I saw her kicking a can down the street, and when I asked her what she was doing she said, “moving”!
I saw her hanging the toilet paper out to dry!
your family eats cereal with forks to save on milk!
she can’t afford to pay attention!
her face is on the front of a foodstamp!
when she goes to Kentucky Fried Chicken she has to lick other people’s fingers!
when I ring the doorbell she says,“DING!”
she went to McDonald’s and put a milkshake on layaway!
she waves around a popsicle stick and calls it air conditioning!
she was in K-Mart with a box of Hefty bags. I said, “What are you doing?” She said, “Buying luggage.”!
when I ring the doorbell I hear the toilet flush!
Yeah. I tried to think of something light-hearted and funny, but somehow reminiscing about being cold, impoverished, hungry, frightened, dirty, and stealing to survive just doesn’t put one in the mood for humor.
It’s my dark secret, but I do the same thing. Even if I soak up a little bit of spilled coffee, I’ll put it to the side and use it again and again until the paper towel is completely filthy. If I use a clean paper towel to eat a sandwich, i put it in the “pile” for later use. It disgust my wife to no end, but it just drives me nuts to not get full use out of them.
I also uses kitchen sponges in the same way. Once it gets nasty, I’ll put it through the dishwasher and then demote it to kitchen cleaning, then bathroom cleaning. It just drives me nuts to waste paper towels or sponges.
I’m not sure why I do this, I didn’t grow up poor, my family did alright, and I don’t recall my parents ever doing stuff like this.
The proper way to use a paper towel to eat a sandwich is A) place said paper towel on counter B) place two pieces bread on it C) make sandwich D) wrap paper towel around bottom of sandwich while eating, thus eliminating need for a plate to catch crumbs whilst sitting on the couch watching the boob tube.
When my dad was out of work we used to go by the saying, “if it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown send it down”. But then, living in an all male household, the only real change was not getting yelled at for putting this rule into practice.
When I was at college in 1991, my bank manager refused to extend my overdraft, so I worked out that, after rent, I had £5 per week to live off for about 3 months. A bunch of us were in a similar situation, and one Sunday we didn’t have anything to eat, so we went out shoplifting meat (not proud of that). We then made a big stew out of the stolen bacon and sausages, which I accidentally dropped all over the kitchen floor. I had to pick it all up, wash each bit under the tap and put it back in the oven.
Needless to say I also stole my lunch every day from the college canteen, and all the toilet roll. To get a drink I would buy the slops from under the beer taps in the college bar (10p a pint), which would be a mixture of stale lager, bitter, Guinness and cider. Or I’d drink Stone’s Ginger Wine (30p a glass).
Towards the end of my course I had to go to London for my showcase, and the train ticket cost me the rest of my money, so I didn’t eat for several days. One day a friend took me to a kosher café for lunch, and when I saw the food behind the counter I doubled up in pain: I had given myself a stomach ulcer. I met my mother the next day and asked for a loan - she had no idea of my plight and offered me £5. I managed to get her up to £25, which lasted me for the next month until I could sign on the dole, and then get a job.
I didn’t grow up as poor as some of the others here. There always enough food to eat, but we had cistern water…read practically no water. Never flush your pee; only flush your poop.
We rarely shared bathwater–only during droughts when we ran out and had to buy water (it came in by truck), but the standard procedure was to get into the shower. Turn water on just until wet. Turn water off. Lather up; do whatever scrubbing or shaving was needed. Turn water back on. Turn off as soon as most of the suds were rinsed off, or expect a mother or grandparent pounding at the door yelling at you.
For baths, get into empty tub. Stick head under faucet; turn on water just until head is wet. Turn off water; wash hair. Stick head under faucet; turn on water just until head is rinsed. Wash body in the inch or so of water that has accumulated in the tub.
We never had to worry if we could flush or not, we had an outhouse. You haven’t lived until you have to go to an out house in January. We did have to share the bath water because it took so long to heat on the potbelly stove, that heated our two room house.
We never had to steal food either. We lived in the country so we hunted deer fished and shot pheasant. My father’s grandmother was Native American so he had learned alot about edible wild plants.
The thing is that my cousins were just as pour as we were, and I was never around other kids so I didn’t know we were poor. That is until I went to school and the other kids started to tease me.
I’ve hung around counter service restraunts and pocketed the crackers they leave out for people who buy soup. This combined with a 40 cent hard boiled egg is a decent meal.
I couldn’t afford a necklace, so I used pretty string.
I’ve gone to art gallery openings for the free wine and cheese.
[QUOTE=boofy_bloke]
How do you use a paper towel to eat a sandwich?
Instead of getting a plate dirty, I’ll use a paper towel. After I’m done, I dump the crumbs into the garbage and put the paper towel back into the pile.
With the sponges, I’m a guy so I’m probably not to thorough with rinsing them out, and after a while they start to get a bit grimy. That’s when I run them through the dishwasher.
I moved out from my dad’s house when I was 17, and had nowhere to go so I moved into a car I had bought for $50. I was ripped off. It was a 1963 volkswagon squareback that barely ran (and after a bit didn’t run, but fortunately broke down halfway between my minimum-wage job and my college, so at least I was able to continue living in it while I walked everywhere). Lived in it for almost a year before saving up enough money to rent a place. I told my sister she could have a third of whatever she sold the car for; she sold it for $15. The job I was at was shovelling popcorn at a movie theatre, so free left-over hotdogs, popcorn and nachos was pretty much my diet for a long while.
The funny thing is that I miss those days in a lot of ways. I had no money, but I also had no responsiblities. Plenty of time to do whatever you wanted, as long as it didn’t cost money, and though at the time it seemed like everything good cost money, in hindsight some of the best times I had were hanging out playing chess with friends or having a bonfire at the beach with other poor bohemians such as myself. Some of my best friendships come from that time.
My boyfriend’s mother grew up very, very, very poor, and while I don’t know many stories about her earlier childhood poverty, (other than that squirrels were a frequent menu item) I do know that after she left home at 16, she got a lot of her food from funeral parlors. She’d figured out where they all were in the city and she had one nice outfit, so whenever there was a funeral being held, she’d creep in, offer condolences to the family (they’d always assume she was a distant cousin or something) and get as much food as she could. She avoided having to become a prostitute that way, and I think she’s rather proud of that.
Like I said in another thread, my husband and I share bathwater, but only because we don’t have a shower and it takes too long to regenerate the hot water.
My husband used to put a brick in the toilet tank to save on water. I believe this practice is frowned upon by the toilet people these days.
When I lived up in the mountains, I was in a poor little town. One day we all had nothing and I got everyone together to pitch in on chicken stew. One person brought a tomato, one brought an onion, I got a piece of chicken or two from others, one brought a can of corn…when it was done, we had a pretty decent meal for about 8 people. Then we didn’t eat for two days until the welfare checks came. Then I moved back to Chicago where I could find a job. Which I did.
My family went through a rough time when I was about 15. We were building a house when my dad went on strike so we had to move in. No exterior walls, no interior sheetrock, no doors, a roof and a bathroom. No hot water, only 2 finished rooms, no kitchen. Then the contractor split with all the money and the house less than 1/4 finished. And winter comes. And my brother is raising a piglet for FFA or 4H or whatever. So, 6 people, 2 dogs, 1 pig and little heat and only one cold bathroom.
As God is my witness, I’ll never live with a pig again. Vile, angry thing. Piglets pee strait out the back! And this monster would aim for you! And don’t get me started on how the mice would fuss if we had the TV too loud.
I’m not rich but I’ve been poor. This is much better.