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

I always do this too.

• Grew own fruit and veg and flowers … so ate seasonally
• bought half a pig, then butchered it and made own sausages etc. used every part of the pig.
• sewed and repaired clothes
• only 1 pair of shoes at a time, and pumps for PE until went to Sec School
• no heating at all in bedrooms
• hardly any clothes … not quite a wear one, wash one, dry one situation but not far off
• Christmas presents is when we were lucky to get our new underwear and nightwear for the year
• made own jams and pickles
• made own stock, the famous MN chicken style of cooking

My Dad grew up in the 1930s, he told me that one year he only got an orange for Christmas. I thought perhaps this was special and asked if he'd been happy to receive it. He said he was very pissed off 🤣

My dad worked Monday-Friday in London in the DHSS. He then laboured as a plasterer at the weekend. My mum wouldn’t work.

Reuse cling film for school pack lunch even after it lost its stick. She used to wash it in hot soapy water every night before reusing it then dry it in the airing cupboard

Yes to :

Reusing wrapping paper (even to the extent of crossing out names and rewriting them)

Hand-me-downs (I used to yearn for Girls' Wellies- I have older brothers)

Shopping at the cash and carry OR a lovely supermarket called Shopper's Paradise (boxes of broken biscuits from the c and c were a favourite)

Never eating at service stations on trips out- always a flask of tea and sandwiches (or, as on one occasion, and rather bewilderingly, a tin of condensed milk)

Grew all kinds of fruits and vegetables and made her own jams/puddings/cakes.

Knitted and sewed most of our clothes and a lot of her own.

It's how she was brought up, as someone who was 5 when the 2nd world war broke out. She learned young how to take care of what she had, having lived in a time when there wasn't enough of anything to go around.

No central heating, only a coal fire in kitchen. A rack hanging nearby to dry clothes on.
No food ever thrown out.
No car, walked everywhere.
Living with various combination of relatives.
Tomatoes on toast / tripe /potatoes and cabbage (bubble and squeak) fried for dinner.
No fridge so milk bottles kept in a bucket of cold water in summer
Making cheese in netting.
Reusing Christmas cards
Aunt wrote everything she spent in a book
Clothes from older sister/relatives/ friends
Very few toys ( can remember every one my sister and I had) They were recycled round cousins
Darning socks, holes in jumpers etc.
Never buying furniture
Taking food if visiting relatives so as not to 'put them out'.
Knitting socks, cardigans etc.
Home made teddy bear/dolls/ dresses
Spending hours in the library
Piling coats on bed to keep warm in winter
Sharing bath water - Sunday only bath- no shampoo ever.
Collecting blackberries / bilberries/ rosehips/ sloes

Lots of these things just seem normal to me.

We had old ceramic frame electric fires with twisted wire that glowed red and hardly heated the room so heating was hardly on, multiple vests had to be worn under clothes day and night.
Wooden windows so in winter we had a transparent layer that was stuck over them and sealed/tightened with hairdryer heat.
Our small cube TV would regularly glitch and we couldn't afford a new one so we'd lift one side and drop it to reset it - it worked!
Food was bulked out with slices of bread/toast.
My DCs both have heating/food choices and wall mounted flatscreen TVs - the easier life!

On the reusing foil debate - I bought a roll from Costco . Pretty sure it’s go to last me until I die 🤣

picking a child to deprive so the others didn’t go without.

Never new clothes. All clothes and toys from jumble sales.

not buying my clothes or feeding me dinner once I got a paper round.

im not sure we were as poor as I was told but that was their justification for it. My dad spent a lot of money in the pub and my mother always had her snacks. Deny it all now of course claiming I had everything I needed growing up

1970s/1980s during my primary school years.
Once a year they seemed to buy half a cow/sheep/pig from a local farmer with an onsite butchery and stash it in the chest freezer.
We were weaned onto unpasteurised milk straight from the tank at the dairy farm.
Mum used to roast an entire chicken to take on a caravan holiday.
Gift wrap was recycled and cards turned into gift tags using pinking shears.
All gifts received were re-gifted to someone else.
2nd hand Christmas and birthday presents.
Flasks of tea/coffee and sandwiches taken everywhere. Remember two occasions (birthdays?) going to the Happy Eater and it was a massive treat, but never used to eat out or go to cafes.
Mum’s packed lunch consisted of two Ryvita, a tomato and a satsuma or apple.
Most veg home grown.
Foil and freezer bags re-used.
All socialising done at home or friends’ houses.
Mum went back to work full time when I was 6 weeks old.

A bottle of pre mixed squash for days out and a pre buttered loaf of bread and one portion of chips between 8 of us kids at the beach. I got a continental quilt for my birthday when I was 10 and a duvet cover the following Christmas. As the 4th kid I had no clothes that were new to me, ever, until I had a Saturday job. One bath a week (shared water) I was unbelievably not bullied, despite being massively tall, ginger and really freckle.

I remember the immersion heater and it only went on for baths and then we all had to have a bath the same evening. I had 3 older sisters. My Auntie kindly bought them all a new party dress. I was only a toddler at the time. The dresses were all identical. My eldest sister wore her dress 2 years in a row, my second eldest sister wore her own dress for the first 2 years then her elder sister dress for the following 2 years. My 3rd elder sister wore her own dress for 2 years, then my second oldest sisters dress for 2 years, then my eldest sisters dress for 2 years, so 6 years in an identical party dress. When she cried about it my Mum bought some different coloured ribbon to tie around the dress like a sach. My sister's laugh now whenever the old photos of my third eldest sister aways wearing the same dress come out and say I was lucky all but her original dress was worn out so I only had to wear one of these dresses for 2 years. My Mum cutting my hair to save on hairdressers fees. Having very weak orange squash. My Dad got paid on a Friday so we often had spam and chips with baked beans on Thursdays for our meal as spam was so cheap. It was freezing in our bathroom there was no heating. I remember those green shield stamps. My Auntie saved them then gave them to Mum and Dad to help get us Xmas presents. My Auntie also knitted my dolls clothes as a Xmas gift in our stockings from Santa and my Uncle made my sister a dolls house and used a scrap of lino from our kitchen on one of the floors. My Auntie and Uncle didn't have any children if their own and looking back I can see all the things they bought for us that made our childhoods nicer. We got a comic on Saturdays my parents couldn't have afforded. My Auntie bought a daily newspaper and she'd drop it in for Dad to read in the evenings.

I can't remember anything obvious, but I do know things were tough. My Mum desperately needed a coat at one stage. They bought a doer upper when I was a baby, which remained like that for a good few years - apparently they were lucky if they could buy one can of paint at the end of the month.

I can remember furniture being a bit sparse. They had two wooden framed arm chairs and I used to squeeze in one with my Mum. We did have food, but Wednesday was our treat day, a cake and some fresh bread. The rest of the week it was essentials and stretching a chicken out so we'd have scrapes off carcass mixed with stock and veggies.

Growing a lot of vegetables and strawberries and currants in the garden.

baking most of the cakes and pies eaten in the house.

Making quite a few clothes for us DCs, and mending them.

passing on clothes to the younger ones.

Buying a half a cow and freezing it once butchered.

Buying full boxes of apples from a fruit farm - all our snacks outside of meals were apples mostly.

Dogaredabomb Grandad was born 1895 , (no birth certificate as you had to pay I think) Nan was born on the stroke of midnight 1900 .Forever lamented that all the boys born then, got a gold watch,sadly the girls got nothing!

Falling asleep to the sound of the washing machine going at night, because electricity was cheaper after 11pm
Dad constantly shouting for lights to be turned off
Making phone calls to friends from phone boxes because banned from using landline due to cost.

Yes! My great uncle would drop the daily mirror off at my gran’s every afternoon after he had read it. That must have been to save money. Never thought about it before.

This has been a trip down memory lane for me and when I look at the excesses of consumerism and human behaviour now it seems poignant.

I'm inspired by lots of the posts to be more frugal around the house.

I'm already pretty mean.

I can remember my Grandparents and parents doing all of these things. My Dad and Grandad used to have an allotment that I used to love going and helping with, I remember eating the peas from the pod fondly.

In all honestly I do most of these things now, not out of necessity but I like to make my money go further and spend it on other things. We still only have an immersion heater, no heating in bedrooms and many other things mentioned.

Surely it is. Reusing wrapping paper and making gift cards? I don’t know anyone who doesn’t do this.

I don’t know anyone who does 🤷‍♀️

If anyone is silly enough to give me a gift bag that gets reused too. I can't imagine literally buying one.