We save a lot of “stuff.” Most of it we’ll never use, but we save it “just in case.” I think Claire is worse about saving stuff than I am, but maybe not….
Anyhow, both of us grew up in households that had to be creative to “make ends meet.” Out parents and grandparents saved, reused, and repurposed lots of stuff….maybe that’s why we still save a lot of stuff. Even now, we save stuff that our kids don’t think twice about tossing.
I remember hearing that during the Great Depression, the phrase “use it up, wear it out, make do or do without” was popular. Obviously for good reason back then — and, maybe, not bad advice today.
Some of the things I remember my mom saving to reuse included paper bags, fabric scraps, buttons, string, flour sacks and soap. I remember that my grandmother and granddad, especially, saved just about everything their entire lives — maybe/probably because they lived through the Great Depression. And my grandmother squirreled away money in all sorts of hiding places all over the house — my grandparents didn’t trust banks after the crash in 1929.
I mentioned that my mother (and grandmothers) saved flour sacks. When I was growing up, flour came in cloth bags, or “sacks” a term I heard all through my childhood. They were made of cotton and some even had nice prints and patterns on them, which meant they made excellent fabric to make clothes out of. “Flour sack dresses” were very popular in Oklahoma and I remember my mom making me shirts out of flour sacks.
No one threw away rubber tires — or inner tubes. When I was little, there was no such thing as a tubeless tire. I’m sure inner tubes for cars or trucks don’t even exist today….except maybe for antique cars. Anyhow, I remember my granddad using old tires to patch soles on worn-out shoes.
But again, I’ve gotten off track and started down memory lane — that wasn’t my intent when I started. The point I started out to make was that today, we’ve become a throw-away society — people don’t save or re-use, repair or repurpose anything anymore.
But we still save stuff. Stuff we probably won’t use, but there’s still something in our past that says we might need it sometime and we can save money by not having to buy it.
So if you save things, I guess that’s ok….
But don’t save string. If you need string, buy it.
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