16 Olden Day Struggles Modern People Don’t Know Existed

In this day and age, we have a lot of life luxuries at our fingertips. Want to talk to your family on the other side of the world? Pick up the phone and give them a call or send them a text message. It wasn’t too long ago that things like instant messaging or even the telephone didn’t exist. Here are some of the most popular everyday problems from hundreds or thousands of years ago that most people don’t know about today.

1. Food Preservation

Hundreds of years ago, you couldn’t purchase food that was already preserved through commercial methods like canning. If you wanted to be able to preserve food to last you through the winter, you had to have the skills to do it yourself. People would salt meats to cure them, can and pickle fruits and vegetables, as well as take advantage of cold cellars for storing certain vegetables like potatoes and onions that could tolerate those conditions. Those skills are lost to the vast majority of people today.

2. Seeing After Sundown

Have you ever considered that what we know as nightlife wasn’t a thing prior to the 1800s? That’s because people didn’t leave their homes after dark until gas lamps were invented in the 1800s. People didn’t dare venture out at night if they couldn’t see where they were going, so instead, they chose to stay at home. Most of us only vaguely learned what that was like during the COVID-19 pandemic when we were forced to stay at home.

3. Land Borders

During the Middle Ages, land borders changed constantly. Usually, only the elite would have some sense of this change, but peasants were kept in the dark. That meant that they could be living in one county or country one day and another the next day. They might also be forced to pay taxes for multiple places in a year.

4. Treated Water

Before modern water treatment methods were developed, access to clean and safe drinking water was a major challenge for many people. This led to a higher incidence of waterborne illnesses and diseases, such as Cholera, Typhoid Fever, and Hepatitis A. Some of these diseases became epidemics, with outbreaks leading to death for hundreds of people.

5. Alarm Clocks

Alarm clocks are an invention that no one in today’s society would think twice about, especially when you consider we can now set alarms on our cell phones! Before alarm clocks existed, some people were paid to wake people up at a certain time. They usually did this by hitting the window of the person’s bedroom with a large stick, and they wouldn’t stop until the person came to the window.

6. Cavities

You might be surprised to know that dental cavities can and will kill you. The difference between now and hundreds of years ago is that we have much better dental hygiene now; dental care is now considered proactive – we try to take care of our teeth so that we don’t get cavities to begin with. Now that we have routine dental care, cavities only become a risk to someone’s health if they truly refuse to see a dentist.

7. Communication

Communication is a big one that we take for granted. Almost every person you know has a cell phone and can be reached at any given moment. We can send emails instead of waiting weeks for letters to reach people. The advancements in communication have also improved emergency response, which has saved a lot of lives. Many of us have never stopped to think about what life was like without being able to reach our friends and families at the touch of a button.

8. Drowning

Before running water existed, people had to fetch water regularly, and falling in was a risky possibility. Clothing during medieval times often consisted of multiple layers of natural fabrics, which get incredibly heavy when wet. Even if one could swim, that kind of weight could drag a person down quickly, causing them to drown.

9. Childbirth

Childbirth used to be considered high-risk and life-threatening a lot of the time for the woman and the baby. There were multiple reasons for this, including a lack of medical knowledge about childbirth, and poor hygiene that increased infection risk. This was one of the drivers for the introduction of the Cesarean section surgery, so that certain birth complications were no longer considered immediate death sentences for mom and/or baby.

10. Modern Medicine

Before the invention of antibiotics, a common infection of a wound or cut could and very often did kill you. On a related note, the invention of reliable anesthetics for surgeries and dental work is a fairly new thing. Modern medical advancements have increased survival from many diseases that were once considered life-threatening, and that work continues even in today’s society.

11. News

We have information at our fingertips these days, with access to the latest breaking information on our cell phones. But back in the old days, it took ages for news to travel around the world; all of that information had to be shared through physical newspapers, and even then, news was reported regionally. There weren’t global channels reporting information, so information was only shared globally through letters in the mail.

12. Clothing

Purchasing clothes? That’s another modern luxury most people don’t think twice about. In the olden days, people made their own clothes from scratch. And that’s not all – they even had to spin the thread and weave the fabric first. Some historians say that the majority of household labor was spent just making clothes.

13. Washing Clothing

Washing clothes and dishes used to be so labor-intensive before the modern invention of washing machines. In some times and places, being a “washer” was a whole profession. In addition to being back-breaking work, it was also a health hazard. Back then, various caustic chemicals such as lye were used to whiten, release stains, and soften cloth.

14. Car Repairs

When the automobile was first invented, if you were wealthy enough to own one, if it broke down, there were only two options for repair. The first was to perform the repairs yourself, but this was much more complicated back then without the modern-day DIY resources we have access to. The second was to take it back to the factory to be repaired, though this was quite costly since you had to pay not just for the repairs, but to have the vehicle taken to the factory as well.

15. Traveling

Travel is another luxury that is overlooked by today’s society. With enough money, you can travel to any part of the world in about 24 hours. This is mostly thanks to the invention of high-speed travel methods by planes and trains. Back in the day, traveling to another state could take weeks or months, let alone another country.

16. Food Variety

Certain foods were only available at certain times of the year. These days we can eat whatever, whenever we want. Back in the day, you could only eat things that were able to be harvested locally at that time of year. Now, produce is imported from all over the world, where things can grow year-round in certain climates, making them available to us throughout the year.

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