Depression Era Frugality

[Braxton36]

I imagine most of us have known or currently know of people who grew up during the depression era. The stories of people's frugality during that time are remarkable. Many of those habits carried forward for many years after.

I was at a dinner party over the weekend and this subject came up. Everyone had an amusing story about a friend or relative who stockpiled things, hoarded cash, etc.

Here was the one I told: I had a great aunt who scrupulously dried her paper towels every time she used one. I rarely ever went in her kitchen that there weren't the tattered remnants of paper towels spread out to dry. By the time I knew her she could have bought a paper towel factory. She also believed that if you removed soap from its packaging and stored it uncovered it would last longer.

Frugality stories anyone?

 

[Story]

To extend the life of men's dress shirts, carefully snip the threads of the collars and sew them on reversed - thus hiding the cloth worn by 'whisker burn'.

 

[jake_fink]

Snipe cigar butts and crumble them into a pipe for smooth smoking.

Ask your local coffee shop for used coffee grounds and make your own heady brew with them. (I did not grow up in the Depression but I have been very poor and I did this in Israel, Italy and here at home. I told them here it was for my garden.)

My wife's grandmother smooths out wrapping paper for reuse and crosses names off of Chirstmas cards (but only if she thinks the card is pretty).

 

[nightandthecity]

dry used tea leaves in the sun and then re-use them.

I knew an old lady who still did it in the 1970s but with the "modern" tea bag. Used to hang 'em out on the line to dry.

 

[Lady Day]

My Granny washes out and reuses plastic frezer bags.

LD

 

[Sefton]

My grandmother did the "dry and reuse" paper towel thing too! I think it wasn't just because of living through the depression,but also a carry over from being immigrants from Spain where they were quite poor. Lot's of old world habits.
fftopic: : I'm sure they'd both be amazed to see how much I'm spending to get a reproduction of a 30s depression era fedora! (worth every penny to me though! ).

 

[JustJen]

I don't know if you'd call it a "Second Depression" or not but my husband and his family lived through the farm crisis years in the 80's.

- His mother, to this day will wash plastic baggies and plastic utensils.

- She absolutely will not throw out any leftovers (this is interesting when we visit). And they do get served and eaten.

- We never ever have chicken for any meal. Apparently when they had meat on the farm, that's what got served.

- She also combines soap slivers (you know, soap that's almost gone and what I'll usually squish down the drain) into a larger bar.

- My husband throws all small soap bars away and get a brand new one (of course, we keep Lever 2000 in business around here). That's his catch from those years.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My grandparents lived thru the worst part of the Depression in a tar-paper shack with no electricity, heated with a barrel stove. So frugality was a matter of survival for them, and my grandmother carried the scars of that experience for the rest of her life.

She wouldn't spend a cent she didn't have to spend -- I can remember helping her dig dandelion greens out of the yard to boil up and serve with supper instead of store-bought vegetables. And she saved *everything* -- after she died, we must've taken a hundred bales of neatly-folded brown paper bags out of her pantry, along with boxes full of empty jars and bottles, rag scraps from sewing, cans full of buttons, and all sorts of other stuff like that.

I can also remember her turning the collars and cuffs of my grandfather's work shirts, and cutting down her old housedresses to make playclothes for my cousin and me. And when her bedsheets started to wear out, she'd cut them down the middle, undo the hemmed edges, resew them along the old hems, and then put a new hem down the new sides -- that gave her twice as much wear out of a sheet.

I'm pretty thrifty myself, as a result of her influence, but I have never resewn a sheet.

 

[Shaul-Ike Cohen]

dry used tea leaves in the sun and then re-use them.

I knew an old lady who still did it in the 1970s but with the "modern" tea bag. Used to hang 'em out on the line to dry.

This isn't uncommon in today's Britain either.

 

[Viola]

Not a depression-era anything, but I definitely remember gathering dandelions and red clover to be boiled for dinner.

And that's how I learned that spinach really is king of the boiled greens, absolutely luscious and flavorful by comparison.

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

Sticking the old thin bit of soap to a new bar is Depression-era? I always do it. lol

 

[Caledonia]

Saving soot! My mother-in-law grew up in real deprivation throught the 20s and 30s, but basically as a farmer, and is convinced that soot has a use. When she moved house recently (age 79 or thereabouts) she insisted that a bag of recent soot came with her because "that's a good bag of soot, it'll come in handy". Nobody has ever seen her use her soot, although I have heard of organic farmers that swear by it around the base of certain plants. She is also a saver and hoarder as mentioned by several in the thread. Bags, old clothes, cutlery, anything really. The point is that nothing should be thrown out as rubbish. Can we really disagree in this climate we live in?

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Modern-day retro frugality (or something):

Scraping the fabric lint from the clothes dryer vent and using it to stuff pillows. Line-drying fans need not apply


.

 

[Viola]

Saving soot! My mother-in-law grew up in real deprivation throught the 20s and 30s, but basically as a farmer, and is convinced that soot has a use. When she moved house recently (age 79 or thereabouts) she insisted that a bag of recent soot came with her because "that's a good bag of soot, it'll come in handy". Nobody has ever seen her use her soot, although I have heard of organic farmers that swear by it around the base of certain plants. She is also a saver and hoarder as mentioned by several in the thread. Bags, old clothes, cutlery, anything really. The point is that nothing should be thrown out as rubbish. Can we really disagree in this climate we live in?

Wood ash, tea bags, and coffee grounds are major ingredients in my organic gardening. Ash is full of nitrogen, which increases foliage growth.

I don't know about saving it in a bag, though, mostly I take it right out and lay it under my rhododenron.

 

[Caledonia]

If only your ingredient list was hers! There's plastic and all sorts in there. Potash I can go with, just started some today although unfortunately from the burnt remains of two bee hives that failed this winter.

And I burnt them under the line dried washing so it smells of honey - and is beautifully soft......

 

[Rosie]

My dad, who grew up the son of a sharecropper, NEVER and I mean NEVER spent money he didn't have to. He would save oil (even though we barely ever fried anything) in coffee cans, one for fish, one for everything else. He *swore* (even though to this day I don't believe him) he had to cut the heels off of his mother's old shoes and wear them to school. Of course he had to walk three miles there and back. He washed out plastic baggies, and mushed tiny slivers of soap together. He reused coffee grinds and tea bags, (ewww). He also hoarded money and food. In the fireplaces in our house (there were six of them) he had money stashed up in them in fire proof boxes. He also kept a stash of food, water and toiletries in the basement, just in case. A few years after he died, and my mother took down the awful paneling in the basement he loved so much, she even found money there.

 

[JustJen]

Rosie~my mom still does the whole 'oil/grease' saving thing to this day. Remnants of her growing up poor. But I will say that it gives the food you cook in it much more flavor. Although I can only stand to eat her fried chicken in it....lol

 

[Marc Chevalier]

We could use people like these when the next worldwide catastrophe comes. Unfortunately, they'll probably all be gone by then ...

.

 

[nightandthecity]

I'm a hardcore hoarder myself but its not so much frugality as a mental disorder. Especially when it comes to vintage clothes, books and records....

..and also old bits of wood, boxes, abandoned doors, the rubber bands dropped by postie, perfectly good screws and half full mastic cartridges in skips, and all other such things that might be useful one day.

I fact I have inherited a certain frugality from my mum (who always saved and re-used Christmas wrapping paper) and from growing up during rationing. I can't bear to see food wasted. It is almost a physical pain. It really shocks me to see people throw food away. One of the worst jobs I ever did was washing up in a resteruant..every night we had to throw away enough food to feed half the city's homeless. And that is going on right now in every eatery in the western world.

 

[nightandthecity]

...mind you, I draw the line at some of Mum's habits. She used to put milk in the bottom of salad cream and ketchup bottles to make the dregs go a bit further. And she always included the apple cores and stalks when she made apple pie.