Make do and mend - how did your parents or grandparents exemplify this

[AceAcer]

I've been clearing out my mum's house recently, and came across so many amateurish repairs (a dish held together with sellotape!), a darning mushroom and of course the tea stained saucer for all the teabags to go in because "there's far more than one cup in that!".

It got me to thinking more about our disgraceful disposable culture now, and I wondered if there were any quirky or funny examples of frugality out there, which maybe need resurrecting (or not, as the case may be).

My lovely late grandma made this, out of parachute silk

I have a darning mushroom! And I use it, my DCs are hard on socks and the toes of tights. Also hem/take stuff in and do various running repairs if at all possible. Clothes are often cut down or altered to pass on to someone else. Also have a button box which my DC loved, and a tomato pincushion (slightly more dangerous!)

Also have a toothpaste squeezer like the picture, and turn worn out towels into flannels, or hair turbans with a button and loop and a bit of elastic, very popular with teens and saves them using every other single towel in the bathroom and leaving them in their beds for days

I like to cook from scratch but that's because I have more time these days. Things like bread and stews are cheaper but cakes and biscuits are probably actually more expensive as butter is so £££ now

I'm actually naturally profligate but have champagne tastes on beer money, so have to do this so I can spend it elsewhere on books and perfume. I often think if we valued our time though we wouldn't think we were saving that much at all. So in some ways it's a luxury these days to be able to do things like grow your own veg and sew your own clothes.

Both my grandmothers knitted. Prolifically. I do that now.
I remember one of them used to keep the drippings from the Sunday roast in a pot on the counter, to use for cooking. I might start doing that.
They were both very good cooks. As was my paternal grandfather - apparently as a young man, he was a pastry chef in a big London hotel, before moving out of London.
YY to the soap slivers thing. I always squish the old sliver onto the next bar.
Both my sets of grandparents lived in London during the war. Very much a make do & mend attitude. They would never have thrown something away if they could fix it or use it. I do that, to a certain extent, but I do try not to keep things just for the sake of it.
I do have a darning mushroom...

Pressing and saving used wrapping paper.

Only buying what was really needed from the village stores - Butcher, Baker, Greengrocers etc. I really envy that lifestyle of popping out to buy what looks freshest and takes my fancy for dinner that day.

Repairing anything that could be repaired.

Having a lot less of everything and belongings being cared for.

To consider it a "damn sin" to Chuck our bones without making broth and barley with them first. She was also known to have wrestled a bone from a huge German Shepherd that tried its luck!

She was awesome, I miss her very much.

I remember soap slithers being saved. We had a small plastic cage type thing with a handle that you could put the bits in then you could swish it in the water and it would make the water soapy.

When clearing some clutter from DM's house after DF died, I found a plastic bag with lots of socks in. When I asked DM what they were for she said they were waiting to be darned! My parents both had more than enough socks and my DM's eyesight and manual dexterity certainly hadn't been up to darning for quite a number of years - although she did still have her darning mushroom.

My parents always kept old white vests and Yfronts to use as dusters - there was a whole waste paper basket full of them in the cupboard under the stairs.

Always had a chip pan in my youth and I can remember the weekly ritual of straining the fat (melted lard) through a muslin so it could be re-used!

I still have my mum's darning mushroom, and I know how to use it not that I ever do

It's made from Bakelite and was originally my grandmother's - I think it is about 100 years old now.

Thank you for this thread. I am about to start running some local reminiscence cafes and I am sure these memories will prompt chat.

My mum tells the tale that her DF kept rabbits at the end of the garden. They were fed by the DC on kitchen waste. For winter mum and her 6 siblings had new 'furry' hats and gloves. They also ate alot of what her mother called 'meating'. Mum was an adult before she realised the rabbits at the bottom of the garden were err recycled

Squishee - that top is beautiful

I have a darning mushroom! DH wears a lot of thin merino jumpers and he's always putting holes in them.

My DGrandfather always tied string in a way it could be untied, definitely not cut, and therefore re-used.
Soap savers
I have a wooden darning mushroom, inherited from my Granny
My DM used to make all our curtains, bedspreads and Christmas decorations. She also remade her old clothes into new clothes for me and my sister.

Really interesting thread, op, thanks for starting it.

I remember as a small child 'helping' my DM to make rag rugs from scraps of material garnered from various sources- friends and family or bought for a few pence from the pawn shop. She would cut up the garments-usually woollen coats-into long strips then used a proggy to push the material through sacking material. those rugs lasted years and had to be hung on the line outside and bashed to get the dust out.

@ProfYaffle My grandparents are the same!

War children - my grandad hated second hand clothes and charity shops. It was a pride thing with him that he bought his family new.

My granny is a fabulous knitter though - I had cardigans all the colours to match my outfits!

Rag rugs made from strips of material that was repurposed from other stuff.
Sheets turned sides to middle
A darning mushroom
Underwear was used as cleaning cloths
Most of my clothes were home made, either knitted or sewn. I can knit and crochet and do cross stitch, but not clothes sewing.

Also as well mending my grannies cooker, my dad was always (or so it seemed along with endless summers of my childhood) stripping down car engines and repairing bodywork.

Dh makes wine (that takes your head off), and we make preserves and jams.

I reuse holey tea-towels as cleaning cloths.
I can make curtains, blinds and cushions but only coz I can’t find what I want in a fabric I like.

I remember my Nan would knit while watching TV. She didn’t need to look. It’s a really lost art. I tried to take it up but I don’t have the attention span

My Dad taught me so many useful things, knitting, sewing, darning, cooking, gardening, ironing. I used to make him egg mayonnaise sandwiches and a flask of tea for his nightshifts from when i was 8. We still talk about all the stuff we planted when I was a kid.

He also taught me to skip and i taught him to swim - both very badly

My parents are actually quite competent at mending stuff. My dad restores motorbikes getting on for a century old. Sadly, he's a few decades off but no longer able to do so much work on them.

I inherited a few single bedsheets with the seam running down the middle- always wondered why so thank you for explaining it!
I still use DM’s darning mushroom and I have made some clothes and knitted socks. However I am no way as skilled as DM who used to make fantastic clothes. She used to turn DF’s collars and repurpose left over fabric- she made herself a smart waistcoat from a piece of armchair fabric. She also used to pick fruit from the roadside and turn it into jam or wine. Wrapping paper was also reused.

I make clothes for the DC when I have the time. Fabric is quite expensive, so I buy old sheets and duvet covers at jumble sales for pennies, plenty of fabric in those.

I also cut the legs off DS's trousers when they wear through at the knee, hem them for shorts and save the leg bits for dusters. Saves money and is more environmentally friendly.

My grandparents used to get flour in sacks for bread etc made out of a soft cotton which they then used to make sheets. They also used a bucket which was buried at the bottom of the garden every day until they got a toilet in the 60''s.

My grandma let me into a secret. She never darned any of my grandpa's socks, she'd glue the holes back together with PVA...

She reckons that the repairs survived washing too and saved her a hell of a lot of time!

My mother made her wedding dress out of parachute silk post war.

We had Blakeys in our shoes and in summer our T bar sandals had the toes cut off/opened up when they became too small.

A strip of flowery material,was hemmed to the bottom of our dresses as we grew and they got too short.

Knicker elastic was replaceable and we had circles of elastic to hold our socks up - along with deep red indentations on our legs.

Shirt collars were turned when worn and sheets usually had a seam down the middle where they’d been turned sides to middle when worn through.

@squishee that is so beautiful! Were the flowers hand embroidered? I can't imagine many people these days have the skills to make anything so lovely, I certainly don't.