Was the Depression so enjoyable you want it to last forever, Mom?

The BBQ Pit
21

My grandmother’s thing is saving wrapping paper. It is so funny to watch her open gifts. She opens the gifts very carefully (so as not to rip the paper), and then carefully smoothes the paper and folds it up, commenting all the while on how the paper is so pretty it needs to be used again.

This wouldn’t be so bad if she actually reused the paper. But, as far as I can tell, she never has. She always buys new paper when she’s giving gifts. My sister and I have imagined her attic filled with stacks and stacks of wrapping paper waiting for the next Depression.

22

Tamex

LOL. I have an aunt who saves wrapping paper too, except she really does reuse it. Every year on the 26th of December she spends hours ironing it, and she does wrap things up in it next year.

23

In 1988-89 I had a roommate who was wacko for oh-so-many reasons, but one of them actually applies here.

One day I was looking for something in the cabinet under the bathroom sink, and noticed several sheets of folded-up newspaper on the side nearest the toilet. I asked her what was the deal with the newspaper, and she said, “Oh, I use that to wrap my [hushed voice] sanitary pads [/hushed voice] in, because toilet paper is so expensive.”

OK, let’s do the math here. I don’t use pads, but a box of tampons (one-month supply) costs about $5, and a whole ROLL of toilet paper costs maybe 50 cents if you get the good stuff.

Mind you, we were both college kids sans wads of cash, but still, we weren’t starving! She even had a car, whereas I didn’t. She also washed out sandwich bags and reused them. Oh, and she was 26 at the time – AND getting her elementary ed. degree.

She’s now pushing 40 and teaching 1st grade, as far as I know. I weep for the future.

24

FairyChatMom– You are SO right about the long-distance telephone costs! My father (in his 60’s) is like that a little bit, but my grandparents (in their 90’s) are SO paranoid about talking long distance for more than, say, ten seconds. I suppose long distance rates have dropped a lot in the last half-century, especially considering inflation. They are thrifty New England yankees, but not to any great extreme, except when it comes to the telephone.

My father and all 4 grandparents have also had a tendency to shout into the phone when talking long distance. At least they don’t answer with “Ahoy Ahoy.”

25

This used to be necessary, when there were a lot of analog connections and the farther away the person you were talking too, the worse the sound quality is. Now that it’s almost all digital, there’s no need.

My Dad yells so loud into the phone he could save on tolls by hanging up the phone and opening the window. The kicker? He’s a telephone engineer.

26

What about these habits …

  1. Never using the remote control for a television, because it “uses batteries,” and if you used it too much, you could “wwear it out.” The similar old-folk logic also seems to apply to most battery-operated appliances, and automobile air conditioning. What good is having something if you don’t use it?

  2. Driving several miles to save a few cents on a gallon of gasoline. C’mon – let’s say you’re the typical eldo-American, driving a 1972 Dodge Dart (the Official Car of the AARP), that has a 15 gallon tank and gets 14, 15 MPG city driving, tops. You drive 20 miles to the next county to save five cents on a gallon of gas. For a tank, that’s 75 whole cents – whoopie – and besides, you burned about $2 in gas to get to and from that distant gas station.

Real estate prices are also something that old folks are blissfully unaware of – they bought their house in 1952 for $6,000, and the mortgage was paid off long ago. The thought of a $100,000 house is shocking to 'em. They’d have a heart attack if you brought up San Jose starter houses, Boston triple deckers, Denver bungalows or Manhattan co-ops.

And why do they call TV shows “stories,” anyhow?

27

Oh … and my mom saves gift boxes from department stores to re-box gifts bought at stores that don’t offer ‘em. Kinda’ cool, actually, getting something in a box from a department store chain that folded ten or fifteen years ago. Hengerer’s, LL Berger, Hens & Kelly …

28

Would it be fair to say that this is your “spinster” Aunt? Ugh. That’s just sick.

My grandmother-in-law has tons of magazines that she hasn’t gotten around to clipping. Oh, did I mention that there are magazines from the fifties?

29

Everything you learned, Mom, from Jimmy Carter is, to use your old “hip” phrase, “bogus”.

We didn’t run out of water. We didn’t run out of gas. We wasted a lot of time separating and rinsing tin cans that still ended up in the landfill. Plastic diapers are not wrong because they don’t degrade - they have found old newspapers from 200 years ago in landfills that didn’t degrade either.

30

My grandmother doesn’t save wrapping paper, but she irons pleats into the tissue paper she uses for wrapping gifts. (Well, not any more because she has gone blind, but she did for at least thirty years).

31

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Revtim *
**

The Mormons do this. My ex-husband’s grandmother was Mormon and she had an amazing stockpile of canned food in her basement…canned veggies and fruits, boxes of powdered milk, dry cereal, dried fruits…you name it. It was for religious reasons, IIRC. It was so she would be ready for Arrmegeddon.

My mom is also one to re-use boxes. We still get gifts in boxes from stores that closed YEARS ago…Hochschild Kohn, Stewarts, etc. in the Baltimore area. It kills me to take the paper off something and see a box from a store that closed 15 or more years ago.
She also re-uses the bows and ribbons. She runs around like a maniac on Christmas, gathering up bows to use again.
**

My in-laws do this. All the “good” stuff is never used, so it won’t wear out. And the central air conditioning. OMG, they NEVER run it, saying it isn’t efficient, costs too much, don’t want to wear it out…and they live in a 15-year-old apartment! It doesn’t matter if it wears out! The mgmt. will have to replace it! They also don’t use the car AC, ever.
They (the in-laws) keep their TV remote on top of the TV and walk over to the TV to use it. What the hell is the point of that?!? (they are afraid of losing it)
My FIL was amazed that we actually spent money on a replacement remote. He was sure it must have cost $50 or so. He refused to believe we could buy a new remote for $7.
[shameful secret]
I re-use the Ziploc bags. If I use one for crackers or cookies for my kids to have a snack in the car, yes, I will rinse it and re-use it. But NOT if it had raw meat or something “yucky” in it.
[/shameful secret]

32

My grandparents were raised in the Depression and Grandma was the worst pack rat I’ve ever seen. After Grandpa died a couple of years ago, my sister and I helped Mom go through their spare bedroom, which was Mom’s room when she was a kid. We found a box of Tampax in the dresser; the copyright date on the instructions was 1967. Did you know in those days the tampon people advised inserting 2 at a time for “heavy flow days”? We also found random maxipads in suitcases, boxes, and drawers. Wrapped in Kleenex, no less. It got to be like a freakin’ treasure hunt. “Ohhh, look, here’s another one!”

Grandma’s other big thing was butter containers. “Grandma, where’s the carrot sticks?” “In that butter container in the fridge.” When you opened the fridge door there’d be thirty thousand damn butter containers stacked on top of each other. “Can you narrow it down, Grandma?” “They’re in the red one!” Which narrowed it down to about fifteen thousand. She died nine years ago yesterday. We helped Grandpa haul two Hefty bags full of butter containers out of the house.

Miss you, guys.

33

Well hell, I think she was just practicing for her future poverty.

[SuaSponte runs for the door, followed by a horde of irate teachers]

34

Oh, sheesh, I just know I’m gonna come off like a pompous twit again…

Look, different generation, molded by different experiences. My folks were both “greatest generation”; grew up in the depths of the Depression and then got to fight WWII. (To be sure, Americans were incredibly well off compared to Europeans during that war–but damned few of us have any comparable experience.)

And yeah, my mom in particular drove me nuts. When she died, her basement was filled, literally filled floor to ceiling, with paths between, of stored linens, old clothes, glass jars and…stuff. It took weeks for my sister and I sort it out, and 12 truckloads to a local charity–and that was before the auction.

She never talked much about her youth, but my uncle did. They lost everything–the farm, the money in the bank, the modest investments, everything. It was all just gone. They survived by “use it up, make it over, make do or do without”.

The squirreling instinct and paranoia drove me batshit–but in some respects they weren’t such bad examples either, if taken in moderation.

Frugally–and boringly–yours,
Veb

35

I can barely type because I am laughing so much from reading this post. When I hit Marliharn’s post about the butter containers, the tears started rolling down my face from the laughter. I must be secretly related to some of you, because we obviously have the same relatives.

The phone stuff kills me. My Dad, who is an engineer, for heaven’s sake, has this message on his answering machine “This is John Smith … ON TAPE.” Gee Dad, I’m glad you pointed out that it wasn’t really you, but rather you on tape, so I wouldn’t be confused.

I finally figured out the “long distance is so expensive” thing when I called my grandma and she used this to end the conversation. “But grandma, it’s not long distance, I’m visiting my mom so I’m just across town.” Ha, she had a hard time figuring out what other excuse to use to get me off the phone.

My grandma also has a nifty little device that lets you take several scraps of soap bars and press them into a whole new bar of soap. Will wonders never cease? It’s cute, too, how she leaves little hairs and other charming bits that soap picks up, sort of like a surprise for when you are using the “new” bar of soap.

My mom’s latest coup is that she was able to get a whole case of unused boxes from a store that was closing. She asked if she could buy some, and since Jenss had no further use for them, they just gave them to her (“They gave them to me, FOR FREE!” she stressed). Our family will be receiving gifts in these boxes for the next seven generations. Oh, did I mention that the case looks so attractive in the corner of her dining room, because it is too big to be stored anywhere else?

And an actual danger … last time I was home with Mom, I was looking for some cold tablets and about 75% of the medications in her bathroom had expired some time in the 1970s. Is she trying to poision me?

Does anyone read GAMES magazine? Every so often they have a scavenger hunt type contest that has about 30 extremely unusual things that you have to find (a calendar that shows a full moon on Friday the 13th, for example). People spend weeks assembling this stuff to enter the contest. The last time around, I found 20 of the required items in my Mom’s house.

36

Well, my family saves those plastic containers from cottage cheese, butter, margarine, ice cream, etc etc.
BUT…
They REALLY come in handy, because we always have TONS of leftovers, and we just put them in the plastic containers and pop 'em in the fridge. Seriously, it beats using foil and the original dishes (takes up less room). I mean, it’s stupid to pitch them when we USE so damn many of them.
(They work well if we have to freeze stuff too.)

37

Yeah, I am not alone!
Hi, my name is Shirley U. My mom is a semi pack ratter and a depressionary baby.

After fifty one years of having kids at home, she is finally living on her own. She still has two fridge packed with food with the freezer sections jammed so tightly I don’t think you can shove a knitting needle in any space. I have been trained to automatically catch what falls out of the freezer, because something is always trying to escape. My reflexes in this department beat Jackie Chan hands down.

Her freezer that she bought used in 1960 for $20 ( It was probably from the 30’s or mid 40’s)that was the size of a large jacuzzi, she just recently replaced, despite the fact that there was nothing wrong with it. This flabbergasted me (and my aunt) because she hasn’t replaced the stripped bath tub handles on the tub since I married nearly 8 years ago, she uses a screw driver to turn the water on and off. Apparently screws are a LOT of money to her.

But her chest freezer, which, when I was about twenty, I decided to see what was on the bottom of it, I started digging and digger through frozen goods ( this was about 1986 or so) and found frozen rhubarb dated 1979. I never did reach the bottom and I joked that I was planning on burying her in the freezer because it would be so economical. She did find that amusing.

Every cupboard in her house is jammed with food. (why, yes, she has unresolved issues and a weight problem, why do you ask?) [sidebar}the fact that I don’t weigh 900 pounds is testimony of my ability to say no to anything. If I can say no to the FOOD PUSHER, aka as MOM, than drug dealers are a peice of cake to shove off. [/sidebar] I even found a box of cereal that I haven’t had since high school and we did not live in this house when I was in high school. ( It was Count Chocula.)

Trying to explain to her that buying something and stocking up and having it go bad is just as wasteful as buying something and just tossing it in the trash. * She doesn’t get it.* My aunt and I pull our hair out with her antics.

She still has in her medicine cabinet a roll of cotton that she received as part of a wedding present back in 1948. This roll of cotton has made it through 17 moves. But she has lost her wedding gown. ( Cotton did not always come in balls.)

She was going to toss the cotton recently, but I told her,
“Why bother, we might as well bury you with it since you’ve never opened the stinking box.”

When I was about 16 (18 years ago), I found a bottle of aspirin in the medicine cabinet that expired in 1969. I threw that out and she was cheezed at me. Then again, she just got around to throwing out my Dad’s pain medication and he died back in 1975, so progress is being made in minute amounts. She was very proud of doing that.
She has books in her basement, college text books, from her two years in college back in the 40’s. We have halloween costumes dating back to 1949. She is an artist and will pick up frames at garage sales really cheap.That’s fine, but compound that by 30 garage sales a summer, times maybe two frames a sale, times twenty five years and what you have is an entire corner of the basement looking like a “Great Frame Up” exploded in the corner. Our pool table is choking to death from the hundreds of little gifts that you get but don’t want so you save them to pass along as a gift to someone else but you can’t remember who gave it to you so it just *sits *there because you are of committing gift faux paux. ( This pile is at least 15 years deep.)
I have told her, and I am not kidding, that when she dies I am going to run her obit in the garage sale column stating that " Mrs. So and So, **Depressionary Baby, Consumate Garage Saler and Artist ** died on Tuesday. Following her funereal, the wake/garage sale/open house will be held in her basement. BYOB & Everything Under $5. "
It simply isn’t fair that me being the youngest will outlive all my siblings and I will have to deal with this crap.

I thank you for allowing me to vent.

38

While I’m on a tear…
I would like to mention that when I married, she went through her spice cabinet and thinned it out a bit and gave me a heap of spices. Being the culinarinarily challenged, I shelved them and ignored them for the better part of two or three years.

Then I noticed the prices on them. Paprika for twenty five cents and a few others for a few cents more. When I actually bought new spices, I was a little sticker shocked. I haven’t thrown these out yet because I really want to find out how old they really are and just tease her about it.

also, I am a second generation of washing the ziplock baggies and reusing them countless times. I might buy one box a year. If that. This affords me to live in a lifestyle and a 3 million dollar home on the southern shore of the Big Island. Really. Ok, I’m lying. At least I don’t save all the sixty billion plastic shopping bags.

I know I’ve probably just killed this thread…

39

Delphica said:

: My mom’s latest coup is that she was able to get a whole
: case of unused boxes from a store that was closing. She
: asked if she could buy some, and since Jenss had no
: further use for them, they just gave them to her (“They
: gave them to me, FOR FREE!” she stressed). Our family
: will be receiving gifts in these boxes for the next seven
: generations.

Damn, Jenss is gone now. Which reminds me, a few years ago I got a Christmas present in a SATTLER’S box. Sattler’s is a department store in Buffalo that all the old timers reminisce about – it closed in 1980 or so. “Oh, they used to have this 998 Broadway song.” I know — I heard it every year, when another one of those “Remember When” stories appeard on Channel 17, with the usual scenes of Sattler’s, Central Goddmn Terminal, big bands at the Town Goddmn Casino, rattling IRC streetcars, Deco Restaurants and tract houses popping up in Tonawanda after the war. Lots of memories for the oldsters, but no fu*king Rocketship Seven, Dialing for Dollars, WPHD’s Land of Fa, or any memories that someone under 40 could appreciate. Hey, it seems like everyone left in Buffalo is older than 60, so who cares.

Buffalo – where you don’t step into a restaurant without a two-for-one coupon. Buffalo – where people plan their trips to avoid toll booths. Damn Buffalo.

40

The remote control stories reminded me of another one.

My brother, who is 50, has always lived with mom. He and she are just the same in their pack-ratting habits. My brother is a techie nerd and fascinated by new technical knick-knacks, and tends to buy stuff he doesn’t need. My mom and brother have perhaps 15 remotes for the television, only a few of which work, because he bought most of them at close-outs or yard sales or God knows where. It requires a complex series of button-pushing of a combination of two remotes to turn on their television, and my poor old 80-year old mom can barely remember how to do it.

He only recently bought himself a cell phone, but he won’t carry it with him in the car and use it. He says it costs too much to do that. He keeps it at home and never turns it on so that the batteries won’t run down.