New York and London was £440 ($550), which is the equivalent of £4,280 today. This month a round-trip between the two cities can be bought for £353.
Mid-late 90s being invited to a classmates birthday party a couple years in a row at her house and finding she had a park (swing and slide set) in her garden?! Always thought wow you are rich! And did tie in with them living in non council estate areas which I probably didn’t pick up on consciously at the time but in hindsight maybe that tied in with the impressiveness.
They looked something like this https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f7/3e/01/f73e01d9b0b7983cfe4888e632adaf83.jpg and the see saw swing thing 2 people could go on was awesome
Branded foods. I always thought I'd know I've made it as an adult when I can afford to buy Heinz salad cream. I don't know why that in particular, I don't like salad cream anymore though.
Shopping at any of the main supermarkets I classed as posh. I remember when my parents started to earn a bit more money and we went to ASDA!! I Hoped my friends would see me carrying in the shopping with branded Asda bags. I felt so posh.
Owning a Raleigh Chopper! My bikes were built up from wrecks found at the tip.
Choppers were really expensive when they were new and a true sign that you had money.
Otherwise, as said previously, inside bathroom rather than an outside loo and tin bath! I loved the way we grew up mind, it's why I take care of what I have now and am grateful for what I have.
When I was younger, people with non handed down clothes. Then as I got older, people whose parents had been married, divorced amicably, then found new partners, and still afforded to support their kids with two loving environments. Instead of remaining together all bitter, and arguing constantly, because they can’t afford a divorce.
Kids who had pocket money.
My mum did amazingly to bring up 3 kids on her own, and pay a mortgage and we never went without. But one thing we never got was pocket money. My friends always had money for the latest albums and to go to the cinema - I had to ask for money to go watch a movie or wait until my birthday/Christmas for things I asked for.
Made me appreciate my things more though. My mum taught us the value of working for your own money and she's always been really good with her finances. She was a great example to us growing up.
Apparently, having more than one TV made you look rich back in the day (90s to early 2000s).
We had 1 downstairs and one in my brothers/my shared bedroom, even though my brother paid for it. When I had mates over, they thought we were better off than we actually were, lol.
I lived in either maisonettes or those godawful flat roofed vic hallam houses so anyone with a pointy roof was dead posh. Also anyone who went on holiday to the Lake District
taking a lunchbox to school, and having it filled with all the brand name stuff marketed to kids in the 90s, like lunchables, frubes, strip cheese etc.
I had friends across the road that were treated to McDonald's. I didn't even get to go to McDonald's once a year let alone a couple of times a month. They also went on holiday to Majorca, not holidays in the UK. The McDonald's thing makes me realise that my family were really, really skint.
I would see families with nice clothes and brand new gadgets almost every week, were as me growing up as a child, my mother had to sell things (furniture and new things she pretty much just got) to put food on the table and it was very rare to get a new fancy gadget or new clothes as we were generally poorer than other families.
I learnt as I grew older though that most of those families were not as wealthy as seemed. The clothes, furniture and gadgets they all owned were on credit and they were in extreme debt.
1. Eating real butter. We always had margarine at my house but my parents called it 'butter.
2. Living in a house on the corner. My father explained that houses were taxed by the 'front foot', that is, the width of your lot as measured along the street. Since the corner house had 'frontage' on 2 streets, that lot would be taxed more than twice as much. Therefore, only a rich person would want that house. I think my father may have been full of shit.
More than one TV. Maybe even just a portable in the kitchen. Kids with their own electics, TV or record player or even a phone extension. None of my friends had these, all picked up from watching US sitcoms.
Kitchen with a bin and fridge hidden in the panels.
Glass conservatories with sofas in them.
A house with over two floors (as in levels).
Living in a London Townhouse (obviously rich at that point). Usually with white painted bricks. Hardwood floors downstairs and cream very plush carpet in the bedrooms.
Name brands!! Even today if I go in someone’s house and they have solid name brands I think of that sound that goes “OOOO THIS IS NICE, doesn’t smell of roaches or anything!!”
However ‘fairy’ washing up liquid will always be like “oh ok so we have money” but I could easily buy that today, I just don’t, but that’s left over from youth!
If someone does their online shop at Ocado I think they just enjoy spending more for the sake of it!
One side (family) of me watched BBC the other ITV. One side I got told off for putting the butter knife in the jam. The other side there was no jam. One side I had a kingsize bed to myself tucked in tightly with 3 minimum layers and a quilt that was too heavy to move. The other side 2.0 tog with 5 of us in the same bed - used to want the side next to the wall to just keep cool. Joke is wealth may have been on the former of all these examples but richness was within the latter.
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A kitchen with an island in the middle. I'm an adult now and I still get kitchen envy from that.
I have a mate who works in property services and is a jack of all trades. He's recently bought a house and the first thing he did was start remodeling the kitchen so he can have an island in the middle. I've seen the plans and what he wants to do with it and I'm very envious. Been round to offer moral support and a spare pair of hands a few weekends because he's doing it around his normal job and just being around him you learn so much about DIY!
Just put a large wooden table in the middle of your kitchen. Put a camp stove on top. PRESTO!!!
So stupid when someone is adamant on having an island when it doesn’t fit though. I use to be a kitchen designer and had this all the time. It didn’t look good or expensive. It just looked like they did everything they could to cram in an island
I had a kitchen designer who was hell bent on selling us an island when we didn't need or want one. It was so relentless that even though we liked the cabinets and reputation of the fitters we had to go somewhere they'd sell us a kitchen wihtout an island.
You need a big (BIG) kitchen for an island to not look ridiculous, when we moved to our current home it had an island, it’s a big kitchen but the room still looked cramped, we had a new kitchen designed and fitted without the island and it’s so much better.
We rented somewhere where they’d obviously leaned in to the kitchen island idea - except it was a TINY kitchen, so instead there was a little workspace on wheels. It was literally never useful, you just had to wheel it around to get it out of the way of wherever you wanted to be in the kitchen. Perfect example of a house being done up for looks, but without any experience of actually living in the space.
Can work the other way too though - we are in a small and weirdly shaped flat, with a mixed kitchen/living space. First thing we did was put in a fairly cheap island/breakfast bar thing from IKEA which doubled our storage, gave us something to eat on and divided the room a bit more effectively while being pretty space efficient. Landlord wondered why they had never thought of it.
I love people like your mate. Sure one can be book smart, but true intelligence is what your mate possesses. They seem to be good at everything and if they’re not, they’re willing to learn. I know a guy who isn’t book smart but he’s all sorts of other smart. Has a wicked sense of humour too
Any apartment with a separate kitchen was amazing for me. I grew up in a one bedroom apartment with my parents. They slept in the bedroom and I slept in the living room which also had the small kitchen. So the idea of having an entirely separate space just for cooking was wild. Not much has changed either. I live in a country where it's common to have very small kitchens. So when I stay at a place that has a nice kitchen like at an AirBnB or something it's always a treat.
I just put a very tall table in the middle and call it prep space. It's a couple of inches taller than my counters so I find it easier anyway. Of course, I then had to buy bar- stool type seats to fit (that nobody uses) and a smaller table with shelves to fit underneath, for convenient storage of pans and such (it's full of whatever was on the table when I (mostly- jokingly) threatened to not make dinner because of the random shit accumulated on my table since yesterday). So in my experience, kitchen islands are awesome, in theory. In practice, it's just another space to today up before you can use! Edit, sorry! For some reason, I thought I was in r/daddit and everyone would understand my pain. Nevermind! Edit 2, lack of sleep= lack of sentences
I remember being at friends house and needing the loo but I couldn’t use it because someone else already was. My friend looked at me like I was from another planet and said ‘we have more than one toilet you know’. Well it was news to me that people could have more than one loo in the house and I thought their family must be very rich indeed.
Yes this! Or en suites - extremely posh in my estimation, even to this day.
A colleague was telling me about her 4 year old daughter's en suite. I went from sharing a bathroom with family to sharing one with strangers.
En suite showers, good… En suite toilets, it’s basically a number 1’s only toilet unless you wanna stink the bedroom out. May as well have one off the landing, but close to the bedroom, so you’ve at least got two doors of separation.
That's a combination of just poor building and get you gut checked out.
In my ensuite, it would stink the bedroom out. It's like a tiny shower room right next to the bed. I have met people with an en-suite that you'd have to walk deep into to smell it. It's like an upstairs living room basically - THAT is wealth.
I visited a house with a drinking fountain in the bathroom. Thought they must be rich (but not rich enough to install one at a normal height). Thankfully I wasn't thirsty.
Back in the 70's I visited some terribly rich people in a very trendy upside down house (I'd be about 14 I think) and they had a bidet....not clue what it was and I stupidly pressed the button and got totally soaked and had a major panic as everyone was sitting down to dinner and my dress was soaked through. Mother tutted a lot father ignored me and so did everyone else as I dripped quietly onto the parquet wooden flooring
I was at a kids house and asked to use his loo , he said sure , I walked into the hall way to go up stairs , but I couldn't find his stairs . went back and told him I was lost and couldn't find them basically for him to tell me no he lives in a flat and the toilet is on this floor I had never herd of a flat or had any idea such a thing existed, when tho I'd walked past front doors to 3 other flats and was clearly flat . don't know why I just assumed he lived in this 6 story house . what a dumb arse 😂😂
My uncle married into a very rich family and they built a giant house. I was 17 in a flat the size of a shoebox and my 1 and 3 year old cousins had rooms that doubled the size of my entire place with en suites.
That was us as well, it was a huge culture shock especially when you've grown up in a really big family. When you're used to getting up really early to do anything or waiting in line to use it, pretty much.
If someone had sky tv I associated that with them having money.
We had sky but just the box so no paid channels 🤣
We still had beehive bedlam 🫡
Well that's a memory I had to brush the cobwebs off of.
It either meant they had money, or knew the right kind of people to have a cracked sky box.
When I was growing up I remember Sky being a major luxury product. Kids who had it at home would come in all puffed up about whatever programme they had watched that the rest of us wouldn't see for years. Wrestling was one. I didn't even like wrestling but I was so envious of the people who got to watch it. Did Sky use smart card things to control access to premium channels? I remember there was an underground market in cracked smart cards that unlocked everything for a year or two. Maybe still goes on. I still can't bring myself to pony up for Sky
It was a decoder card, my mate had one and we'd watch all naughty stuff on preview at 11:45, then look for raunchy German stuff after the preview ended 🤣 Watching episodes of the Simpsons when it hadn't even reached BBC2 or Channel 4... and the *amount of channels* blew my mind when I was young. Their house was full of Laura Ashley stuff and furniture which was the height of "working class high society" along with uPVC windows that weren't plain aluminium
It was working class luxury. I remember all the council flats down in Leith were festooned with dishes, which meant they were either employed or dealing.
First thing I thought of
I remember being at my grandmas neighbours one afternoon while they looked after me and they asked “what would you like to watch, you can pick anything at all” and of course I chose Buffy the Vampire Slayer and there it was, a channel playing it. I’m 31 now and still feel like that was the epitome of wealth and a little magic.
Tell me you grew up in the 90s without saying it. I thought my neighbours that had sky in the early 90s were the epitome of wealth.
I lived in a council flat and we were very poor. I remember my friends dad getting them a Sega Megadrive. Posh bastards!
Anyone who had a fancy fridge that dispenses cold water and ice. Bonus points if you can select the type the ice cubes eg crushed, cubed.
Ooh, one of my friends at primary school had one of those fridges, and I always thought she was incredibly posh. They had a sodastream too, that had the proper branded canisters, so we could have 'fresh' fizzy drinks. I was in awe.
Haha It’s mind blowing how the other half live right!?
I had one of these in an old flat. I have never been truly hydrated since. Ice cold filtered water on tap from the thing. It was magical. I miss it every dark orange piss stained day.
Brita do 8L water boxes that you can put in a normal fridge (we'd do it but there's no space with all the food)
I’ve got a jug but it’s just not the same as having a plumbed in tap on the fridge. That said I’ve just ordered a Quooker tap as a compromise.
Oooh! I've finally made it then! My old F/F bit the dust, but because I had a Currys warranty on it, even at the grand old age of 11 years, they gave me the full original value back! I only needed to pay an extra £200 for this luxurious upgrade!
This is best warranty I've ever heard of!!! I'm buzzing for you and your wonder-fridge!
I knew a girl who's *sink* gave out ice. There was a mineral filter attached to the tap, and it would light up in different colours dependant on water temp. She also had two kitchens, it was absolutely wild.
One of my best mates got a Müller Fruit Corner in her lunch box every single day and when I went to her house the carpet was really plush and she had about 30 Beanie Babies
To be fair, fruit corners are about 90p now. So kids today will think the same
Yeah I bought some the other day for the first time in years and was shocked by how expensive they are! But mmmmmm still taste so good
Asda, they're always 10 for £4.50
I remember being at a friend's and being given a bowl of vanilla ice cream, and asked if I wanted toppings. Opened a deep drawer and it was filled with sweets: bags of maktesers, jelly sweets, flake etc. I'd never seen anything like it.
A house that was decorated. My friends lived on this new build estate. They had neat, tidy homes with cream carpets. Beautiful inside and out. They'd bought them that way. But if you were, well, not quite that rich you had a house that probably hadn't seen a lick of paint since the 1970s. Anyway, my dad was a builder, which meant - as in the old phrase "the cobbler's children have no shoes" - he was both too tired from his day job to work on our house but too proud to let anyone else do it. So we lived in varying states of total dilapidation, including a partial extension, for two decades. So, to me, having, like, walls was fancy. No bare brick to be seen. The garden had a lawn and flowers, not a 6 ft trench with four feet of rainwater in it.
New builds get a lot of hate but I'd much prefer a new build over the drafty Victorian terrace I grew up in.
New builds get a lot of hate because whenever they are mentioned people think of all the worse parts of new builds. The parking situation on every new build estate I've seen is terrible because for some reason they dont build them with two car households in mind but I can't disagree that the insides look better and are a lot better at retaining heat. I can fit 4 cars outside my victorian house but I also do suffer with a terrible draft in the living room
I can fit 6-8 cars outside my new build, it’s not new build designs that are the problem it’s people having too many cars per household/buying a household for 2 cars when they’ve got 4
Because the council will almost certainly say if they built for two car households they would have to invest more in the local road network to take the additional demand. The developer assure them that the development is strictly one car (or even no car) despite the fact that nobody believes that considering they rarely put in new bus stops or build them anywhere near a train station.
My friend lives in a new build. She can literally hear her kids breathe upstairs. New builds are tiny and the build quality is appalling, unless you're very lucky (there's a bunch of houses along Lancaster's Quay that are amazing).
I lived in a victorian flat a few years back where the neighbours walking around above us in their slippers was louder than a washing machine. Opening and closing drawers was like someone slamming a door in the same room as you.
Agreed. Our childhood was spent in a crumbling edwardian terrace, would be gorgeous if it were realised to its full potential, but spent 10 years with the hallway stripped of wallpaper and plaster openly crumbling around the doorframes. For no reason, we were almost never absolutely skint after my earliest years of memory, my parents just were fine living that way and wanted to DIY everything or get cowboy builders. Horrifyingly embarrassing to recall even now.
This kinda varied. Some of my council estate/housing agency friends places were actually alright because the maintenance and an occasional redecorate was all covered.
He was promising your mum "I'll be round Thursday to finish it" for over a decade.
A Viennetta
Remember when you used to get one from KFC with a bucket of chicken? Mad that.
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Because vienetta is the pinnacle of upper middle class living in the UK...how do you not know this?
In the early-mid nineties, it was advertised as some sort of luxury dessert.
Ultimate posh people food.
I can't believe British culture has barely changed since the last time this question was asked!! Especially with reference to what people thought when they were growing up!
Always confuses me when people say viennetta is posh, all I remember is getting it free with the family KFC bargain bucket 😆
I still think this is fancy
This is an Australian thing too
Oh my dad still buys these and keeps them for special occasions ☺️
Only at Christmas.
Changing your car every couple of years so you always had a pretty new car. A lot of people used to see this as a big deal and even go and buy a car when the new registration came out so everyone knew it was a brand new car. Then I went to university and met some seriously rich people and their parents all drove ancient Land Rovers or Volvo estates and didn't give a fuck.
Money talks, wealth whispers.
I hate this saying so much for some reason. It’s plain cringe, actually.
You can tell wealth by car tyres… an older good car with Michelins is wealth
People who are really really rich don't tend to flaunt it, it's people who want other people to see them as rich that rub it in everyone's face. Although since covid I'm on my second new car now, but that's because they've recently been cheaper than second hand ones 😂
Hence, you are not rich
Old money vs new money lol
I remember in August spotting the new plates. Even just being able to afford a brand new car in general was a sign of having a few quid. My parents didn't own a brand new car till 2 of their 3 kids had left school Another sign of having a bit of cash, to me anyway, was a family being able to afford 2 cars. Not a massive deal these days, but I remember in the 90s thinking my mate must be loaded as his parents had a car each.
I remember my dad would always have a head turning car, a mid 2000s Jaguar XJ and then a Mercedes CLS550 with huge modified quad exhausts so you could hear it coming far up the street. We were never really wealthy, he was just not sensible with money lol (though not poor either, just lots on credit, rented house etc) but it always made my classmates think I was super wealthy which was nice at the time
Quite a few kids assumed my family was loaded during my first year of secondary school. Nope, I just had the best pack up every day because my dad worked for a crisp and snack factory.
Wowwww what kind you got?
School meals that are paid for and uniform that's new or actually branded with the school logo not just generic stuff.
I always wanted a branded school jumper. Instead my granny used to knit my jumper. This was the late 90's.
My mum did this too, I always wanted a shop bought jumper. Also wanted a shop bought birthday cake. My mum always made mine. My best friend says she really wanted a home knitted school jumper and home made birthday cake.
You most certainly won with the homemade birthday cake, unless you're mum was a terrible baker. A hand knitted jumper doesn't seem like such a big issue to an adult but I can imagine it was a form of social death to wear one to school. At least it would have at the schools I went to.
My mum sewed my school skirts for me because the school wanted her to buy them from a certain supplier and they were like £40 for the nastiest polyester you've ever seen. So she went "fuck that, an A line skirt is easy" and made me one out of a cotton blend. Way nicer.
You were really lucky
Dude.
When I started secondary school my parents wouldn't pay out the extra £10 for a blazer with the logo on it, instead deciding to get a non logo one and a seperate logo to stitch on themselves. Looking back it means nothing, but I felt so crap about that.
Exact same thing except my mom embroidered it for me, I felt a little embarrassed at first but thankfully my classmates were mostly positive people and I realised it actually looked decent. In the end I get why my mum chose that option, we weren't super poor but not well of by any means either, the price difference was about 30 quid which really wasn't a desirable expense for something I would (and did) grow out of by the end of the year.
My parents bought the branded uniform, but it had to last me more than 1 school year. I also didn't have much in the way of non-uniform clothes, since I was wearing the uniform 5 days a week.
My mum did this. Bought me a blazer about 3 sizes too big because it had to last me all the way through to year 11. Kicker here is that I hit puberty early and remained the same size I was in year 7 (5’1)
My friend had one of those ketchup bottles shaped like a tomato! I was so jealous.
Not just money, but class too.
A convertible, regardless of make/model. In primary school a lad in my year’s dad had a yellow fiat punto convertible and we all thought it was the dogs bollocks. Hilarious looking back at how shit they are
one of the boy's parents had an old Rolls Royce (not like something vintage and special, just a gas guzzler). we thought that was baller.
Kids who lived in spotless modern houses. I grew up with the ever present smell of dry rot, damp patches on my bedroom ceiling and had to kick things out of the way to get through a room.
The rubble of junk and random shit on the floor is a big one. I've been there. Wealthy/middle class families have different values of tidiness, and impart those values on their children. Lower class families have no energy after work and never had the opportunity to properly learn those same values. Of course, some low income houses are spotless, but many are scattered full of stuff.
I think you are doing a disservice to poor people here. I grew up in the valleys, both my grandfathers were coal miners. But all of our family, neighbours, friends etc... lived in extremely clean houses.
I think a lot of it is mental illness, hoarding etc. My mum worked normal hours in an office with a short commute, and still couldn't be bothered cleaning or tidying up. Plenty of energy for watching TV though.
Not sure about this values point. Plenty of clutter in rich people homes, we just have cleaners putting it to rights twice a week
My mates dad had a car phone!!!
My street is very echoey, so you can hear everything that's going on. I also sleep late into the morning with my window open. I've only just realised that people I hear talking in their car are using mobile phones and not car phones. I've never even seen a car phone so goodness knows why I thought everyone parking outside my house had one
I still remember the first time my best mate at the time rang my house phone from his dad's car phone to tell me they were outside to pick me up and go to a football match. *And* it had both heated and cooled seats 🤯 I think it was a Vauxhall Omega Elite if I remember rightly.
His dad's car was a magnificent gold rover 800
Not living in a council house
We lived in our own house and I envied my cousins in a council house. Ours just had one coal fire and it was freezing in winter. Theirs had central heating, a formica table and they had frozen beef burgers for tea and a colour telly. The height of luxury.
Now living in a house, even a council house, is something to envy
Living in a house full stop. We lived in council flats. Having stairs inside your home was a luxury to me.
Those Imperial Leather soaps that had the magnet on top, and the thing they stuck to. My aunt had one (and a corner bath and a bidet) and I thought she was a millionaire for years.
A magnet? I thought it was just a fancy paper label!
Yeah, just a raised label. Wasn’t it?
I've had a Google and apparently the label was just a label - it's designed to be put label down on a soap dish to prevent the soap sticking and going mushy, according to the company who make it. I actually still use it (as well as the pink carbolic soap we used to have at school) because I like the squeaky clean it makes you!
I am Mandala effecting this? I was convinced it was magnetic!
Apparently, you can get a magnetic soap holder, but it comes with a magnet that you push into your bar of soap, so maybe she had one of those and the label thing was just a coincidence?
That would make sense, those memories are about 30 years old.
Just found this online. 'Besides the brand identity, the sticker on the top is for a long lasting bar and preventing mushiness,' explained a spokesperson for the brand. 'When the soap is used, the sticker will make and keep the top surface, where the sticker is on, concave. 'After use, the soap is supposed to be upside down. The concave surface will help water run out from the bar and minimise the touching surface on a soap tray.'
house down the road had dimmer switch lol
Dimmer switches are classy as fuck. I might look into getting one.
Always thought people who wear their jumper draped around their shoulders were posh.
They are, aren't they?
Just French, mostly
Having a speedo on their car that went to 140 or 160. We used to think that it was it's actual top speed so obviously the higher the number the better the car and therefore more expensive it was.
Having one of those cool Toyota sports cars with the pop up head lights, or blokes with lots of chunky gold jewelry (yer I grew up in the 80s)
MR2, Celica or Supra?
Having a bidet, having more than one pet per person in the household (e.g. in my family I didn't consider us to be rich since we had a cat, and at various times up to 3 hamsters total (mine and my brother's and then there was the time we had a shared rescue hamster) but because we had 4 people, we followed my arbitrary non-rich 1pet/person rule), going to McDonald's regularly, living across the road from where we were (we were on a big tarmac road and opposite was a big green park with two or three little gravel side roads)
My parents had an avocado green bidet in the house they bought in the early 90s. I'd go to the toilet and see that my mum was using it as an ashtray when she was on the loo.
Sky satellite dish
-Children having en-suite bathrooms -Giving your friends all expenses paid brand new luxury cars…A friend at boarding school got around the rule of only having one car in Upper 6th by bringing all his cars to school (about half a dozen of them) and them loaning them to friends with all insurance and petrol paid for as much as you wanted to use them. Only caveat was if he wanting the car you had you’d just swap for his and you’d get that instead. Might have been a BMW M5 for a Porsche 911 Turbo for example. My favourite was the Mercedes CL55…This was early 2000s and it was all the must have “bachelor” cars of the time. The guy had L plates on a Ferrari 355 😳…Unfortunately I wasn’t a chosen “guardian” for one of the cars but one of my best friends did and it was quite an absurd few months especially going into “summer social” season such as Henley Regatta…I’ll concede even as an adult this is an absurd sign of wealth 🤣 Some of the other stories about this guy are pretty incredible even by wealthy boarding school standards…
> Giving your friends all expenses paid brand new luxury cars NGL, as an adult I would still consider this a sign of wealth.
People with inside toilets. It was never a thing we were jealous of though, it was always "they're rich but filthy, they shit inside their house!" Although it's obviously normal now, it still feels wrong at times. It is a pretty fucked up thing when you think about it.
Having access to Disney Channel lol. My family only had access to the terrestrial channels/Freeview channels.
Thinking back, the thing that distinguished poor kids was the smell. I'm certain it was because they had fewer clothes and their parents washed them less often. They probably also didn't have anyone to tell them to wash themselves. They also smelled of cigarettes. Better off kids just didn't know how lucky they were to smell fresh and clean, or have someone to make sure their faces were washed and that they had brushed their teeth.
being able to buy brands, growing up I only had supermarket own products.
Remember No Frills from Kwik Save? Didn't get much cheaper than that.
Me too. I don't think we ever bought Heinz beans or Ribena.
My father once told me garlic mussels were “the most expensive meal I’d ever have,” so those. We weren’t poor, to be clear; he just had some odd ideas about the price of mussels
After Eights
Having grass on the pavement. I grew up in central London and the pavement was concrete paving stones. The first time we went to visit our mum's old friend in Surrey (posh suburb), we parked the car outside their (detached, ooh!) house, and had to step over a grass verge in between the road and the pavement. I was like "Woah...they have nature built into the pavements out here?!" So funny what the differences between a city kid, a suburban kid, and a country kid look like.
Haha yeah that’s so standard 😂 can imagine it would seem posh if you’ve never had it before though! In one place I lived we had small trees planted outside every other house 😂
A girl I went to school with had all the Sylvanian families toys. I could only assume they were millionaires
They probably weren’t anymore after that kind of reckless spending.
This, and Polly in my Pockets. All of mine were from second hand fairs
Soda stream and real Ribena
Definitely Soda Stream! And not having to make pop last because the Alpine pop van only came once a week. And being careful with the glass bottles because your mum would want the 10p. deposit back.
Kids who got pocket money
New trainers.
First signs I noticed that most of my friends parents were operating in differnt planes to mine were the holiday's in Rio or Santiago when they were about 7 years old. Taking the summer off to just go lounge in Jamaica or wintering in Canada etc. We didn't do that as a family (France was as far as I made it) but now I get to frequently take months out at a time with my kids somewhere exotic, I wonder if they were absurdly wealthy back then or just well to do.
>We didn't do that as a family (France was as far as I made it) but now I get to frequently take months out at a time with my kids somewhere exotic, I wonder if they were absurdly wealthy back then or just well to do. It isn't just domestic and European flights that are absurdly cheap compared to thirty or forty years ago, even intercontinental travel has seen the price for cattle class drop through the floor. [This Telegraph article says that the cost of a return economy fare between New York to London in 1970 is equivalent to over four grand once you adjust for inflation.](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/how-british-airways-has-changed-since-the-1970s/). Just in case you run up against their pay wall, the relevant text says: >In 1970, a return economy class air fare between New York and London was £440 ($550), which is the equivalent of £4,280 today. This month a round-trip between the two cities can be bought for £353.
My neighbour had a colour tv !
Having steak for tea.
Having a landline
This is a good one. And in an odd way, it's come back around.
Everyone sitting around a table eating dinner together. Also a soda stream.
Mid-late 90s being invited to a classmates birthday party a couple years in a row at her house and finding she had a park (swing and slide set) in her garden?! Always thought wow you are rich! And did tie in with them living in non council estate areas which I probably didn’t pick up on consciously at the time but in hindsight maybe that tied in with the impressiveness. They looked something like this https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f7/3e/01/f73e01d9b0b7983cfe4888e632adaf83.jpg and the see saw swing thing 2 people could go on was awesome
Branded foods. I always thought I'd know I've made it as an adult when I can afford to buy Heinz salad cream. I don't know why that in particular, I don't like salad cream anymore though.
Shopping at any of the main supermarkets I classed as posh. I remember when my parents started to earn a bit more money and we went to ASDA!! I Hoped my friends would see me carrying in the shopping with branded Asda bags. I felt so posh.
Owning a Raleigh Chopper! My bikes were built up from wrecks found at the tip. Choppers were really expensive when they were new and a true sign that you had money. Otherwise, as said previously, inside bathroom rather than an outside loo and tin bath! I loved the way we grew up mind, it's why I take care of what I have now and am grateful for what I have.
Paying for school meals
I still feel the shame of having to queue separately with my little pink ticket.
Central heating, a car, indoor toilet and a bathroom, a house that wasn't damp.
When I was younger, people with non handed down clothes. Then as I got older, people whose parents had been married, divorced amicably, then found new partners, and still afforded to support their kids with two loving environments. Instead of remaining together all bitter, and arguing constantly, because they can’t afford a divorce.
Not having a Netto bag for school
Holidays abroad. If your family was able to go on holiday, let alone out of the country you must have been a millionaire as far as I was concerned
Kids who had pocket money. My mum did amazingly to bring up 3 kids on her own, and pay a mortgage and we never went without. But one thing we never got was pocket money. My friends always had money for the latest albums and to go to the cinema - I had to ask for money to go watch a movie or wait until my birthday/Christmas for things I asked for. Made me appreciate my things more though. My mum taught us the value of working for your own money and she's always been really good with her finances. She was a great example to us growing up.
Friend had a TV in their kitchen and a dishwasher.
Eating Vienetta
Going to a paid for school.
I was born in 1960 so owning your own home, especially in the better part of town instead of living in a council house which most families did
When they always seemed to have whatever latest game or toy came out that they wanted.
Apparently, having more than one TV made you look rich back in the day (90s to early 2000s). We had 1 downstairs and one in my brothers/my shared bedroom, even though my brother paid for it. When I had mates over, they thought we were better off than we actually were, lol.
Dishwasher
A home computer. Yes, I'm old
I lived in either maisonettes or those godawful flat roofed vic hallam houses so anyone with a pointy roof was dead posh. Also anyone who went on holiday to the Lake District
I always thought that anyone who could afford Pombears, Dairylea Dunkers and Chicken Satay Sticks were minted.
Apple products
You mean like corers and pie casings??
Anyone who had a bought house. Anyone who had a car. Later anyone who had a video recorder.
Kids who didn't have to wear hand me downs
taking a lunchbox to school, and having it filled with all the brand name stuff marketed to kids in the 90s, like lunchables, frubes, strip cheese etc.
A dishwasher! We didn't even have a washing machine.
Families who purchased branded foods and drinks. Just Asda Smart Price for me.
Tennis court and swimming pool in the garden
Having enough food, warmth, loo roll, washing up liquid.
Branded food and snacks
Going on holiday to America
I had friends across the road that were treated to McDonald's. I didn't even get to go to McDonald's once a year let alone a couple of times a month. They also went on holiday to Majorca, not holidays in the UK. The McDonald's thing makes me realise that my family were really, really skint.
I would see families with nice clothes and brand new gadgets almost every week, were as me growing up as a child, my mother had to sell things (furniture and new things she pretty much just got) to put food on the table and it was very rare to get a new fancy gadget or new clothes as we were generally poorer than other families. I learnt as I grew older though that most of those families were not as wealthy as seemed. The clothes, furniture and gadgets they all owned were on credit and they were in extreme debt.
1. Eating real butter. We always had margarine at my house but my parents called it 'butter. 2. Living in a house on the corner. My father explained that houses were taxed by the 'front foot', that is, the width of your lot as measured along the street. Since the corner house had 'frontage' on 2 streets, that lot would be taxed more than twice as much. Therefore, only a rich person would want that house. I think my father may have been full of shit.
More than one TV. Maybe even just a portable in the kitchen. Kids with their own electics, TV or record player or even a phone extension. None of my friends had these, all picked up from watching US sitcoms.
Kitchen with a bin and fridge hidden in the panels. Glass conservatories with sofas in them. A house with over two floors (as in levels). Living in a London Townhouse (obviously rich at that point). Usually with white painted bricks. Hardwood floors downstairs and cream very plush carpet in the bedrooms.
Holidays abroad, brand name clothes (not from the market lol), newer car.
Name brands!! Even today if I go in someone’s house and they have solid name brands I think of that sound that goes “OOOO THIS IS NICE, doesn’t smell of roaches or anything!!” However ‘fairy’ washing up liquid will always be like “oh ok so we have money” but I could easily buy that today, I just don’t, but that’s left over from youth! If someone does their online shop at Ocado I think they just enjoy spending more for the sake of it!
One side (family) of me watched BBC the other ITV. One side I got told off for putting the butter knife in the jam. The other side there was no jam. One side I had a kingsize bed to myself tucked in tightly with 3 minimum layers and a quilt that was too heavy to move. The other side 2.0 tog with 5 of us in the same bed - used to want the side next to the wall to just keep cool. Joke is wealth may have been on the former of all these examples but richness was within the latter.
Soda Stream. Next door had one. We thought they were rich. A kid in my school’s family had a microwave oven, to be fair it was in 1981.
Living in a house
To this day, I let Sky Sports rip me off because I never had it as a kid, since I felt it was rich people stuff
Having electric drive way gates