One of my big pet peeves is when people say "people used to ..." and they describe something well-off or only wealthy people did in the past. "but nowadays people just..." and they describe something poor and broke people do today.
We don't have as much documentation of how poor people lived in the past... so in a way we don't know how poor people lived as clearly.
1/
For example I recently encountered a rant about the terrible quality of Temu furniture.
"Furniture used to be a family heirloom... but now it's disposable" --this isn't a statment without merit, but low quality items that didn't last may not be documented because they didn't last.
The selection bias of it all annoys me a little.
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@futurebird I remember when you could get a dresser made of heavy cardboard.
@ClimateJenny @futurebird you still can! have you ever taken a hacksaw to IKEA stuff?
@ehproque @ClimateJenny @futurebird
Actually, no. The dressers were cardboard. Ikea stuff is a hundred times better.
As a disabled person, I've held back tears hundreds of times over the furniture that hurts my hands horribly to use, knowing now I could've got Ikea for the same price. Each year, I can replace one or two things.
@futurebird Furniture has been a choice for at least my lifetime (for those who can afford it) - you can buy something disposable or you can buy something you'll never have to replace, the latter obviously costing more.
You can also buy stuff in the middle, that'll last for quite a while and then go tatty and need replacement. I tend to avoid this stuff and buy at one extreme or the other depending on use case.
Jul 3, 2026, 2:31 PMI've always been a fan of buying disposable crap that fits the need (when it's something relatively urgent like storage for stuff that's in the way) and then looking for a better one to replace it with at leisure now that there is no time pressure
@gbargoud @futurebird Like, we found a freezer for something like £49.99 to keep stuff in for a few days until the repairman could turn up and fix our real one.
Jul 3, 2026, 5:59 PM@TimWardCam @gbargoud @futurebird
We had MFI here in Britain when I was a boy, although it didn't fall apart immediately it wasn't any better than IKEA or Temu and used the same construction methods.
My late father was a decent carpenter and even made some furniture or fixed up older stuff, but as he got older he had both the responsibilties of fatherhood and got a job in the petrochemical industry which meant he had less spare time but enough money to buy at least partly ready made furniture..
@vfrmedia @gbargoud @futurebird My grandfather was a proper cabinet maker. I've still got some of his stuff. It shows no signs of getting old or worn out.
@futurebird this ikea desk has been in our family for years (/joke)
@hi_cial @futurebird @ehproque Well, actually... (sorry to be that guy)
We have an Ikea desk, filing cabinet, and hutch cabinet in our family room that've been in our family for years. They have moved 15 times (at last count) to homes in three states. The holes where a keyboard drawer was mounted show it's definitely the fancy cardboard type of construction...nothing solid there.
The cheapo Sauder kit furniture my parents built for my childhood bedroom is planned to be used in our kids' bedrooms, so it will also be intergenerational "heirloom" furniture that has already been used across five decades.
@DanielMReck @hi_cial @futurebird so, even better, you can have cardboard heirloom furniture!
Jul 3, 2026, 5:18 PM@hi_cial @futurebird Our Ikea workbench and dressers are coming up on 14 years of constant use. Pretty solid stuff.
Oh, the bookcases, also.
@drwho @futurebird oh yeah absolutely they'll last you what you need. they're just not ~heirloom~
ikea is great for families bc itll hold together long enough and thru enough abuse by kids that if you dont mind dents, stains and scuffs (and why should you, raising kids) you're set until they need to head out to college!!!
@futurebird
It was only the other day I heard about this snobby put down
https://libquotes.com/michael-jopling/quote/lbq3b1l
@futurebird exactly - you can still buy heirloom quality furniture today. Its just expensive.
I've seen a lot of the inverse too, which bugs me even more more, personally - "back in the day everyone was poor as dirt and we just had beans and cornbread, when we were lucky. Now we can eat whatever we want 3 meals a day and people still complain about being poor"
Sir, you came up, not everyone did.
@AldinTheMage @futurebird it’s also really heavy. So unless you’re completely settled, it’s easier to cart around the cheaper stuff.
@AldinTheMage @futurebird In case you werent' aware, Mony Python were making fun of that attitude in 1982.
@Infrapink @AldinTheMage @futurebird
And this sketch is far older than that; it goes back to the "At Last the 1948 Show" in 1967.
Yeah, I mean, visit a Walmart once in a while. Some of the people shopping there are obviously not doing well financially.
Like, I saw a woman with a kid a few weeks ago who was buying nothing but canned beans. The implications were…not pleasant.
@futurebird the
most annoying generalised-from-rich-people idea is that women used to stay at home while the men worked. Poor women have always worked - and usually ran the home too.
(But on the disposable nature of things, have you read about why historical examples of shoes in museums tend to be tiny? I can't find the article I read about it now but it's survival bias again - the shoes that someone outgrew survived to be put into a museum, while the ones that fit got worn out.)
@louisa_ rich women also worked, they just did things like make clothes for the family and coordinate their husband's social life for maximum networking instead of working for someone else.
@stellarsarah @futurebird yes, sorry, when I said "stay at home", I was thinking "ran the home" rather than just being ladies of leisure. But worth noting that poor women would have also been making the clothes for the family, as well as all the cooking/cleaning, and working outside the home, so very much working a double shift.
Jul 4, 2026, 7:09 AM@stellarsarah @louisa_ @futurebird that’s a great point, basically they are PA, housekeeper and and events manager rolled into one but also ‘not working’ hmm
Jul 3, 2026, 2:33 PM@louisa_ @futurebird THIIIIIIS! this is the one.
@louisa_ @futurebird Also annoying: the idea that "work" and "home" were/are two separate concepts, as though a person's work somehow isn't real if it's done under their own roof.
@louisa_ @futurebird the reason why there’re almost no men’s working or everyday clothes in collections — such clothes rarely survive
also, i’ve been browsing a shop in japan (sadly, i forgot its name) they were selling used clothes from europe from some 1900-1940s — every piece was heavily and visibly mended, it was so unusual to look at
the same happens to fancy wedding dresses in museum collections: it’s not that women were that small, it’s they were married when they were lean teenagers
@futurebird A lot of even cheap "poor people" furniture was very very much better made than today and would last a very long time at least in the UK. Stuff was also of necessity designed to be repaired and repaired.
Bigger problem is there are loads of things everyone poor or employee of the rich knew how to do that were long term sustainable and few know now. Just look at modern paints on timber, non permeable renders and the use of aircon to replace good building design.
I disagree. I lived in a house with a lot of poor people furniture. My desk during most of my school years was a wobbly, torn, foldable, card table. It was cheap, shit and poorly made.
It is likely now, for the same price or less, to be able to purchase a sturdy Swedish Flatpack desk around the same size. Even less or free second hand as overseas students return home.
Neither would be considered "heirloom" but the latter is far better suited to the task.
Jul 3, 2026, 2:08 PM@etchedpixels @futurebird Continuing that line of thought, the materials used in the cheapest items now didn't exist 100 years ago, so at least you got solid wood and metal fixings rather than chipboard and plastic. Of course, expensive furniture was oak or similar while cheaper pieces used pine or other less durable wood. Expensive things also often had decorative carvings that didn't affect durability.
@mansr @futurebird Plywood is 1850s, some of the crappier ones like chipboard are WW2 though.
There certainly were cheap products, poorly made products in existence as well and plenty of them. There's a second level of skew in the data there because bad ancient furniture is long lost.
Jul 3, 2026, 2:41 PM@etchedpixels @futurebird Plywood used properly can be very strong. Even chipboard/fibreboard can be a perfectly reasonable choice in some applications. Screwing into the edge of either is not proper, and that's how a lot of cheap things fail today if the plastic fasteners don't break first.
Of course there's a selection bias where we only know about what survived or was worth writing about. Where is the Ea-nāṣir of furniture?
@etchedpixels @futurebird From the "vintage" secondhand stores I've been to, can confirm. They were usually tatty AF, but perfectly serviceable.
For the aircon part, it's definitely true at least somewhat (Boston had an incident where the central library's HVAC was down for construction, and the newer half of the building was absolutely uninhabitable while the century-old half that predated aircon was just a little warmer than usual) but with the current heat in Europe, aircon is an absolute necessity. 100F and 60% humidity is generally not something you can "passive cooling" your way around.
That's not to say that modern building design couldn't be way better than it currently is though. The best way to help an AC keep the place cold is the older techniques to stop the heat getting inside in the first place. Stuff like awnings and louvers to keep the direct sunlight out of the building during the hottest parts of the year, that fell out of "fashion" as soon as AC became practical for some reason.
@becomethewaifu @futurebird it's particularly bad in the UK as we never really designed for heat but to stay warm and keep water out. Even our old buildings often have just enough loft ventilation to stop rot and you won't find cupolas, or any kind of vertical airflows, shading of windows from high sun etc. And almost nobody in the UK even knows about things like sheet cotton attached to the roof timbers so that radiant heat never impacts on the loft floor and thus room ceilings
Yeah I remember the ‘heirloom’ cinderblock and wood plank shelves my parents had when I was a kid and the ‘couch’ which was an unpainted plywood box with a used mattress covered with a slip cover mom made on top.
I recall many injuries from knocking into the cinder blocks or stubbing toes on them, and splinters from sliding off the couch wrong.
Cheap furniture today looks nicer and is less likely to injure clumsy kids.
I've been moving and repairing the same shitty Ikea bookcases for 23 years. People are like, they are so cheap you could just buy more. Nope. They are so cheap YOU could buy more. I am poor enough to not be able to do that and i grew up in a city riddled with bedbugs so thrifting that stuff is dicey. My favourite piece of furniture I own is my grandfather's desk from the depression era. It's fake oak from when they painted the oak grain on by hand for the cheap stuff. I expect it is the equivalent of Temu from 1934. Fine by me.
It's a pretty impressive paint job
@RobotDiver @futurebird
Yup! I still have a piece like that from my mom’s family! (The whole set included this dresser, a “writing table” and double bed with a huge headboard 😹 all made of a soft wood that I assume is white pine (from the north east us)
If anyone wants to add to the description for the alt text please let me know as I am unsure if I covered everything 😹
@futurebird @RobotDiver i had heard so much that ikea is “so cheap!” that when i actually went there i was like “the fuck, only furniture that is cheap in my books is that plastic chair that will break if you sit on it too hard”.
100% We are currently saving up for a single Ikea cabinet for our kitchen. $400 is like a month of groceries.
Jul 3, 2026, 1:53 PM@futurebird plus, a lot of people don't want the heavy old furniture anymore. They don't have room for it, and when they move, it's with a friend and a small car, not a moving van. Lots of good stuff goes to the landfill because the economic conditions have changed so much..
Jul 3, 2026, 5:19 PM@temporal_spider @futurebird Sometimes, it costs less to chuck stuff and replace it then it does to move it.
Jul 3, 2026, 11:59 PM
@futurebird Wallace Stevens' 1926 poem 'The Emperor of Ice Cream' describes a scene of folks who are less than wealthy, and makes note of the cheapness of the furniture:
"...
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
..."
"Deal" here is a word that means a type of cheap pine or fir wood; the glass knobs are mentioned as a contrast to more expensive alternatives...
The poem is talking about a wake or funeral for a woman; the dresser was unlikely to be an heirloom piece, and this was the point...
Jul 3, 2026, 2:36 PM@futurebird reminds me of Frasier talking about "antiquing"
@futurebird Off topic: I’m struck that many of the replies talk about the furniture the writers grew up with, and describe contradictory experiences… but from context, the writers are clearly of vastly different ages and are describing completely different periods of time!
My dad was a great woodworker, but I only have a couple of small things because he died just when COVID hit and I had to leave in a hurry without time to choose and ship something bigger,, across the Atlantic.
OTOH, I am a poor woodworker but we have a couple of small cabinets I made with my son to teach him how to do it.
But he's followed the family tradition of being even less skilled than me.
@futurebird In the distant past, before mass production, it was probably the wealthy people who had less durable furniture: delicate details, refined finishes, upholstery that could wear out, and fashions that changed and made old stuff obsolete. With that stuff, there’s a survivorship bias too: it’s preserved through association with the wealthy and powerful and as a showcase for period craftsmanship.
@futurebird
I am lucky, perhaps, to have grown up with some of my grandmother's stories from when she was young. When they moved from the farm she spent her childhood in, they piled most of the furniture and burnt it.
It was more reasonable to put together new stuff from planks and a farmer's approach to building useful stuff than doing many rounds with horse and cart.
From my grandfather's on the other side, there is heirloom quality furniture as heirlooms. They were rich.
@maswan @futurebird
Yes! I remember stories like this about houses built in the us (early days like 1600-1700) often times they would burn the house down and go through the ashes to save the nails and hinges. Much faster than taking a crowbar and hammer to it 😹 and the nails would be intact. There wasn’t a “housing market” per-se at the time in the “wilderness” (which again is a terrible term from colonialism 😾) and the conception was (at the time) that there were too many trees 🙄
@em_and_future_cats
In this case it was in the early 1900s, and the farm was bought out by the forestry agency because growing lumber was seen as a better use of land in northern Sweden than farming or something (I'm not 100% on the motivation, just know who forced a sale).
@futurebird
Jul 3, 2026, 3:50 PM@futurebird Agreed! Furniture for poor people used to be boxes made of scrap wood or cardboard. Either that or throw-a-ways found on the street or at the town dump.
@HappytoBe
Orange and tea crates
@HappytoBe @futurebird Or liberated from a company dumpster.
I remember friends visiting and asking me why the carpet in my bedroom didn't reach the walls at either end, why I had a chair that looked like it belonged in a factory, and why the kitchen table looked like pieces of old doors.
@futurebird You remind me of who we think that all Roman roads were well built due to the ones that survive to today. But we ignore all of the poorly made Roman roads that no longer exist. Surviver bias.
My parents bought bookcases from the NY Museum of Modern Art in the 1950s. They were on the fragile side. Destroyed in a flood.
And young people often can't afford to move furniture when they move, so why get expensive stuff?
@paulc @futurebird
It's the maintenance that enabled some Roman roads to survive, probably those on major routes. Not really any different to today.
@futurebird Some sort of boots theory addendum?
@futurebird I wonder if part of this is from people who were related to people who were able to do woodworking. I have a nice bookshelf my dad made when I was little, and it's pretty simple, but it still beats the tar our of anything you'd buy at the Wal-Mart that can't even stand up straight without the cardboard nailed to the back. And we have some nice, solid wood desks and cabinets made by grandfathers and uncles. But while we're far from rich, we're also not poor.
@futurebird It’s like when people point to grand old buildings in San Francisco and say “they don’t build them like they used to”; my friend, those are the exceptional ones. The others collapsed and burned in earthquakes and fires.
