One of the great pleasures of my public-library volunteer work is that I get to do it with a lady who was a teenager during the second world war, in Hungary. We chat away non-stop. The other day, talk got around to penny-pinching and frugality, and how those practices are still around, often these days under the header of ‘recycling’. My own parents learned a lot about frugality in post-WWII Britain, with rationing still firmly in place, and I learned a lot from them.
When we had a big yard, I had 3 composters going. Mr. S. built me an ingenious sifter for it, out of hardware cloth (half-inch wire mesh) and sticks. It was custom fitted to my wheelbarrow. Awww.
Old newspaper got used as garden mulch, to stop weeds growing. Put an inch of dirt over top and no one knows it there.
The lawn got over seeded with Dutch white clover, which grows where grass won’t. It’s the same colour as the grass, grows at about the same rate, you mow it over and no one knows it’s there. It’s a leguminous plant, and so adds nitrogen to the soil, cutting down on fertiliser cost. And because it adds biodiversity to the lawn, it cuts down on pesticide use.
In Canada, you can buy milk in plastic bags, 3 one-quart bags in a larger bag. They all got recycled. The milk bags got their tops sliced open, they were rinsed, and draped over the kitchen faucet to dry.
Used-up dryer cloths make the best dusters for tv and computer screens. Grabs those bits of teensy lint that everything else leaves behind. Of course, I’m too cheap to buy dryer cloths, don’t see the need for them. I get them from a neighbour.
Old dead t-shirts get cut up and spend many, many years as rags. Sometimes Mr. S. catches me eying an ancient but still beloved t-shirt, and says, “Don’t you dare!”
How to use the rags? A bucket of hot water with half a cup of white vinegar in it will clean anything in the kitchen or bathroom. Don’t like the smell? Bah, it’ll pass off in an hour or two.
I HATE to pay full price for anything. Just kills me. Thrift, consignment and discount stores are my natural habitat.
What, pay money to have my car washed? I don’t think so. In our community we’re not supposed to wash our own cars and let the water run away down the street, because water conservation. So I get a bucket of hot water and a rag, and sneak-wash it. I see no reason to use cleaning fluid on a car anyhow. When the water has cooled, it goes to water a plant.
We will both always put on a sweater, socks, slippers, and another sweater, before turning the heat up. In winter we reverse the ceiling fan, so it pulls the rising warm air back down towards us.
When we restored This Old Cottage, we put insulation everywhere we could think of. Even between rooms, for the sake of sound-proofing and making things quieter for sleeping when there were people in the house still up.
Ok, enough of me with my Little Goody Two-Shoes routine. What are your own favourite tightwad practices?
Photo: Offikart, via Wiki Commons
