As a teenager, I recall my mum complaining when the cost of petrol went up from 4 shillings and fourpence per gallon in the late sixties and later swearing to give up beef when it threatened to approach £1 per lb.
In the eighties we were paying 15% interest on our mortgage and I wasn’t working. (There wasn’t much childcare around back then and what there was cost a small fortune, so working wasn’t an option for some years – even though I’d been earning more than my husband prior to number-one-son.) There was Tupperware and similar work-from-home options, but I never ended up with much in the way of income – just more Tupperware and the occasional hostess trolley.
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I see no point in playing the blame game about our current situation. The world has been in a two-year economic halt and Putin is bombing half the world’s wheat supply. If he doesn’t care about his own country’s anger, your rising blood pressure won’t bother him.
We’re living on pensions, but I know I spend too much compared to those single-income, penny-pinching decades. I could spend less if I put my mind to it.
I have the example of an older friend (now deceased) who I used to take shopping. She had raised three children alone, working two meagre part-time jobs in the days before benefits and with no support from her ex-husband. By the time I knew her, she said she’d never been so well-off (on only her state pension and housing benefit) but old habits tend to stick, and she hated to waste anything.
She passed on a lot of tips.
It’s probably time I put them into practice…
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She would never turn on her oven to cook a single item. Her cooker would be stuffed with casseroles, cakes, bread… full with whatever she had prepared for cooking. Needless to say, her freezer bulged.
She found it hard to pass by a bargain, which filled her freezer even more. She died before lockdown, which would have given her cabin fever, but she could have lived off that frozen food for months.
As my gran used to, she would boil bones for stock or soups, often getting these free from local butchers. Staff on butchery counters in the supermarkets knew her from the days before me, when she had travelled to them by bus.
When cooking veg (some of which she grew herself in pots) she used the whole plant. Stalks of cauliflower and brocolli were chopped into casseroles, leaves were cooked along with the heads and nothing went to waste.
She was a keen craftswoman who made her own greetings cards. She knitted dolls and other items for appeals and fundraisers, using wool left over from bigger projects, such as Christmas jumpers for grandchildren. Unused materials were never thrown away.
I am sure more of her tips will come back to me as I put my mind to cutting back on our spending.
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Writing Wrinkles, and Random Ramblings 
The main tips passed down in our family were if you boiled a kettle and only used a bit you put the rest in the thermos so you could use it later for drinks. We always scrubbed our veg but if it still needed peeling then the peelings were used for soup. If you cooked a stew on the hob you brought it to a boil for ten minutes then placed a lid on tightly turned off the gas and wrapped the saucepan in tea towels. It would stay really hot and finish cooking with no further use of the gas. If you cooked chicken you always boiled up the bones for broth or gravies. When boiling potatoes Mum would balance a colander on top of the open saucepan and fill it with a mix of vegetables as we didn’t have steamers then. If you used the oven you made enough to fill it and if you had a freezer, froze dinners for other days. I still do this as I often don’t feel like cooking, so I can get something out and use the microwave to reheat. When I was working this was a life saver.
When I was a child we used to roll and fold newspaper to make fire starters. We would bank down the fire at night with damp used tea leaves so it would still be going in the morning. Any butter wrappers were kept and used to grease cake tins when baking. Before we had a fridge we put the milk in a bucket of water with a wet tea towel over the top to keep it cold and stop it turning. This has taken me back to my youth, I am so glad today we have all mid cons to make our lives so much easier.
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I remember Mum using the butter paper to grease her baking tines. There never seems enough butter left on mine to do anything like that, but I suppose that’s because it’s just come out of the fridge.
I don’t remember when I last peeled a potato or carrot… It’s been a while since I cooked a whole chicken as well – we seem to be eating the rest of it forever! (I’d rather not freeze cooked chicken unless it’s casseroled or curried.) Although the dogs do approve of getting the parson’s nose and scrapings off the bottom of the carcass.
When we had a real fire, I had a sort of roller thingy that compressed newspaper into logs for the fire – although they didn’t take long to burn.
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I meant mod cons
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I always believe in frugality. I learnt this from my mum and my mum learnt from her mum, my grandmother. I use to think why save on these things but when I had the chance to observe and see the late Mrs Lee Kuan Yew and how frugal she was, I admired the trait. So what if one is well off, is there a need for hundreds of clothing pieces when there are 7 days a week. Do we need the bling blings or designer bags? I learnt to recycle tote bags as handbags as I can never find a handbag large enough to keep the things I need. Maybe I am daffy but I am unashamed of being seen in my simple clothes and accesories.
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My clothes have nothing to do with style or fashion either. The wrapover skirt I wore yesterday must be fifty years old (at least. I definitely had it through my twenties, until I got to the point there wasn’t enough to wrap over for decency. I’ve recently lost weight). The only reason it wasn’t consigned to a charity shop in spite of being, not only too small, but also the ‘wrong’ colour for me (explanation in a forthcoming post) was because I loved it too much.
(The shorts I put on this morning literally fell down – on their own. I won’t be sending these roomy items to the charity shops just yet though. I may be wearing them again next winter. I’ve been here before…)
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I too wear roomy clothes and my purple Adidas shorts may be ratty tattu but super comfortable. I am not letting that go either haha.
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I can remember my mum keeping butter wrappers to grease baking tins.
She was a brilliant cook and we never went without decent meals and homemade cakes.
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My mother in law used to cut up worn sheets and make them into tea towels after hemming each one. Christmas presents were carefully unwrapped so that she could fold the paper and use again. Christmas and birthday cards were cut up and made into gift tags. I am sorry to say that as a young bride I looked down my nose at such things, but realise now of course that she may well have had a decent idea.
Apart from the Christmas presents. To deny someone, especially a child, the pleasure, fun and excitement of ripping apart the paper to see whatever goodies were hidden within was to my mind slightly cruel and took away some of the joy.
Totally agree with other comments about food waste. Any veg seemingly past its best often finds their way into some version of soup. Admittedly with varying degrees of success!
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I’m afraid I’m not a respecter of eat-by dates either. If I can smell it when I come into the room or open the fridge, I’ll concede it’s off (although my husband would say the same about harmless onions or lovely smelly unpasteurised brie. I suppose you have to know what things are supposed to smell like…)
The branch librarian of the second libraryI was posted to after qualifying used to undo the knots on every parcels’ string and roll the string onto a ball in the stationery cupboard (which was kept locked. The daft thing was, as an Assistant Librarian, I was given one of the keys!)
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Wow! I’ve really enjoyed the great tip!
One that I can think of right off is I learned that you really do not have to pre-heat the oven. The exception would be when cooking meat, but for everything else, there really is no need. This saves on energy.
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I tend to put things like casseroles and jacket potatoes straight in, but I recall when my husband was left to fend for himself first time with a frozen pizza (twelve minutes in a hot oven). He told me when I came home that it wasn’t the same as when I did it. It occurred to me to ask if he’d turned on the oven first to warm it. “Oh, do you have to warm it first?”
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That’s very interesting, because I’ve never had to preheat the oven. Even when putting frozen pizza in the oven. Strange.
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I suspect your oven may be of more recent vintage than mine…
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You would think that, but no. Wherever I’ve lived, as far back as the ’80s, I’ve never had this problem.
I guess this makes me The Oven Whisperer? 😁
Wouldn’t that be a great name for a cooking show?
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I’ve batch cooked for years and filled my freezer to the brim, a few hours of 1 day preparing and cooking saves £’s galore and ensures that there’s always food at hand … I do the same with washing a full load of whites/lights, coloureds, then darks so 3 full washes takes 3 hours instead of doing part loads or mixing and matching varying shades … look after the pennies and the £’s will look after themselves x
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I’m afraid I tend to wash most things together these days (although much of my older underwear, that was once white, is now blue. That particular pair of blue cotton trousers seemed to bleed more colour at every wash). Second hubby insists on doing his own laundry (who am I to disagree…) and my little bit seems too meagre to separate out after twenty years of laundering for six.
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You have a husband who knows how to use the washing machine? Treasure him, mine barely knows where it is, never mind how it works.
Same goes for the oven, although he’s getting better at that. The hob he has no major problems with (apart from forgetting to turn it off occasionally). The oven part though remains for the most part a mystery.
To be fair I’m useless at most DIY tasks, so I suppose it makes for a good team.
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I learned a fair bit of DIY between husbands but, why keep a dog…
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I’m not feeling very frugal at all after reading this, but am very pleased with myself for living on a very small pension, including paying rent these days, and managing not to get into debt, having paid off the huge debts my ex husband built up without my knowledge. I love shopping in Aldi, charity shops and Sales elsewhere. But admit I am addicted to clothes and shoes. I remember my Mum and Nan saving wrapping paper and string. I have always cooked large portions of meals like lasagne, chilli, bolognese etc and frozen portions, even better now I’m on my own. Passing clothes around the family has always been a treat. As a tall child I loved receiving my Aunt’s clothes. She was 8 years older than me. Although I think my first bra had been my Nan’s! Can’t imagine that being well received these days..Although one granddaughter asked me the other day if she could have my long white linen shirt when I die, to shocked gasps all around. I thought it hilarious and asked if that was all she wanted?
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When my son was young he said to me, “Dad when you die can I have the factory and be in charge of your workers?”
I replied, “Can I just retire instead?”
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I love your sense of humor 🤣
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Thanks, I,m pleased you like it.
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I estimate that more than half my clothes came from charity shops. I try and hang up as many as I can find space for so that I remember I have them – stuff in drawers tends to be forgotten.
I move my clothes between my home here and the flat in East London, as I don’t want to be lugging lots of clothes backwards and forwards with every visit, but I still often find the item I really want is in the wrong location.
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I’m having a sort out again feeling virtuous. Making myself give away two coats I bought for £3 each in a charity shop and made good use of both. I have a bag ready for one daughter to look through, and one fleece already taken by another daughter. Granddaughter and youngest daughter regularly exchange clothes. Haven’t finished yet, resting for a while today
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When I was much younger (like in my 20s-30s) I shopped at thrift shops all the time – Salvation Army, Goodwill, local shops – and would get so excited when I found a deal. I even bought vintage clothing and would wear it everywhere.
Now, I buy the majority of my clothes (mostly dresses) from catalogues. I loved my style when I was younger. By the way, most – if not all – of my dresses were (still are) long and flowing. When I lived in Florida I used to wear these very large costume earrings. My hair is very long and thick. I had to wear such large earrings, or else they’d be lost in my big hair.
The strangest thing is, when I moved to California my ears, particularly my right ear would get irritated and red when I wore any of my earrings. I had such a lovely collection and I was saddened that I had to give up wearing the huge earrings. Hypoallergenic was either too expensive or I just didn’t like the styles they came in.
Now that I’ve gotten older I’ve gained some weight. Because of this, many of my dresses are ‘roomy’ too. I’m hoping I’ll be able to lose the weight and get back to how I used to dress – even at the ripe old age of 64! LOL! Someday I hope to get back to being the hot mama I used to be! I can dream……
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I never was all that hot, but I still have all the weird earrings I wore when I was on teaching practice and volunteering to help out in my kids’ primary schools. the kids loved them. (They have kids themselves now.) I recently lost a stone and a half (at 72) by still eating what I liked – just not all in one day!. This week has been hot in the UK and I’ve been wearing a wrapover skirt (remember those?) from my 20s – you don’t get much more vintage than that. Also a top I bought on a holiday in Spain when I was between husbands (I managed to lose weight then, temporarily, but I only had to cook for me. It helps.)
somehow, when the weather’s hot I feel I can wear clothes I would feel conspicuous in at other times.
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I didn’t have a wrap around skirt, but I did have a wrap around topic. I think it’s great you’ve lost weight. I know that for me, the older I get, the harder it is to lose stones. Sorry. Couldn’t resist. 🤣
It’s getting hot here, too, and like you, I don’t eat as much in warmer weather. I hope I lose some of what I’ve gained.
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I’m not ruthless enough. I think to myself, ‘I could wear that if ever… ‘ but ‘if ever’ doesn’t often materialise these days. 😦
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Ditto LOL x
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I think we are pretty used to being frugal since we have all, at our ages, been there before.
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That’s true. One thing I did learn was that, however much more I earned in my new job/promotion, it was never quite enough to stop me worrying about how much I was spending.
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Mum and Dad lived through WW2 and the Hungarian Revolution so they both knew how to make do with next to nothing. Once we arrived in Australia, that make-do attitude continued. Mum always put delicious, healthy food on the table, and I was sent to a Catholic girl’s school, but my clothes came from the op shop [second hand shop?] until I was in my late teens. I’m not as frugal as they were, but I’m so glad they taught me how to make do. Great post. 🙂
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I think it gets instilled into our psyches. I hate to throw anything away, be it food or clothing or old bedding (which becomes dust sheets or garage rags).
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lol – I make animal bedding out of old towels. I think we should wear our make-do credentials with pride. At least we’re not killing the planet with our waste.
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