[Tart Cherry Jam]

Mine: dental floss. I love the feeling of freshly flossed teeth and gum surfaces and even the process of flossing. When I have my occasional bouts of depression and anxiety, which are thankfully short-lived these days, hygiene stops and when I return to normal afterwards, flossing is the very first thing I do that signals 'the crisis is over'.

I walk down memory lane and can't believe I used to live without flossing back in the day.

[unaluna]

Ever since a dental hygienist gave me two important tips - 1, floss sitting down in the living room while watching tv and 2, wind the floss around your middle fingers and direct it with the index fingers - i have loved flossing ALMOST more than seks. Electric heating pad is next.

[lizardlady]

Indoor plumbing

[BeyondtheRainbow]

Hot water and heating on a very cold day

[Nammu]

Microwave, I rarely cook anymore

[Tart Cherry Jam]

Originally Posted by Nammu

Microwave, I rarely cook anymore

I absolutely love the steam-in-a-bag technology. Makes it so much easier for me to eat vegetables. You put a bag into the microwave, nuke, let rest for a minute, open the bag, empty the contents onto a plate and add olive oil and lemon juice. Cannot be simpler and no mess to clean up afterwards.

[divine1966]

Indoor plumbing

But also anything that made household tasks less physically overwhelming. Washing machine and dryer, for example

[Blueberrybook]

Epidurals for childbirth!

[Tart Cherry Jam]

Originally Posted by divine1966

Indoor plumbing

But also anything that made household tasks less physically overwhelming. Washing machine and dryer, for example

I literally give thanks internally each time I fold laundry. How easy and swift it is. I grew up without dryers and with rudimentary clunky washers.

That said, I still air dry all finer clothes of mine including Solmates! And I think that is why I get so many wears of stuff.

[splitimage]

Computers and data bases of research papers. it's so much easier to research things, compared to the card catalogues I grew up with.

[mote.of.soul]

Guitar tuner, you put a little battery in it. Much quicker, much more accurate than tuning guitar using my ear.

[lizardlady]

Originally Posted by mote.of.soul

Guitar tuner, you put a little battery in it. Much quicker, much more accurate than tuning guitar using my ear.

Didn't even know such a thing exists. Kewl!

[Blueberrybook]

GPS that mostly works...so much more convenient than maps.

[divine1966]

Originally Posted by Tart Cherry Jam

I literally give thanks internally each time I fold laundry. How easy and swift it is. I grew up without dryers and with rudimentary clunky washers.

That said, I still air dry all finer clothes of mine including Solmates! And I think that is why I get so many wears of stuff.

Same! I air dry delicates and most work clothes.

[SquarePegGuy]

Originally Posted by BeyondtheRainbow

Hot water and heating on a very cold day

Amen to @BeyondtheRainbow. If we're allowed a third convenience, I'd add refrigeration.

[Nammu]

Vaccines, pasteurized foods, and antibiotics

[SquarePegGuy]

Originally Posted by lizardlady

Didn't even know such a thing exists. Kewl!

Actually, there are guitar tuner apps for smartphones. I was lucky to find one when my daughter auditioned for the Arts Magnet School. But I don't find it difficult to tune a guitar by ear as long as I have my 440 Hz tuning fork.

[mote.of.soul]

Originally Posted by SquarePegGuy

Actually, there are guitar tuner apps for smartphones. I was lucky to find one when my daughter auditioned for the Arts Magnet School. But I don't find it difficult to tune a guitar by ear as long as I have my 440 Hz tuning fork.

Oh that's great you have a good ear. I thought I had a decent ear but lately, even the ph app tuner didn't do a great job! Must be the intonation on the guitar I've been using lately. Hmm.

Great mod con though, yes.

[Tart Cherry Jam]

Originally Posted by SquarePegGuy

Amen to @BeyondtheRainbow. If we're allowed a third convenience, I'd add refrigeration.

My grandmother grew up without fridges and her own mother (she died long before I was born) would put perishables in woven sacks and suspend them from a window during winter months. She also reboiled soups to kill bacteria, every day.

Obviously, we had refrigerators, but my grandmother was still in the habit of reboiling a pot of soup every morning. And she would refry leftover fried foods. All of it made the taste and texture of fried-and-refried food horrible, but it was impossible to talk her out of her ingrained habit. She appreciated having a fridge and she did not suspend perishables in woven sacks from windows during cold months, but she reboiled and refried leftovers.

I do not know how they kept perishables during warm months. Probably kept them in cellars dug deep under houses.

I should add to your list SquarePegGuy: MODERN fridges. The fridges I grew up with required maintenance. They had to be regularly defrosted. That meant everything was taken out, the fridge unplugged, water that would accumulate regularly collected and thrown away, then the whole thing washed, wiped dry, and plugged back in. What I remember from this laborious procedure was that my grandmother would keep butter inside a bowl of cold water to keep it cold while the fridge was being defrosted.

My aunt would also shout at me if I left the fridge door open for an extra split second when taking something out, such as milk. The idea was that you minimize the time the fridge is open. This is probably still a good idea from the energy preservation standpoint, but I live alone now and can afford keeping the door open when I take a half-gallon of milk out, pour from it, and put it back in, and nobody says a word. So I do that, enjoying the freedom to do whatever I please. Perhaps I should stop doing that.

And regarding pasteurized foods, @Nammu: we had pasteurized milk in the city but had to boil raw milk that was sold in the countryside. It actually changes taste if you boil and then cool it down.

[Blueberrybook]

Originally Posted by Tart Cherry Jam

My grandmother grew up without fridges and her own mother (she died long before I was born) would put perishables in woven sacks and suspend them from a window during winter months. She also reboiled soups to kill bacteria, every day.

Obviously, we had refrigerators, but my grandmother was still in the habit of reboiling a pot of soup every morning. And she would refry leftover fried foods. All of it made the taste and texture of fried-and-refried food horrible, but it was impossible to talk her out of her ingrained habit. She appreciated having a fridge and she did not suspend perishables in woven sacks from windows during cold months, but she reboiled and refried leftovers.

I do not know how they kept perishables during warm months. Probably kept them in cellars dug deep under houses.

I should add to your list SquarePegGuy: MODERN fridges. The fridges I grew up with required maintenance. They had to be regularly defrosted. That meant everything was taken out, the fridge unplugged, water that would accumulate regularly collected and thrown away, then the whole thing washed, wiped dry, and plugged back in. What I remember from this laborious procedure was that my grandmother would keep butter inside a bowl of cold water to keep it cold while the fridge was being defrosted.

My aunt would also shout at me if I left the fridge door open for an extra split second when taking something out, such as milk. The idea was that you minimize the time the fridge is open. This is probably still a good idea from the energy preservation standpoint, but I live alone now and can afford keeping the door open when I take a half-gallon of milk out, pour from it, and put it back in, and nobody says a word. So I do that, enjoying the freedom to do whatever I please. Perhaps I should stop doing that.

And regarding pasteurized foods, @Nammu: we had pasteurized milk in the city but had to boil raw milk that was sold in the countryside. It actually changes taste if you boil and then cool it down.

My grandmother had the so-called "icebox"; she still calls a refrigerator an "icebox" (she is 91 yr. old) and so did my mom when I was young; I didn't even know they were called refrigerators until I started school (though we did have an actual refrigerator when I was growing up); where you'd buy a block of ice, put it in the bottom to chill things, buy another ice block when the first one melted & so on in warm/hot weather. Living in southeast TX, most of the year was very warm, even times in winter can get quite warm. They had a local delivery who would go around selling blocks of ice. She had no AC or fans; there wasn't power in the country where she lived until she was 10 or so, so it was kerosene lamps. She told me once they got electricity she felt the house was way too bright! She walked to school but could only go through 8th grade as her father would have to drive her to the high school, but in the winter, I forget which part of it but the car would freeze and she wouldn't be able to make it to school (no school bus ran out to where she lived). She had no library to go to, and only owned one book a teacher had given her (Black Beauty, which she later gave to me). In addition, her family was poor and tenant farmers (yes, even poor white people had to become tenant farmers, i.e. sharecroppers), there was no welfare for them). Her parents only spoke Czech at home, and she had to learn English completely when starting school (which I realize there are people in similar situations these days though often the language is Spanish, but now many students in foreign schools in Europe do learn some English in school including the Czech Republic as when I visited there most young people had at least rudimentary English). She had no washing machine, churned butter, those days had to be so hard; there were no food banks they had to make do with the food they could garden & chickens to butcher & lay eggs and what littele they could afford, and then there was food rationing in WWII. In addition, they had zero warnings of upcoming hurricanes (which happen more than one would like in these parts). Growing up back then had to be so difficult!

Then, to make matters worse, when my mom was growing up (around 13 yr. old) her brother (around 19 yr. old) & one of her sisters (around 17 yr. old) drowned in a river swimming together. This was in the 1970s! These days, any decent church & charity group would have offered a free funeral & burial because the family was still indigent and couldn't afford to bury their own children. But their church wouldn't. No church in town would until finally one stepped forward. How awful is that?!

There is SO much to be grateful for these days!

[Blueberrybook]

And for women, let's not forget birth control! Well, many men too though they are not the ones who have to give childbirth!

[Blueberrybook]

Airplanes to cut down travel time

[lizardlady]

Blueberrybook, you grandmother's child sounds a lot like my dad's. Tough way to live.

[unaluna]

Many of us are only one generation away from no plumbing, no electricity, etc. Thats how my parents grew up in Italy. When my cousins visited italy when we were growing up, they returned with stories of using leaves for toilet paper!

[MuddyBoots]

Crampons/spikes. I put my micros on the other day to get the mail