Mine was keeping plastic bags inside a bigger plastic bag. I genuinely thought that was just a universal life rule until I stayed over at a friend’s place and didn’t see “the bag of bags.” What’s yours?
Mine was keeping plastic bags inside a bigger plastic bag. I genuinely thought that was just a universal life rule until I stayed over at a friend’s place and didn’t see “the bag of bags.” What’s yours?
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my mom keeps the bathroom light on at night, never understood why. I don’t forget to turn the light off when I’m at other people’s homes and I also didn’t keep the lights on at my place when I lived alone either.
Wait, what? Not everyone has a bag of bags?
On a related note, grabbing extra plastic bags while grocery shopping to be used in the bathroom garbage bin.
My family did the same ‘bag of bags’ thing 😂
Grew up in a 2 bedroom house with 8 people. No such thing as personal space. bathroom breaks were the only alone time.
Wait, I also thought the bag of bags was universal. Except classy people had a bespoke cloth bag to store the bags in.
I’m pretty sure bag of bags is very prevalent in certain cultures.. Don’t worry it’s not just your family!
Listen mostly to Christian music. When I made friends outside of church it was amazing to me how diverse music could really be. This wasn’t necessarily bad, but it showed how outside the norm I was.
My family actually does that too.
The TV played SportsCenter/ESPN in the background all day (even though I had no interest in it). It wasn’t until I went over to a friend’s house in 7th grade I was like, why don’t you have the game on? And she was like what game? To which, I had no answer. . .there was just always a game on in my house.
Being mad at someone and then later on acting like nothing happened
I really thought every house had a drawer full of random batteries, tape and old keys that no one knew the purpose of.
I’m sure it’s almost universal to have a bag of bags, surely?
For a long time we had a sausage shaped bag made of canvas – you put the bags in the top, then pulled one out of the bottom when you wanted one. It was really handy!
Keep the house clean and do repairs(or at least try). Then I met my husband’s family and found out that a lot of will just live in filth with the house falling apart.
Mom would fix the same 5 or 6 meals for dinner every week. Like – chicken every Monday; meatloaf every Tuesday or burritos every Wednesday, etc. On Weekends, we’d go out to eat for dinner, once a week to break the monotony.
Lunch was always: a plain bologna sandwich with no lettuce or tomato and plastic cheese; chips and a soda.
The variety of dishes at other people’s homes just blew my mind! And, they ate so many vegetables; they even put them in their sandwiches! Once at my mom’s friend’s BBQ, they gave me a burger with pickles on it. That was so weird, I started pulling them off, till mom stopped me.
Later, my friends would take me out to lunch at Taco Bell and it became my favorite restaurant. My friends would ask me, why did I like ethnic fast food, when I could get real Mexican food at home?
It was unbelievable to them that my mother’s cooking was NOT my favorite food.
My grandpa always left the stove light on at night. Now I do it too bc I find it comforting to imagine he’s here. My grandma also often fell asleep with just her bedside lamp on, and most of the time her TV too. I do that also now. I also like leaving a lamp on in my office at all times. I can pretend it’s her light when I go to use the restroom at night. I miss them both so much, but I do find it comforting to know I’m so much like my grandma, and that I’ve picked up some of both of their behaviors.
Celebrating my dads death date by releasing balloons at his grave and going on a fun outing😭 I looked forward to the day instead of being sad (he died a couple months before I was born so I was already desensitized to the death)
When I was 15 I ended up getting a dog who was born on his death date, so it really is a special happy day in my family 🥲
Everyone had the plastic bags.
The supreme punishment in my family was THE SILENT TREATMENT. You make a mistake and the whole family will ignore your existence and carry on with their lives including fun movie nights and happy dinner discussions, while you rot there in guilt 😅
Only when I moved to college did I realise that this wasn’t a ‘norm’. ☠️
Not eat dinner on Sundays. Growing up we’d go to church and either hit up Sizzler or King’s Table etc or my mom had a big subday lunch and family all joined in and stayed till later, then that evening, maybe a sandwich or bowl of cereal.
My now wife was blown away when she first had a Sunday with us we had roast beef and potatoes and the rest my sisters and their families all there and later going home and wife-to-be saw my mom make a small salad and sit down and she leans in quietly and goes, “should we offer to make or buy dinner?” I was a little confused with that and respond, “we ate!”
That’s when I realized not everyone did this. I later found out my brothers in law both had never seen such a thing and their kids’ spouses as well. I mean I guess it was weird but that’s what I assumed was a typical Sunday in everyone’s homes.
The bag of bags is universal. That family without were the odd ones. lol.
It’s weird hearing so many people calling it “a bag of bags” because I grew up calling it “the bag bag”. So I guess that’s my answer
I’ve done this for ages, long before shops started charging for them. It’s a way to reuse them.
People who don’t have a bag of bags are missing out. 😂 My family did that as well.
We had a little cloth lady chillin’ in the pantry who had bags coming out from beneath her skirt.
True love true friend ship being nice to everyone never got back anything in return
My family never celebrate holidays at all. Not any kind of holidays, whether birthdays, christmas, New Years, religious holidays, whatever. They just give me money during birthdays and if I want I can buy cake or something. I think I did tell them I want to try blowing candles on cakes one year, and we did it just for that year and we stopped lmao.
1950s: Mine was dumping the household trash somewhere away from the city under the cover of night. Had to choose a road less-traveled, and far from any farmhouses. Real cloke-and-dagger stuff. Such fun!
Woke up to reality when the sheriff showed up at our house one Saturday morning, holding an envelope we had discarded—with our mailing address on it.
Thought all mums screamed at their kids all the time.
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Cousin camp. Me and my fourteen cousins would all pile up into a single vehicle and head off to my aunt’s house. It was a weird and wild adventure as time went on. It was nice to visit with cousins. It was torture to endure my aunt’s lack of cooking skills. However, one year I broke free and rode my cousin’s bike to a McDonald’s over the hill. I took the money my mom gave me and got some for me and one of my siblings (the other one vowed to tattle if I went). We ate McDonald’s in the basement and I threw the evidence away in an outside trash can. The tattle tale ended up eating some indistinguishable glop with a sad face. Good times!
wtf are you on about. Everyone has a bag of bags
We called our pantry the “long cupboard.” I always assumed that if you didn’t have a walk-in pantry, that you had a long cupboard. Stuffed me up.
Reading!! We rarely watched TV though we had no rules about it. After supper was cleaned up, you’d find the 6 of us spread around the house reading. I was shocked the first time I met someone who never read!! I was so sad. I can’t imagine my life without reading.
Iced tea spoons
A lot of replies and no poop knife. Does Reddit even Reddit anymore?
Not talk to each other…unless we needed to. For example, “Please pass the salt…”
Collecting water in buckets and reusing them. I felt like a king the first month I started renting and had a flushing toilet and just let the water run during showers.
I didn’t grow up poor, by the way.
The bag of bags is pretty universal, it’s your friend’s family that’s the anomaly in that regard
Go to church on Saturday.
I was in second or third grade. The rule at our house was one bowl of cereal per day. I spent the night at a friend’s house, and we were served cereal the following morning for breakfast.
After I’d eaten, her mom asked me if I was still hungry. I told her I’d already eaten my cereal. She asked me if I wanted some more.
I was stunned. In my head, I’m thinking, “More cereal?! What is this ‘more cereal’ you speak of, and how did you come to know of it?”
My friend piped up and said, “My dad says if you leave our house hungry, it’s your own fault.”
It was like seeing colors I’d never seen before!
The bag of bags is absolutely the norm
bags in bags is universal, your friend is the weird one
Have a house full of books. More books than book shelves. This is still true of my house vs my friends and I am in my 60s.
Whenever my mom made tacos as a kid, she also put a can of refried beans in the taco meat. I thought that’s how tacos were made till I was a teen when a friend slept over and looked at her taco like wtf? Haha.
You mean not everyone did this??? 😳
We actually ate every meal together outside of school at the kitchen table. Four kids and both parents. Ate all the same meal too. Alot of neighborhood kids would join us but at minimum it was us 6. We always waited for dad to come home (blue collar worker).
I have the bags of Ziploc bags at my apartment. I hand wash them and reuse them. Also bags of grocery bags, bags in bags upon bags. Bags. Garbage bags that I reuse for my recycling. Unlimited bags, here, there, everywhere
Everybody I know has bags in a bag. It was definitely not just your family.
I thought every house had the ‘junk drawer’ that magically ate scissors.
Going to church 4-5 times every week, for a few hours each session.
Violence, and verbal abuse
I thought it’s normal – initially I thought that every parent does this, later I thought it’s not common but accepted in society
I remember seeing a girl from kindergarten messing up, and her mother was so calm and nice… It was just so hard to grasp that violence is not the first reaction for other people
And when I was almost 20 years old my boyfriends parents were so loving towards him even though he messed up so badly his entire life
Not having food in the cupboard or fridge on a Regular basis…
What about the “rabid raccoon thicket under the kitchen sink” collection of bags, interrupted by the occasional detergent, windex or discarded sponge?
Santa bringd the tree. My house had 0 christmas in it on Christmas eve. but Christmas moring the entire house was decorated with a huge tree and presents.
Our bag of bags was always under the kitchen sink. How bout you?
I lived next to a field where every year dozens if not hundreds of hot air balloons would be inflated and drift across the sky. As a kid I was like “obviously every place on earth does this because it is awesome”. Turns out it’s exceedingly rare.
I’ll never forget poop knife.
For me it was lamb for dinner. We had it super regularly, in my head there were 4 dinner meats, pork, chicken, beef, and lamb. But when I moved out I found out most other folks where I live never eat lamb, and it was crazy expensive at the grocery store. I think my parents had friends that owned a lamb farm haha.
We had so many plastic bags under the sink, that my dad designed a plastic bag holder and a can crusher to hang in the garage. Bags inside bags is a thing!
My mom is from the Philippines and used to pronounce “mayonnaise” like “MY-onnaise”, and that’s how I grew up knowing the word.
Learned the correct pronunciation the hard way in a change room full of boys after a karate class. I got roasted to shit haha
My boss once asked me how my holiday was and I said, “it was great! Nobody cried, nobody died.” She stared at me for a whole minute and asked basically wtf. I was just like, “yeah I’m serious. That’s the bar.” Holiday times as a child were…fraught.
I do better for my own children. Our holidays are pleasant.
Parents not having friends and watching television every evening.
I thought this wasn’t common and I learned so many new names for this concept, but my favorite was “mother bag”.
Use the oven to heat up the house.
Spending all day at the movies, watching one movie after another in a different theater. Because my parents wanted to see a movie that i didn’t.
Having “home” and “outside” clothes. When at home, my family would always change into something comfy, sweats, etc. and I still can’t imagine that you would wear jeans or something equally uncomfortable when lounging in your own house.
You’ve heard of the bag of bags. But have you ever heard of “the socks box?” All the spares that mysteriously were missing their mate went in there. Lots of days when getting ready and being out of clean socks, the kiddies were told “go look in the socks box!” At the very least, they didn’t match but we could always find two similar in length/feel. 😂
Taking shoes off in the house. I’m grateful that my parents ingrained this in us. Because when I see people wearing their outside shoes inside the house and then thinking about everything that they step in all day. Welp,🤢🤮
Store rubber bands on the doorknob.
Use shower caps.
In my house growing up as soon as your plate was placed in front of you it was “eat or your food will get cold” . My husband grew up in a house where no one was allowed to touch their food or drink until his dad sat down at the table, no matter how long he took his sweet ass time to get there. I don’t know which is more common but I can tell you I’m not waiting for anyone to eat.
Everyone I know has the bag of bags. We also used to smooth out the brown bags to reuse. And had the blue sewing tin from cookies.
Also we reused the margarine tubs.
I thought that everyone got a scavenger hunt with chocolate coins from the leprechaun, and that if you made a wish, 3 days later it would come true, as long as you wished for a stuffed animal
Don’t lift your fork until Mother lifts hers.
I thought those weird families where they all say they love each other and give each other hugs and whatnot were just on television. Like some kind of government-sponsored program to change society, or hollywood’s hyperrealism about the model family.
Turns out there are families that actually do this. Who knew?
Go out to eat every day. When my dad retired, my mom retired from cooking. Lol
A friend of mine told us a fun story about this. You know how families have certain dishes they make for certain occasions? Her family made red velvet cake…but only for funerals.
When she was newly married, her husband asked her what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday. She was having trouble deciding so he started making suggestions. When he suggested red velvet cake, she was absolutely disgusted with him. “That’s sick!”
Poor guy got really confused, and that’s how she found out that for most people, red velvet cake does not equal Death Cake.
We only went out to eat on very special occasions. Even then I’d have to pick the cheapest item on the menu. I stayed the night with a new friend one time when I was 12 and her parents took us to a steakhouse. I tried ordering just side dishes but they wouldn’t let me. I felt terrible letting them pay.
I’m pretty sure the bag of bags thing originally was a Midwest and rust belt thing, I’m past 30 and I remember it all my life
My contribution is new years feasts.
My family holds a feast on the new years/new years weekend with artichokes and other cool veggies, steak, seafood, drinks, and merriment, it’s really really a staple I love. Turns out nobody I knew did anything like that. Why? My mom started doing it when my eldest sister (8 years older) went to college and Mom wanted to convince my sister to come home for the holiday because she didn’t want her being around drunk drivers in university. This extended to my eldest brother, sister, and then me; so now it’s a tradition that brings the family that has moved away from home together for royal celebrations, it’s awesome
The bag of bags is pretty common. And now that reusable bags are more and more a thing I have a reusable bag full of reusable bags in my car lol Its the new bags bag
My family used to only call farts “puffs” and I thought that was a thing until I was in elementary school and i was made fun of for it. So i stopped calling it a puff and would strongly say fart instead😭
The bag of bags is a staple in every brown/black households
Books… Home was full of them. No one censored what you read. I’m horrified as an adult at some of her stuff I read as a middle schooler. Library usage was encouraged to the max. Never slept without reading a chapter or ten – nevermind being told that we’d strain our eyes and lose acuity. Spoiler: nothing happened to our eyesight.
And then we had someone visiting who claimed she loved reading. So we asked about the genre/types she liked. Only Mills and Boons. Took all our training to not burst out laughing. Yes, that’s the day it occurred to me that not everyone read.
Please reuse your plastic bags! Use it instead of buying MORE plastic that’s designated for other uses, e.g., bigger plastic bags.
Other examples:
Emergency Shower Cap
Going for that “I’m definitely not washing my hair today” look? Tie a plastic bag around your head and boom — instant glamor.
DIY Stuffing for Pillows
Got a sad, floppy throw pillow? Cram it full of plastic bags. It’s like sleeping on the world’s crunchiest cloud.
Poop Patrol Bag
Save money and dignity while walking the dog. Bonus points if you make intense eye contact with other dog owners while dramatically unfurling your reused bag.
Drawer Liners
Cut them open and use them to line messy drawers or under-the-sink chaos zones.
Braided Jump Rope
Braid a bunch of bags together. Now you have a jump rope that sounds like a dying jellyfish when you use it.
Shoe Covers for Gardening
Slip them over your shoes when you tromp into the garden. Fashionable? No. Functional? Also questionable. But it keeps the dirt off.
Packing Material
Instead of bubble wrap, stuff them in boxes when shipping things. Bonus: whoever opens the box gets a bag avalanche. Surprise!
DIY Kite
Tape a few bags to sticks or dowels. Watch it majestically fail to fly and blame “the wind.”
Car Trash Bag
Hang one from the back of the passenger seat. Instantly transform your vehicle from “rolling landfill” to “rolling landfill with a designated area.”
Yarn (Plarn)
Cut the bags into strips and crochet or knit with them. Yes, it’s called plarn. Yes, it sounds like a Dr. Seuss insult.
Ok get this. They do the dishes and will use dishwasher as a dryer rack. Then use whatever dishes are in there for the rest of the week or until there are enough clean dishes to run the dishwasher as a 2nd cleaning. Was so confusing to me why my roommates kept putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher.
Art. My mom is an art teacher and me and my siblings were raised as artists we had family outings to set museums and got very excited for trips to art supply stores. To us it was second nature to look for the basic shapes of an object to draw. I knew that this was more than average but the fact that people didn’t know something simple as mixing paint colors was really mind blowing.
I have no idea where you would keep your bags if not in another bag. And in fact it’s much more shocking if you have no bags. Nowadays I feel more people have cloth bags, so now we have a cloth bag full of other cloth bags, but it’s the same idea.
I broke my friend’s parents’ heart when 9 year old me stayed over and asked “Isn’t your dad going to go to the bar tonight?” because it was a weekend. You have to laugh or you’ll cry. 🤪
Wish boxes! I only recently discovered this was not universal.
So it’s a little similar to the tooth fairy I think? But my family used to collect little boxes. They were mostly decorative, but you could also have used a film canister if you were in a pinch. Basically, you put your wish inside the box (kind of like held it to your face and whisper it into the box and quickly close the lid. Then you put the box on your nightstand when you go to sleep. In the morning, your wish will have been collected (I forget who we said collected them. It may have been a new entity, or it could have been the tooth fairy as well or “an angel”) and so once your wish was collected that means it was heard and taken into consideration. 😂
As an adult now I think it was a clever parenting trick to sometimes get us to repeat our mean wishes like if somone yelled at a sibling “I wish you were never born” you now have to quietly repeat that into a tiny box and realize how silly and mean it sounds.
I don’t remember everything but that was the general idea of it I think.
That we do not have a poop knife because our families are normal and do not obsess over our bowel movements lmfao or eat so much they over fill the toilet
I thought everyone took hand fulls of napkins from McDonalds to use as toilet paper at home. Hand fulls of sugar packets, too. We had a paper bag next to the toilet that was half full of fast food restaurant napkins. Hell, my mom always had toilet paper on the unnecessary list. It was always the first thing to be put back at the store if she spent too much. Now I buy it in bulk and feel rich!
Was having a kitchen drawer with 1000s of bread ties in it normal? Along with 1000s of rubber bands?
When you shop for clothes and ask the cashier if you can keep the hangers. And when they say “no” it’s like well wtf? You’re telling me I have to actually go buy them separately at a different store? With money?
When I was really little (before kindergarten) I once asked my parents, “what do you call the people whose house is next to yours?” And they said “Oh those are the Flanders’ (fake name, but it was a similarly meaningless last name).”
So for the longest time, I just didn’t quite understand the word neighbor because in my kiddo dictionary, it got replaced with “Flanders” and somehow it didn’t come up in conversation for the longest time.
So then I’m at school one day trying to small talk with one of the other kids by asking, “Who are your Flanders? Do you have nice Flanders where you live?”
We were both so confused.
I thought it was normal to fear your father until a neighbor kid cheered when his dad got home from work early. I was like, wait, what? I actually asked him why he was happy his dad was home. It was such an alien idea to me.
Bag of bags is universal. Your friend was the odd one