East German (GDR) here, born early 1970s. Let's go through OPs list one by one: > Don't forget making and mending your own clothes Not making, or not a lot,

East German (GDR) here, born early 1970s. Let's go through OPs list one by one: > Don't forget making and mending your own clothes Not making, or not a lot, but some. Mending, definitely. > washing them by hand No, we had a washing machine. > beating rugs outdoors by hand Yes! We did that regularly. > Harvesting We had the garden in front of the house and an extra one a little further away. We had veggies and fruit in both, lots of it and great variety. And it tasted great. And it was A LOT of work. We also regularly went into the forests for mushrooms and berries and also spent a lot of effort on preserving food for winter. > chopping firewood I did that as a kid, a lot, and it was fun! I managed to never hurt myself somehow. > managing coal. Yes! We got coal every year, unloaded in front of the house blocking the street for the neighbors, so I, after coming back from school, had to start asap to put it into buckets and slowly move that large mountain of black dirt behind the house into storage. I must have gotten a lot of coal dust into my lungs. It only stopped after reunification when we got natural gas and central heating, which was not an option to buy anywhere in the GDR. We had our own house. On the other hand, he (in)famous concrete dwellings of the East Bloc, which East Germany had more and more of too to solve the housing crisis that lastet I think well into the 1970s or even the early 1980s, had central heating from the (extremely dirty) coal power plant of the (very large) local chemical factory. Still, even those living in that kind of housing often also still had a garden nearby usually used to grow fruit and vegetables to supplant what could be bought in the stores.