Hand-Me-Down Wisdom: The New Frugality

If you've read much news content over the past six months, it's likely you've seen the term "The New Frugality" thrown around. Coined to describe our changing attitudes toward spending, this phrase is really just a fancy way of saying that — thanks to the current recession — it's finally cool again to be thrifty.

Many Americans, however, haven’t truly had to practice the art of thrift since the Great Depression, when frugal habits went far beyond just cutting out the daily latté. Howard Taylor, founder of Wellington Farm USA, a Depression-era interactive museum, says it was mainly an attitude that set apart those people of the 1930s. "If people didn't have, they made do without, or they substituted. They found another way."

Here, we share a few of those "other ways" — frugal practices from the Great Depression era, which you can start incorporating, to some extent, to your life today. All it takes is a little tweak of the mindset and some creativity.

RECYCLING, REINVENTED

For a lot of us, recycling is a regular contribution to the green movement that simply amounts to our putting used glass, plastic, and paper products by the curb every week or so. During the 1930s, says David Taylor, author of Soul of a People:The WPA Writers Uncover Depression America, people actually recycled within their own homes. "Any materials that they had, they would keep longer, and use in the same ways or in different ways," Taylor says.

Some Americans still practice this at-home recycling today by saving and reusing things like twist ties and aluminum foil. But Howard Taylor says during the Depression, they also saved items like buttons, nails and even broken machinery, parts of which could be used to repair other machinery in the future. Even old, tattered clothing — which was patched and cobbled until it couldn't be worn anymore — would find a new life as rags or as patches for other clothing items in the future. "They didn't throw anything away," he explains.

BARTER REVIVAL

Shopping was foreign concept during the Depression, when a family's income was minimal or nonexistent, Howard Taylor says. Back then, the common practice for obtaining what you needed was going to town to trade: butter for sugar, cottage cheese for coffee — anything you had for anything you needed.

Mary Jane Sander, who grew up during the Depression, remembers her family trading a lot with their neighbors. "My father had an icehouse and they raised guinea hens, so we would give them ice and they would give us guinea hens," she remembers. Now a resident of New York City, Sander says she sees bartering, particularly the bartering of services, making a comeback. Sites like Craigslist also provide a modern forum for trading goods — everything from laptops to lawnmowers.

DIY EVERYTHING

One of Sander's greatest Depression-era inheritances, she says, was the idea that she could do almost anything on her own. She watched her parents grow their own food in a garden, cook meals and can foods, and sew all the clothing, among other things. "I grew up just expecting that that's what you did," she says. "And when I grew up and started my housekeeping, I did all kinds of things like that."

What's more, Sander is self-taught in most of the skills that she has, including sewing and cooking. "If I didn't know how to do something, I would look it up in a cookbook or some kind of magazine," she explains. "I learned the professional way of making drapes, by going to a store and looking at things and finding a magazine on how to make drapes." Now, she and her son, Ben, have a business for which they make soft goods, like napkins and pillows. Her advice to others is, if you don't know how to do something, just get on the Internet and start looking for answers. Plenty of sites, like 5Min.com, offer instructions on how to do things.

"Even if you don't know how to boil water, you can learn how to do that, that's no big deal," Sander says. "And it makes life much more interesting, because you're always learning new things."

Photo Courtsey: Library of Congress

Dorothea Lange ~ The Picker's Daughter: 1938