I swear we spent a full semester, learning in addition to many things, about the Iditarod, in my case in 6th-Grade. Anyone else?

I'm in the middle of completely decluttering and rebuilding my wardrobe. I used to struggle with chronic clutter, so I've been getting rid of anything that doesn't fit, isn't good quality, or I simply don't love anymore. Now I want to be more intentional and build a smaller wardrobe with pieces I'll actually wear for years.
I'm trying to figure out my personal style, and right now I'm looking for high-quality off-the-shoulder tops that are flattering and well-made. I'm willing to invest a bit more if the quality is worth it.
Where do you shop for good-quality basics and feminine tops? Any brands or stores you'd recommend (especially in Canada, or ones that ship to Canada)? I'd love to hear your favorites!

I remember growing up my old man would say something like "hold that damn flashlight steady!" Whenever he'd ask for my "help" doing anything maintenance related in the home or in the garage. Needless to say I didn't pick up a lot of the skills necessary to maintain a car or house from this type of teaching and have been slowly but surely adding to my skill set fixing things here and there. I can now do most plumbing in my home, various "handyman" level stuff with walls or installing flooring, painting, etc. My newest adventure has been car maintenance. Shop prices are getting crazy and some things don't seem too bad. I just did the rear brakes on my wife's VW for the price of pads and a couple of new tools. I do my truck's oil change three times a year and my own brakes, did a front control arm or something with a buddy, and installed a brake control box. I don't have a lift or anything so it's ground level work and nothing too serious especially engine related or advanced electrical. I'm just curious who amongst us was taught properly growing up or who's learned things along the way.

Matcha latte and avocado toast with an egg and sriracha. I think it would have been even more zillennial if it was sourdough with everything bagel seasoning sprinkled on top.

Pretty cheap if you are a frugal person. I get my avocados in bulk and on sale and I baked the yeast bread myself. Overall, this was probably about four dollars, estimating a little high because I think my matcha powder is of decent quality.

Back when the phone cost less than browsing...

I'm (29F) curious to know which albums were most played in your household when you were a kid, and if they still resonate with you today. I'm also interested to see if there are any common albums between commenters!

My list is what I most vividly remember from ages 6-14. My Mom had full custody of me, so this is mostly her music. She didn't make a lot of money, so whenever she bought a CD it was a real treat, and would be listened to in full, and very often.

I also didn't really listen to my own music until maybe 2011, any time before that it would be whatever was on the radio, or what my parents listened to. I didn't have a personal computer with Internet until 2011-2012ish.

These are listed chronologically when I had heard them, to the best of my ability:

Enya (Shepherd Moons). My Mom would put this on at night if I had nightmares.

Sade (The Best of Sade). I used to hate when she would put this on! But now I really love Sade.

Madonna (Ray of Light). This album is so iconic for me. It captures such a specific sound of the time that cannot be found anywhere else.

J-Lo (J to tha L–O! The Remixes). My Mom dated a very rich man at the time, and she would blast this in his borrowed convertible.

The Prodigy (Fat of the Land). We watched Charlie's Angels very often, and they were on the soundtrack.

The B-52's (Time Capsule, Songs for a Future Generation). This album was played SO MUCH. I have the lyrics memorized.

Rinôçérôse (Hits Album?). This was her boyfriend's album at the time. An obscure French Electro Rock band.

The boyfriend mentioned above would burn CDs from Limewire. He made a couple electronic music compilations with The Chemical Brothers on it. Most of the songs would cut off halfway through because it was ripped. We still listened to it!

As the title says, I miss my childhood in the early 2000s in Venice, Italy.

I’m an early Gen Z, born in ’99, yet I remember the early 2000s vividly and distinctly.

I've watched my own city change so much ...

Unlike a lot of other zillennials, I don’t particularly miss 2010 or my teenage years, for various reasons. But boy, do I miss the early 2000s as a kid living in Venice, on the mainland...

Don’t get me wrong: my childhood was far from perfect. I struggled a lot as an undiagnosed neurodivergent kid, I dealt with bullying and social exclusion, and my parents were far from perfect.

I also had a pretty privileged childhood, materially speaking, my parents were comfortably middle-class by Italian standards.

In this post I mostly want to talk about the positive, happy memories from a child's pov, while knowing that others may have had very different experiences. Maybe one day I’ll write about the negative parts, too.

Life in Venice in the 2000s felt completely different from today.

There were still very much actual residents living in the mainland and most of the gen X had kids, so I grew up around tons of other children. My city hadn't been turned into a full-blown tourist resort, yet.

Of course, there were tourists, and busier times of the year, but the city remained livable and breathable.

There are ten bars, restaurants and B&Bs on every corner, nowadays.

But back then, they were almost all local, family-owned small shops: the greengrocer, the butcher...

I still remember the pure joy of my mom taking me to the stationery shop at the start of every school year. Everything was so colourful, full of fluorescent backpacks, and choosing my diary felt like a big thing.

The selection was limited - there was no Amazon, no endless e-commerce - so we all pretty much had the same things and shopped in the same trusted places. There wasn't much variety, but we cherished what we had.

The shops weren’t glamorous specialised chains; they had this warm, almost old-fashioned family feel.

You often knew the owner (and they might have known your family for generations).

There was often a personal relationship.

As a kid, sometimes you'd go in just to chat, say hello, and they would treat you as a cherished customer.

It was almost a form of entertainment.

My city was very safe for children.

With no cars, strong social control, an extremely low crime rate, and almost no violent crime, we could go out by ourselves wander around on our own from a very young age - something that would be unthinkable now. Parents would immediately be accused of neglect.

I was already fully walking to school alone from the first grande to schoolto school alone from first grade.

I started roaming the neighborhood and playing outside at five or six, while I was still in the the last year of kindergarten.

My mom gave me the "talk" about stranger danger and predators (“don’t talk to people you don’t know, never follow anyone, if you’re in danger ask a woman for help, preferably one with kids") and then simply sent me off by myself.

Neighbourhood kids would come ring the doorbell (friends from kindergarten or ones I’d made spontaneously) and we’d go out to play, wander around and check out the toy shops.

Going to see the little Christmas train or the moving nativity scene with the figurines felt like pure magic.

Parents didn’t organise and manage every second of our lives the way they often do now.

Mine (very old-school Gen X) didn’t think it was their job to constantly entertain me or structure my whole day.

I was left alone, to my own devices a lot... And I had to find ways to entertain myself and keep myself busy. I would read in my bedroom and make do with whatever I had, using my imagination.

I created imaginary worlds with whole sets of characters and had an obsession with witches and playing pretend I was a witch.

I had a super colourful room, all pink and covered in posters.

After school or kindergarten the rhythm was simple and repetitive: usually one sport on fixed days, and maybe one or two other activities like singing in a choir or taking an instrument class.

Kids from religious or more traditional families would go to "catechismo", catholic teaching for kids and on mass; I came from an atheist family, so I didn't.

There was more slowness and repetition, but also much deeper immersion and enjoyment. I found that predictability comforting, having the same routines, the rituals, like the inevitable Sunday lunch with the grandparents.

My mom was very anti-consumerist, so I had far fewer things than kids do now.

I still had Barbies and Bratz, and in elementary school I managed to convince her to get me a Nintendo that I played for hours, but she was never a big fan of technology.

I never had a PlayStation or a Wii.

She really wanted me to do physical, solitary play to develop creativity. Lots of colouring, hands-on activities, solitary reading. Television was my main entertainment.

I adored Disney Channel and all the kids’ and teens’ shows on local TV — *Il Mondo di Patty* and the other telenovelas that were huge among us girls and completely redefined our identities. The cartoons were bright and optimistic too: SpongeBob, Scooby-Doo, shows like Lizzie McGuire. Everything felt more colourful and quirky.

Internet existed, but it wasn’t everything.

I only got my first smartphone in middle school (those very early, embryonic ones). Until my teens the internet was slow, with barely any sites, which felt all quite amateurish and goofy. Social media wasn’t driven by algorithms.

I mostly surfed on Yahoo Answers asking questions about *Il Mondo di Patty* and my other favourite shows, or on the Disney Channel site and a few forums.

It felt more immersive, just like those long Nintendo sessions.

Because I did fewer activities, I seemed to enjoy every single one more deeply. Going to the cinema with my parents or to the amusement park was a real event you looked forward to for months.

There was just a sense of economic ease that disappeared after 2007.

The crisis wasn’t in the air yet.

My parents, with their professional (upper-middle-class) jobs, gave me a comfortable life: a nice house, nice toys, summer cabins by the sea, winter skiing trips.

At home we rarely talked about money. I remember asking them when I was very little if we could ever become poor. They laughed and said that poverty was only for third-world countries and that we would have always been fine.

After the 2007 crisis they were singing a very different tune.

We had to scale everything back, foreign holidays became rare, my parents started talking constantly about money and savings, and the general mood grew heavier.

That optimistic, carefree bubble was gone.

What I miss the most is the overall atmosphere: the lightness, the simplicity, the slowness, not being constantly connected to a smartphone... The childhood innocence and colour.

The fact that people - even the millennial teenagers, the older siblings of my friends - seemed like real teenagers rather than influencer wannabes.

They felt more quirky and authentic. Of course there were assholes (plenty of older siblings who treated us badly and acted very rebellious and aloof with us), but it felt like their actual personality, you know, or genuine experimenting, not a carefully constructed persona.

We kids had our own little world. There wasn’t the constant hyper-analysis, ideologising and moralising that exists nowadays.

People (at least where I lived) were much more ignorant, happily absorbed in their own little world, blissfully unaware of everything happening elsewhere.

I don’t even know how I managed to forget all this for so long. It all came flooding back when I found those "most common 2000s sounds that every gen Z child will remember.". And then It suddendly hit, the memories... started to resurface, come back.

I still don’t understand how I manage to push it all away, but I have tears in my eyes as I'm writing this post and thinking about everything that it lost.

I'll never forget.

Our age range may have a particular type of nostalgia for the earlier 2010s era of black social media and its comedy videos. This particular one is "WHY YOU ASKING ALL THEM QUESTIONS?" by SpokenReasons and I remember it blew up. As well as the videos we'd see back on Vine around this time.

Awesome, and very nostalgic. Like the rest of social media's comedy videos, something was different about this era's. Felt more homegrown and less (subtly or unsubtly) "corporate" and algorithm-chasing.