[RobertaD]

I learned a lot about reusing items from my three Great Aunts and two Grandmothers who grew up in large imigrant families and went through the depression.

They saved & reused buttons, zippers from clothing and reused the fabric (kids/doll clothing, quilt squares, stuffing, etc.) as well.

Grew veggies and canned them (zink lids & rubber rings, what a treat!) storing fruit & veggies in the food cellar kept them longer.

Hanging the chicken on the clothes line by their feet before cutting off their neck keeps them from running around headless spraying blood around the yard.

Freezing that dab of leftover veggie in a container to add to a soup or cassorale instead of eating it.

They had apple, cherry, plum, and pear trees so I learned how to process large quantities of fruit fast.

Hanging clothes to dry and only washing a large load.

Using newspaper for mulch in the flower bed & veggie garden. Cut paper strips and make a paper mache creation.

Make paper dolls from the old store catalogs glueing the people to thin cardboard i.e. cereal box.

Store magazines in decorated cereal boxes cut diagonally.

Planting flowers that come back year after year and splitting them every couple of years to expand the flower bed or to share.

Freshen crackers in the oven for a few minutes, if your cookies got hard add a slice of fresh bread to the cookie jar to soften them up, save the ends of bread in the freezer for when you need bread crumbs or to make stuffing.

Roberta