20 Things Almost Every Home Had in the '50s, '60s, And '70s That Don't Exist Anymore

I don’t have firsthand memories of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s because I wasn’t alive, but I definitely lived with the leftovers. My grandparents never updated a single thing in their house from 1965 onward. My parents weren’t much better.

So I grew up with rotary phones, wood-paneled walls, encyclopedias that predated the moon landing, and furniture that was built to survive a nuclear blast. None of my friends had this stuff. Their houses looked like houses from the actual decade we were living in. Mine looked like a time capsule.

I didn’t realize how weird this was until I went to someone else’s house and saw a cordless phone for the first time. These nostalgic relics were universal in mid-century homes and lingered in stubborn households way longer than necessary.