Going Green: Before it was cool

[momsfirststop]

Since today is Earth Day I decided I would dedicate today's blog at http://momsfirststop.com to the person that taught me the most about recycling, reusing and repurposing, my mother. The reason my mom had a black belt in recycling, reusing and repurposing was not because she lived through the depression nor was it because she is a tree-hugging ex-hippy; she was simply trying to support a family of 6 on a teachers salary. In the past she had been accused of being cheap but I would like to suggest that in reality she was just going green before it was cool.
Here are a few tips you can use straight from my mother’s book of recycling, reusing, and repurposing.
Wax paper from your cereal box: Once you finish the cereal from the wax paper bag it was contained in then you can repurpose the wax paper for cooking or other uses. Simply pull the bag apart until its flat and you have a perfectly good piece of wax paper.
Welfare Gore-Tex: My parents couldn’t afford to buy special winter gear for us so if we didn’t get it second-hand then we would have to make do. This is where the “Welfare Gore-Tex” (nickname my brothers gave it) came into play. My mother would save bread sacks and we would layer socks and bread sacks to form a warm water-proof barrier for our feet and legs. Our Welfare Gore-Tex would enable us to play for hours in the snow.
Butter/Margarine wrappers: Once you have un-wrapped your sticks of butter or margarine fold the wrappers’s and keep them in your refrigerator. These wrappers have little bits of butter/margarine stuck to them so the wrappers are great for greasing cookie sheets or frying pans.
Toilet paper CAN be recycled: Growing up my brother’s and I were in sports so usually during Homecoming our house would be toilet-papered. Most people would look at this as a big mess to clean up. My mother saw this as free toilet paper. We would have to gather up all the bits of paper off the trees and bushes and then this would be our every day toilet paper for the bathroom. There would be little bits of twig on some of the paper so you would take caution in wiping.
Expiration dates are just a suggestion: My mom never believed in expiration dates. If the food looked ok, smelled ok, then it was ok for consuming. *To her credit none of us went to the hospital for food poisoning.
All grease/oil is reusable: My mom kept a container on the stove for storing any sort of excess grease or oil from cooking. This was especially useful when cooking bacon since there is always lots of excess grease. This bucket-o-grease was then handy for the next time you needed some sort of cooking lubricant. Besides being VERY bad for you the only down side to this was that everything my mom cooked had a slight bacon taste to it.
Tin foil, plastic wrap, and plastic bags are all washable: I think this one is self explanatory.
Recycling dinner: My mother was a firm believer in left-over’s. If one night we had bean soup, the next night we would have bean soup tacos and then perhaps the next night we would have some sort of bean soup taco dip.
Plastic ware: This includes plastic forks, knives, spoons, plates and cups. If you have the luxury of buying plastic ware you can get months use out of them by simply washing and reusing.
You can freeze everything: If my mom found something on sale at the grocery store she would buy several months supply. This would include food items that wouldn’t normally keep several months like bread, cheese, meat, ect. All of this food would be placed in our large freezer for use at a later date.

[kav122]

ok, the toilet paper made me laugh out loud because I was going to go down the street and "help" a neighbor de-toilet paper their tree for the sole purpose of free toilet paper but chickened out :/ I will if it ever happens again.

[engchik]

i like a lot of those, but the toilet paper one is a major ew. i'm not wiping myself with something that some kid handled then threw over a tree branch with bugs. ew. a yucky idea. altho perhaps you could use it to wipe up spills, dust with, etc. the excess grease is okay to a point..like a few days. otherwise grease does go bad and get rancid and going to the doctor can really cut into your day.
i do like the wax paper cereal bag and also the greasing the pan with the little butter wrapper. be mindful of cheap vs frugal here. frugal is good. cheap is yucky.

[lucille]

My mom did the save your bacon grease thing until she turned on the stove to remelt the leftover grease in the pan and got distracted by the phone. I think the cost of having to repaint & repair our kitchen after the stove fire washed out any savings in reusing bacon fat.

I really started rethinking how we lived and what we threw away after we owned our home and had kids.

[kav122]

Originally Posted by engchik

be mindful of cheap vs frugal here. frugal is good. cheap is yucky.

haha, I think that we all have different tolerance levels...I think mine is pretty high, because I don't get gross out by most things.

[purplefdu]

lol, I think my grandparents did every one of those and more having lived during the Depression. I recall winding string, washing Ziplocs, folding tin foil, and the like. I don't live in a neighborhood that gets TPed so I will settle for paying $1 per 4 pack last week instead.

[Lisa23]

This is hilarious, but actually a lot of great tips that I practice now (not the tp!) I wash my ziplocs, and save my aluminum foil, for instance. What the heck. Less to contribute to the mammoth amounts of garbage we all make every year.

[kav122]

my grandmother was so frugal that she still had the angel hair tinfoil stuff that you put on christmas trees AND the original packaging from the 50s. She would take each strand off before disposing of the tree. The cool thing was that it was heavy, kind of like strands of metal.

There have been posts about this before, so not to beat a dead horse, but it really is so funny to me how people "don't make enough money" or talk about how "great things used to be" blah blah blah, and don't realize how much people scrimped and saved a long time ago and how much we waste! I'll step off the soap box now, but it is really interesting to see the societal shift back to frugality! I'm glad to be a part of the shift.

[lucille]

Originally Posted by kav122

my grandmother was so frugal that she still had the angel hair tinfoil stuff that you put on christmas trees AND the original packaging from the 50s. She would take each strand off before disposing of the tree. The cool thing was that it was heavy, kind of like strands of metal.

There have been posts about this before, so not to beat a dead horse, but it really is so funny to me how people "don't make enough money" or talk about how "great things used to be" blah blah blah, and don't realize how much people scrimped and saved a long time ago and how much we waste! I'll step off the soap box now, but it is really interesting to see the societal shift back to frugality! I'm glad to be a part of the shift.

I think there are just so many things people assume they have no other option because they have been trained that way. DIY laundry detergent comes as a total surprise to many people. They would have never assumed there was an option beyond paying $12 a bottle at the store for it.

[kav122]

Originally Posted by lucille

I think there are just so many things people assume they have no other option because they have been trained that way. DIY laundry detergent comes as a total surprise to many people. They would have never assumed there was an option beyond paying $12 a bottle at the store for it.

agreed! I think I am pretty frugal, but there is always something on this site that makes me say duh!!

I actually gave my mom and some others a recipe for laundry detergent (at their urging). I think they were surprised at how easy and cheap it actually is.