15 Common Household Items From 20 Years Ago That Have Vanished
Recently, we asked the BuzzFeed Community for examples of household items that were popular about 20 years ago, but you'd be hard-pressed to find them in homes now. The responses were a true throwback, and the nostalgia is real. Here are just 15 once ubiquitous home staples:
"A home computer. My boyfriend, my father, and I all have our own PCs now. I remember I used to watch YouTube videos on my dad's lap on the Dell PC that ran Windows XP. Now everyone has one in my house."
—Anonymous; USA
"Vacation slides. Especially having a party to show vacation slides and videos."
"A Blu-ray/DVD player connected to the TV. We didn't know what we had when we owned physical media."
—Anonymous
"Newspapers, TV guides, magazines. Basically anything paper that gets delivered regularly. My parents stopped getting the newspaper delivered when I went to college. Haven't had a TV Guide in even longer. Last magazine I remember getting was the American Girl Doll catalog in, like, 2011. And just a few months ago, when my husband and I went to paint pumpkins for Halloween, we realized we didn't have newspaper to put down so that we wouldn't ruin the kitchen table! Crafts as a kid meant putting down old newspapers and magazines so you wouldn't make a mess! We ended up using some wrapping paper from our Christmas decoration bin in our storage closet to put down on the table before we started painting!"
"A phone book. It was going out of use at that time, but not yet gone. Occasionally used."
—Anonymous, 57; Upstate New York
"Torchiere halogen lamps that were 300-plus watts. You could heat up a dorm room if your heater wasn't working!
"An answering machine."
—maskedcoach368
"Kitchen trash compactor. Do young people even know what a kitchen trash compactor is?"
"A computer room. A whole room designated for a desk, a computer, and a printer (maybe a fax machine if you had money). To this day, we still call my mom's extra bedroom 'the computer room.'"
—crunchyscissors414
"A home phone. Not necessarily a landline, just the wall mount one that anyone that wasn't friends or family with mom's cell number called…but mostly it was scammers and telemarketers."
"Giant towers to hold your CDs and DVDs."
—monikap6
"A telephone desk. I just bought a house that has a telephone desk built into the kitchen cabinetry. It's going to make a lovely coffee station."
"China cabinet"
—oddunicorn733
"A hand-cranked machine to crush ice cubes."
Finally, "Wall-to-wall carpets. They are hard to maintain and expensive to install. Hardwood floors are better for those of us with sinus or respiratory problems. You can never get a carpet completely clean."
—Anonymous, 69; Maryland
Have other examples of household items that were popular decades ago but you NEVER see them in homes now? Let us know which things and why they went out of style in the comments or through the anonymous form below!
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