I saw a YT vid that referenced a research paper that used a particular basket of goods to define the quality of life for a peasant in the Roman Empire.

I think the trick is to build your personal consumption basket for essential unchanging goods and use that for comparison. Certain things like the types of food I eat have been reasonably consistent over the past 20 years. So something like "how many calories & grams of protein could I buy in 2003 vs 2023", and then compare that my hypothetical wage growth over that timeframe. Or wow much is a quart of oil? I needed to do oil changes 20 years ago, and still do my own today, etc...