In what may be the least surprising non-bombshell to ever sort of explode on the celebrity gossip scene, Jinger Duggar said over this past weekend that it was challenging growing up in a household with 18 other siblings.
On the latest episode of The Jinger & Jeremy Podcast, the sixth Duggar child explained to her co-host (and husband) some of the ways in which it sucked to be a daughter of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar…
Jinger Duggar speaks to the camera here on TLC. (TLC)
For one thing, the family couldn’t afford its current 7,000-square foot home back in the day.
As a result, they resided in small rental homes where the children and their parents shared just two bathrooms, which led to long lines — and cold showers.
“I think when we were younger that was more of a problem because we only had two bathrooms in most of our rental homes,” Jinger said on the podcast.
“There was constantly a line and the water would not stay hot very long, so if you wanted to have a hot shower, you needed to be one of the first two or three in there.”
Jeremy Vuolo and Jinger Duggar Vuolo attend the Los Angeles Special Screening Of Discovery’s “Serengeti” at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on July 23, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images)
Jinger, who tore her family apart in a memoir last year, also said she and her brothers and sisters were pretty darn hungry when they were small.
“I remember a few times when we were very young some of my siblings would take their food, take their plate of food — get ready for this, it’s disgusting — in the bathroom, they would carry it and put it on the bathroom counter, my mom would be like, ‘Don’t do that,’ they’re like, ‘They’re going to eat it,’” Jinger recalled.
“That’s literally what they thought, ‘I’m not going to be able to eat my food because somebody’s going to take it and we might not have enough for seconds today.’”
We’re up close and personal here with Jinger Duggar during a podcast appearance. (Image Credit: Youtube)
Jinger is coming out with another book in a few months.
We can only imagine what nuggets will be included in it when you consider how casually she hurled her parents under a bus during this podcast.
Continuing on this sad meal theme, Jinger said some of the family’s dinners were eaten directly out of a can.
“We’d always try to get whatever we could at Aldi because it was cheap, we would get flats of cans of ravioli and of green beans, corn, we would eat them out of the can,” she said.
“So ravioli, we would eat it cold, and that was our meal a lot of days, and then we would eat green beans out of the can and we’d pour salt and vinegar in there, in a can, and just eat it, and that was our favorite.”
Jinger Duggar released a memoir in January of 2023. (Amazon)
On the fashion front?
Jinger and her sister did the best they could any time the siblings went out in public.
“Jessa and I would usually pack all of the kids’ clothes, sometimes even like the older teenage boys would be like, ‘Oh, I don’t care, just get me clothes that are nice,’ so we would do the shopping for them a lot of times, we would pack the clothes,” Jinger told listeners.
“Back in the day we were all about color-coordinating everybody, so we would not match, we hated matching, but my parents were like, ‘We want you to kind of coordinate at least,’ so we would pick out the outfits so that way they would be somewhat stylish.
“So we would look at the Brooks Brothers catalogs, we would be like, ‘Okay, what should we get the kids?’ and we could not afford it so we would go to the thrift store and we’d buy whatever we could find that looked similar to that.”
Jeremy Vuolo and Jinger Duggar appear in this Counting On trailer. (TLC)
As previously cited, Jinger has written two books.
She doesn’t seem especially close to her mom and dad, but has said in the past that she still loves them.
Jinger Duggar Details Horrible Living Conditions as a Child: We Barely Had Any Food! was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.