what can you remember your parents doing to save money?

[HoraceCope]

we had to clean the bath with cold water
my dm would reuse foil

My version is all very middle class.

Freewheeling down hills to save petrol (But we had a car)

Putting putty round the window frames in late October and not opening them until spring

Parcels in brown paper and string, both reused (Our poshest relatives approved most)

Stamps soaked off envelopes and reused (I didn't know this was illegal until my 40s!)

No phone calls until after 6 (But we had a phone)

Living mainly off veg, fruit, eggs and chickens we raised ourselves (but we obviously had a big garden)

Thermostat for the heating set at 60 Fahrenheit. Upstairs heating isolated during the day.

They’re both normal things to do, though. I do them. It’s not about being frugal, it’s about not being wasteful.

No kitchen paper towel.
Making clothes.
Not buying hair conditioner.

In my mother’s case, not eating 😢

Bulk buying things like potatoes and chickpeas in huge sacks.

Eking out teabags to a disgusting extent

Heating on upstairs about 5 days a year

Scraping mould off food and eating the rest

No phoning in the day

Walking to grandparents home rather then using transport to allow Mum to buy bread and milk instead.

Mum used to bake for grandparents and would bring half home for our Saturday tea so she didn't have to shop. Quite often I ate and she didn't other days.

Us DC shared bath water.

We used to have sausages instead of proper meat with a Sunday lunch.

When DF was in the forces we had a Sunday get together at the village hall.
Everyone paid 50p and we used to have a 'feast' like a large afternoon tea.
There was a large garden with slide, climbing frame etc
A library inside where we could borrow a book and return the following week and same with toys. So pretty much a free day out and a break for DM without worrying about money.

Sharing water for baths
saving pennies in a bottle, emptied annually for holiday spending money

Making own clothes by sewing and knitting. These would not offer any cost savings nowadays unless you already had the fabric and yarn.

Extensive use of slow cooker. It didn't have a removable insert so I don't know how we weren't all electrocuted.

Growing lots of vegetables. When I have done this it wasn't any cheaper than buying them.

We didn't have hair conditioner either but I don't think my mum would have heard of it. I don't think it was as commonplace.

Hems used to be let down a lot.

Elbow patches.

Darning.

oh agree with
elbow patches
darning
no kitchen towel
no paper tissues, my mum would boil the cotton hankies
not much heating, only occasionally allowed the heating in my bedroom
home grown veggies
blackberry picking
phone after 6 pm.
lots of mince as this was the cheapest meat at one time

reused christmas wrapping paper
made gift cards out of old christmas cards

my dm would reuse foil

But that's normal, isn't it? I reuse foil all the time. I wash it if it's got food stuck on it. I wash freezer bags, too.

My mum used to use copies of the Yellow Pages as kitchen paper most of the time. Actual kitchen paper was only for certain tightly defined uses ... if the Yellow Pages was still a great fat book, I probably would do, too.

Comparing special offers and walking to cheapest shop. From about age 7, mum would use me as a human calculator for this (I‘m quick at mental arithmetic).

Clothes were only bought on sale and there weren’t many of them (one year I had 2 non school uniform outfits). Everything cooked and grown from scratch. Walked everywhere. Heating on for 2 hours a day only. Newspaper as bin liners.

I was an 80s-90s child.

Born mid 80s. Grew up in Ireland and we were never hard up really throughout the 80’s- early 90’s, although we used to go out to a hotel for Sunday lunch every week and then that stopped at about age 7. My dad lost his job for 2 years in the recession but my mum was a nurse so always had her job. Although he did odd jobs with friends of his, gardening etc. My parents protected us well from any struggles they had, I had no idea and wanted for nothing, although now I know they did struggle at times.

Most of the above
reusing kitchen foil
freewheeling down hills
phone only used after 6 and rationed then
reusing wrapping paper, making tags out of last years cards
brambling for jam
making jam from pears / apples from garden
repairing clothes although darning socks was more my grandma
buying turkeys with broken legs and wings from bejam
making beer and wine
fibreglassing the car to stop it rusting away
hand me down clothes

Not all of this was money saving though, it was just how things were done

Taking a pack lunch on long journeys and sitting eating it in the services car park. We were allowed to go and use the loos but never bought food or drinks.

Shared bath water once a week on a Sunday night.
Clothes washed once a week and spot cleaning in between.
No heating except in the sitting room.
Never being allowed to drink milk or take anything ever from a kitchen cupboard without permission,

Never used heating. Remember getting dressed for school under the duvet. The horrific cold blast when you got out the shower. 😂

The hand me downs..P.E in my older brothers kit..I looked like i was wearing a dress not a top.
Being referred to as a "he" because my clothes were all my brothers and correcting people out and about constantly.

Sharing bathwater 😂

The dolly's with no necks as our toys were discarded other kids broken ones so you would squish the heads back on.

Bubble and squeak tea!! All leftovers of previous days mashed into one dish and baked. Nom nom

Sharing bath water
My dad buying heels and soles kits from Woolworths and mending our shoes at home
House often cold
Very very rarely eating out - maybe 4 times a year including holidays
No phone calls until after 6 pm
My dad spending all Saturday am doing the weekly shop going to 3 different stores for the cheapest prices (walking, we didn't have a car)

Scavenging driftwood from the shore to use in place of coal.

Lots of use of discount/offer coupons & vouchers.

My main memory is getting free/cheap train tickets from collecting labels from cereal packets and washing powder - our cupboards were full of packets of them so we could go on train trips every weekend. I seem to remember being able to go to London for a pound virtually every weekend one year.

Never bought food on the journey or when we were there, Mother would always make a bag of sandwiches to take with us for both lunch and tea! Whether days out on the train or family days out in the car to seaside resorts etc - the bag always came out and sandwiches passed around at meal times!

She was always cutting out coupons from the papers and studying the leaflets pushed through the door from local supermarkets.

Plus religiously buying stuff from where she'd get either Green shield stamps or co-op stamps, then sticking stamps in the books, and accumulating them to buy pretty impressive things like a hi-fi. I seem to remember Tesco gave out green shield stamps so was our main "go to" supermarket.

Not to mention choosing where to buy petrol for the best vouchers to get glasses and other things.

Basically, all our shopping was dictated by vouchers, discounts, or other forms of incentive schemes.

In a period when my parents were having financial troubles, and before the days of cheap flights, we went to Italy for a holiday by 24-hour coach. Yeah, very middle class one there!

Chopping the legs off laddered tights and wearing two pairs (so two gussets)

Takeaways being a birthday treat

The main thing I remember, though, is the arguments about money.

I forgot about the laddered tights! We used to use a glue varnish then in my teens years nail polish to stop the ladders spreading.

I recognise a lot of these. And I think honestly, that although we did them out of poverty, most of them are actually mostly eco friendly. I still do most of them (I do draw the line at mouldy food).

• Reusing stamps.

• Cutting the mouldy bits off food.

• Having the top of the milk on home-made fruit salad instead of cream.

• Being told the crust was the best part of the bread, and actually fighting over it!

• Home made preserves from wild/scrumped fruit.

• Sharing baths.

• No heating on. Hot water bottle IF you were lucky.

• Home sewn or 2nd hand clothes. Mending clothes.

• Reusing foil or plastic bottles.

• Eating game/fish my father had caught/shot. We ate a LOT of pheasant and it never occurred to me until I was older that this was actually posh food.

Other signs of poverty were less positive. Never having a family car. Ever. No phone. Getting laughed at, at school, because not only were my clothes 2nd hand, sometimes they were actually not suitable for a child (I had an old persons coat once and was very cruelly mocked). Being left alone at home, too young, because my parents were both at work. Looking after my sibling, too young, same reason.