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Health & Fitness

In the '30s, We 'Wasted Not' and 'Wanted Not'

Frugality was a way of life that served us well.

You're surely familiar with the proverb "waste not, want not." That was the motto of our household in the '30s. As I think of the ways we "wasted not," our lifestyle today is positively profligate. 

Cats may be famous for their nine lives, but clothing had several lives as well. Not only did we have hand-me-downs from siblings and cousins, we also had re-made clothes from grandparents and parents. A woman in our neighborhood was particularly skillful at wardrobe magic and could transform my grandmother's blue velvet dress into one for an 8-year-old granddaughter. Another woman in our small town could take outworn clothes, cut the fabric into strips and crochet rag rugs. We had quite a few of those and it was fun to identify a jumper or skirt when it appeared as part of a throw rug.

Holes in socks were darned and, if holes subsequently developed in the darned area, it would be re-darned! If runs appeared in stockings (pre-nylon!), they were mended; frayed collars on shirts were removed and turned; sheets were ripped lengthwise down the middle where they were most worn out and the outside edges were stitched together, making them usable for another year or two. Other bedding found its way into quilts or lap robes.

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The too-small-to-use pieces of a bar of soap were consigned to a basket-like device which allowed them to be swished around in a dishpan of water and thus serve the clean-up chore. Sometimes the small chips of soap were melted down in a saucepan and used as liquid soap. I'm not sure how we used the globby stuff that resulted.

Another household frugality provided us kids with scrapbooks. Mother cut a couple of brown paper bags into pages which she then sewed together. Voilà! We had a blank space on which to attach--with paste made of flour and water--the pictures we cut from magazines. Brown paper bags were also the source of all our school book covers.

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These were not the economies of an impoverished household. They just reflected a lifestyle that took the ancient proverb about wasting to heart and, when I turn off lights in rooms where they aren't being used, I wonder if there's a genetic trait expressing itself.

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