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Coupon clipping.
S & H Green stamps. Cooking from scratch and having enough leftovers for a second dinner. Taking a lunch to work.*
Homemade gifts.
Women setting hair with curlers, slips and bobby pins, and cutting their kids' hair instead of taking them to a salon.
*Btw, can anyone tell me if it now cheaper to buy school lunches or send kids to school with a bag lunch?
These may not be as common as they once were, but can you really say they're obsolete?
I often make stews that serve more people than I invite over to dinner and then refrigerate the leftovers to reheat later. Many tomato-based items like chili or spaghetti sauce actually taste better when you reheat them.
And when I had an office to go to (I haven't had one of those since January of last year, and I hadn't gone to the office we had since the start of the pandemic in March 2020), I was a regular brown-bagger, and I know several of my co-workers also packed lunches based on the contents of the fridge in the office lunchroom.
Using newspaper to line the bottom of a bird cage or worse - a cat's pan.
Washing plastic bags, saving tv dinner "plates"
Hitchhiking - and cheap busses or jitneys
Kool-aid, Chef Boy-ar-dee pizza and boxed mac-n-cheese
Re-soling shoes, re-treading tires
Canning garden produce
Paper bag book covers, sack lunches
Soap-savers
Darning socks
Camping "vacations."
Some jurisdictions (Massachusetts is one) have enacted "bottle bills" that require deposits on all bottled beverages sold, whether or not the bottles are reusable. Disposing of the single-use ones then becomes the retailer's problem.
Ten states have such deposits on bottles and cans, many since the 1970s.
Coupon clipping.
Cooking from scratch and having enough leftovers for a second dinner.
We still clip coupons, but there aren't nearly as many as there used to be. Grocery stores no longer have double and triple coupon days.
I estimate 90-95% of our meals are cooked from scratch, and any leftovers are eaten at a subsequent meal. If we eat at a restaurant, there are almost always leftovers that we take home for a later meal.
I recall the expensive telecom charges we would incur, calling international, out of state, or even “out of our local area” before we had cellular phones and voice over IP.
My first cellular phone (obtained in 1993/1994) was a Motorola analog flip phone through carrier “Air Touch Cellular” here in CA. Monthly rate was something like $70 a month for 100 minutes a month of “airtime.” I had to watch my minutes very carefully. Additional minutes were 25 cents a minute.
No texting or internet access on those early cellular phones.
My parents took a vacation to Europe in the ‘70’s and they called us here in the US. There was a 3 minute limit, or the charges would increase. Hard to imagine that now.
Coupon clipping.
S & H Green stamps. Cooking from scratch and having enough leftovers for a second dinner.
Taking a lunch to work.*
Homemade gifts.
Women setting hair with curlers, slips and bobby pins, and cutting their kids' hair instead of taking them to a salon.
Cooking from scratch and having enough leftovers for a second dinner.
Taking a lunch to work.*
Homemade gifts.
Women setting hair with curlers, slips and bobby pins, and cutting their kids' hair instead of taking them to a salon.
*Btw, can anyone tell me if it now cheaper to buy school lunches or send kids to school with a bag lunch?
None of those things are obsolete. Meal prepping is very common, often a Sunday afternoon ritual. My wife and I don't do it as part of a routine but we frequently portion and plan dishes to last for two or three meals. It's a discussion before we cook; "Is this something that we'll want to eat twice next week?" And it's something I sort of grill her about because she's notorious for making something, having a meal out of it, then two nights later expects ME to eat it but she doesn't want it and makes a grilled cheese or something. So it ends up being dinner for me three or four nights.
I think the school vs packed lunch depends on the state and even the school district. Growing up Mom made lunch and I'd get milk from the school. The school lunched weren't that expensive but a PBJ, apple and string cheese was probably cheaper.
My wife and her girlfriends frequently set their own hair as you describe, but mostly for special events like holidays and weddings. The weekly/biweekly/monthly hair appointment for a perm like our grandmothers often did is not as common as it was.
Cutting your kids hair? I was at TJ Maxx the other day. They had a home hair cutting kit with the other beard trimmers. That's one thing I won't ask of my kids, unless they're boys that want a buzz cut. My Dad insisted on it for too many years.
Cooking from scratch and having enough leftovers for a second dinner.
Taking a lunch to work.*
We do both of those things almost every day. And I'll add making coffee at home. We make hot coffee every day, pour what we don't drink into a container, throw it in the fridge and make iced coffee. Very rarely do we buy coffee out, but I must admit that I do like the Dunkin cold brew.
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