Frugal

My parents were raised during The Depression. They both came from families with too many mouths to feed and, often, not enough. Not enough food, not enough medicine, not enough money. In the pictures I have from when my parents were growing up, you can see the times were hard. The women, my grandmothers, are rarely smiling. Perhaps they didn't have much to smile about.

Even though my parents were eventually successful and had enough money, they never forgot these hard times. There was not much waste at our house. My mom could feed a family of six on a shoestring budget, and I don't remember ever having leftovers to toss out. I am serious when I say that if we didn't eat our supper, we had it for lunch the next day. I know this probably had more to do with discipline than with waste, but still. We rarely ate in a restaurant. Not so long ago I remember mom washing baggies so they could be used again, and I'm sure they were the generic cheaper brand in the first place. You know those plastic margarine containers? We had cupboards full of them. Don't misunderstand me - we had all of what we needed, and a lot of what we wanted - but there was no waste. And there was no buying on credit. If we couldn't pay for it, we didn't have it.

I am frugal, but I come by it honestly. It still bothers me to see waste. I don't leave my car running. I can't let the water run when I brush my teeth. I don't wash baggies but I do use the same one for my bagel all week, and I do wash the plastic silverware that I take in my lunch. I don't wash clothes if I don't have a full load. When we eat at a restaurant, I ALWAYS bring home the leftovers. Most of the time they go to the dog, but I refuse to throw it out. I have a freezer full of partial bags of hamburger and hotdog buns. It makes me insane to find beverage containers that are left half full.

We have new neighbors across the street. She is 24, he is 25. Last night he set the water sprinkler in his yard. This morning it was still going. In the same spot.

I'm just sick.