More Top Ten Items Collected by Depression Era Moms
Last Tuesday’s post listed ten of the items my mother, raised during the Great Depression, continued to save for decades after the Depression ended. Pretty much until 2008 when she gave up housekeeping and moved in with my brother and his family. Ten is not nearly enough space to list 8 decades worth of collecting, so today’s post doubles the list, as well as doubling the awe of present-day penny pinchers who have no idea what it means to be truly frugal.
10. Used aluminum foil. Yes, foil can be washed carefully in soapy water, dried with a dishtowel, smoothed on the counter, folded like a napkin, and saved in the same drawer as the box of foil…sometimes more than once.
9. Free pencils from the lumberyard, the feed store, and especially in the commercial building at the county fair. The fair was providentially scheduled only a month before school started, so Mom hid that pencil haul until the night before school began when she doled them out to her children, who had no idea pencils could be purchased at the dime store.
8. Free yardsticks from either the furniture store or lumberyard. But Mom preferred the ones from the lumberyard because they made better paddles in case her poor, deprived, perfect children needed a spanking.
7. Half-gallon paper milk cartons, plastic gallon milk cartons, and tin cans. These were saved in January and February in order to have a sufficient supply in March to use for starting tomato, pepper, cabbage, and other garden plants.
6. African violet leaves and geraniums stems. When these items accidentally snapped off either plant, perhaps when poor, deprived perfect siblings tussled with one another and knocked the plant over–unaware that their mom had just acquired a new, stout yardstick from the lumberyard–the leaves and stems were immediately collected and placed in a peanut butter jar (see #7 from previous list) filled with water to re-root. Only when the plant bits were safely delivered to their new, watery home did the mother field test the yardstick on her poor, deprived, perfect children’s backsides.
5. Plants spotted in the ditch. Mom dug these out with the shovel she kept in the trunk–for emergency situations like spotting lilac suckers along a fence line–while her children huddled in the back seat praying no one they knew would drive by and recognize them. Or their mother. Or their car.
4. Shoe boxes. (see #8 from previous list)
3. Cardboard boxes* used for for sending packages through the mail (again see #8 from previous list) wrapped in…
2. …brown paper salvaged from large paper grocery sacks. Or the boxes mentioned in #3 might be filled with presents and covered with…
1. …used wrapping paper. The present would not be secured with string–that would be tacky–but with masking tape (cheaper than cellophane tape) rolled into a sticky-side-out tube and discretely tucked under the outside flap of the hopefully not-too-wrinkled, wrapping paper saved from last year’s Christmas, birthday, wedding, baby, and bridal shower celebrations.
*To be fair, the boxes pictured at the top of the page came from my mother-in-law (also raised during the Great Depression), not from my mother.
So, what’s missing from the list? Add your items in the comment box.
