The world around us is changing so quickly that it is difficult to surprise us with something. But the older generation is accustomed to a more measured life. What is normal for us can be a real shock for them.
Our parents and grandparents tend to feel nostalgic for the times of the Soviet Union. Their souls are warmed by memories of cheap bread and ice cream for 5 kopecks. Sausage and sausages were also tastier. Our realities repel them. It is especially difficult to come to terms with modern life. How can you order food on the Internet, pour water endlessly and not do twists for the winter? We have collected habits that, if not shocking, then bewilder our mothers. So we …
1. We eat at the monitor
Soviet people ate breakfast, lunch and dinner with their families in the kitchen. To enjoy, you need to eat measuredly, savoring every bite, our mothers are sure. Dinner is the best time for family gatherings. The habit of quickly intercepting food without opening from the screen of a phone, laptop or right at the workplace, bypassing lunch for Soviet people, is blasphemous. Harmful, and zero pleasure.
2. We buy clothes for home
In the USSR, all things with holes, stains and other defects automatically became home clothes. It was not easy to buy quality things, especially since there was no extra money. Although now there is no such problem, it is hard for our mothers to understand why their beloved daughter needs silk pajamas and why a stretched T-shirt with the same sweatpants is bad.
3. We do not save things until better times
Another habit from the past is to put things aside for a “special occasion.” The beautiful porcelain service was kept for celebrations, new clothes were worn on big holidays, and they slept on darned sheets, while a new set lay in the closet for years. We prefer to use all the best here and now.
4. We wash the dishes with the tap open
Or brush your teeth. At the sight of such economic debauchery, the indicators of the water meters flash before our mothers’ eyes. In the USSR, it was customary to first soap all the dishes, and then rinse them under a small stream. Another outrageous habit is that we turn on the lights in several rooms at once.
5. We do not save on trifles
Do you know the expression “save on matches”? It’s about the penny savings. For example, ordering a taxi when driving from a store with huge bags is blasphemy. After all, public transport is cheaper. And it is quite possible to get to the airport by train. Choosing a cheaper kefir is a sacred thing. However, sometimes mothers are still right. Surely you needed those fifteenth jeans?
6. Brew the tea bag once
There were no tea bags in the USSR at all. There was a regular tea pot that could be rinsed in a teapot until slightly yellow. Therefore, the bags are now brewed several times – for the glory of economy. We do not understand this – there is a lot of tea in the stores, and it costs quite a budget. Why drink a tasteless liquid when you can throw away the old bag and take a new one?
7. Do not stock up on salt, matches and cereals
In the USSR, good food was in short supply. Sometimes even the simplest items disappeared from the shops – pasta and cereals, salt and sugar, matches. When the groceries appeared in the store, they tried to buy more in order to keep them in stock. Therefore, our reluctance to fill the kitchen cabinet with an annual supply of buckwheat, “because the store has a discount”, is difficult for the older generation to understand.
8. Sleep until lunch
“Whoever gets up early, God gives that” – this expression is firmly stuck in the heads of not only our parents, but also grandparents. Sleeping until the sides ache seems to them a senseless and unaffordable luxury. However, American scientists have proven that getting up early is beneficial. Those who like to sleep until noon run the risk of having a stroke, suffer from problems with excess weight and high cholesterol.
9. Throw away the dishwashing sponges
Should you change the dishwashing sponge as often as possible because it harbors bacteria? Should the sponge be destroyed immediately after washing the sink where the meat was thawed? Ladies of the Soviet temper cannot understand this. In those days, dishes were washed with rags, which were periodically washed. Throwing them out as a last resort – saving first of all.
10. We turn to specialists
Our moms and dads preferred to do everything with their own hands. Hem or sew on a skirt? There is a sewing machine in every house. Repair a current pipe or a stove that has stopped turning on? Why husband? As a last resort, you can ask a neighbor in the stairwell. Need a refurbishment? Great family weekend escape game. Mothers and fathers do not understand the desire to delegate all these and many other tasks to specialists. By the way, in some ways they are right. Some of us are completely helpless in everyday life.
11. Getting rid of the trash
The total deficit and the pursuit of material wealth were imprinted in the minds of Soviet citizens. Things were obtained with hard work, and they simply did not raise a hand to throw them away as unnecessary. Storage rooms and balconies often turned into a dump of unnecessary things. A bag with bags, holey tights as a net for a year’s supply of bows, old children’s clothes – maybe it will come in handy. It’s hard for our mothers to understand the modern habit of wasting money by constantly buying new things and throwing out old ones without hesitation.
12. Drain the first broth
Modern housewives know: cooking the first in the first broth is harmful, because it contains all the most harmful, namely hormones and antibiotics, which fed a chicken or a bull. It’s crazy for our mothers. In their opinion, the first broth is the most rich and tasty.
13. Do not store potatoes and onions for the winter
Vegetable garden, dacha, beds. Many carry these memories from childhood with horror. What was to be done? If you don’t grow your vegetables, you will sit on pasta in the winter. After all, even vegetables in winter were difficult to buy. We, on the other hand, have to be sophisticated unnecessarily – in winter, supermarkets are full of not only potatoes, but also strawberries. If our mothers can still put up with the refusal to store potatoes and onions for the winter, then buying cherries in January is considered a real crime against health and wallet, because berries at this time of the year are stuffed with chemicals, and they cost about like a private plane.
14. Don’t twist
Again, due to the strict breakdown of products by seasons and the total shortage of everything, our mothers had to do twists for the winter every summer. They are genuinely indignant when we buy pickled cucumbers in the supermarket and do not want to spend wonderful summer days on the epic of canning.
15. Cook for once
Soviet housewives prepared lunches and dinners for the week ahead. After all, having come home from work in the evening, it is easier to warm up pilaf than to cook it from scratch. We like fresh food in the heat of the moment. If we prepare in advance – a maximum of a day or two.
16. Ordering food from a restaurant
It is truly difficult for Soviet housewives to come to terms with the wasteful habit of their beloved children ordering food at home. And if we do this while waiting for guests, it is simply disrespect for those who have come. After all, having stood all day at the stove, you put your soul into food. And culinary skills. If they are, of course.
17. Do not keep the remote control in a plastic bag
This is more about grandparents. It is inherent in them to cover the technique with a lace napkin and wrap the TV remote control in cellophane to last longer. They are sure that we do not take care of things, since we do not do the same.
18. We refuse from a landline phone
Do you use exclusively a mobile phone and have long ago got rid of the landline? And rightly so, wired devices have long outlived their usefulness. But mom or grandmother will disagree with you. It’s even harder for older people to accept that young people have given up television in favor of YouTube.
19. Buying things on the Internet
To get this or that thing, our moms and dads had to stand in huge queues. Is it a rumor to buy a dress without trying it on the Internet in a couple of minutes? The sofa and curtains are a must-see. What if it doesn’t work? Can I return? But this is rude.
20. We do not like carpets
We don’t have carpets in every room. We do not buy carpets at all, because we consider them to be outdated dust collectors. And in the Soviet past, this was the best way to decorate a room. Apart from the sideboard crammed with dishes and figurines.