Cheap things your family did when you were growing up (and maybe you still do)

[ElizabethT]

My father did not believe in paying for heat or a/c for our home, and likely couldn't afford to, based on how large our home was in the 'good' neighborhood we lived in. The appearance of being wealthy was very important to him, even if his overall income was limited and not equal to our neighbors.

I grew up in S California, so this was hardly life or death, but certainly it was very, very uncomfortable at times.

Even to this day, with all of DH's and my relative wealth, I hesitate every time I'm at our thermostat, assessing if we could/should further warm or cool our home. Crazy how those childhood learnings linger . . .

 

[pjigar]

We walked the railroad tracks looking for treasure.

This reminded me of walking next to the railroad tracks for picking wild berries.

 

[COcheesehead]

My Dad would drink the pickle, pear, peach, etc juice from the can. Jelly jars became glasses. He’d refill the cheap plastic water bottles and put them back in the fridge. Bacon grease was saved. They had a garden.
We both today don’t do much that our parents did.

 

[TripleLindy]

Looking back, it’s a hoot to think of some of the cheapskate things my dad did, but he was raised quite poor with 6 siblings. And we were on the lower end of middle class.

One that stands out:

As color TVs started to become the norm, my dad bought this glass lens that sat in front of our B&W TV. It had colored bands, I think red, green and blue, and was sold as a way to convert your B&W TV to color. Needless to say, it didn’t work very well.

 

[wrigley]

My Dad would drink the pickle, pear, peach, etc juice from the can. Jelly jars became glasses. He’d refilled the cheap plastic water bottles and put them back in the fridge. Bacon grease was saved. They had a garden.
We both today don’t do much that our parents did.

I remember the Folgers can on the stove filled with old grease.

 

[wrigley]

Looking back, it’s a hoot to think of some of the cheapskate things my dad did, but he was raised quite poor with 6 siblings. And we were on the lower end of middle class.

One that stands out:

As color TVs started to become the norm, my dad bought this glass lens that sat in front of our B&W TV. It had colored bands, I think red, green and blue, and was sold as a way to convert your B&W TV to color. Needless to say, it didn’t work very well.

Kind of like hooking up an "FM Tuner" to your AM car radio so you could get the cool FM channels.

 

[COcheesehead]

Kind of like hooking up an "FM Tuner" to your AM car radio so you could get the cool FM channels.

I had one of those in my 1970 Dodge Dart. My first car.

 

[imjustawarrior]

We were middle class. My dad would take my brothers and me to the Boys Club and drop us off. I guess it was cheaper than a baby sitter. It was a rough crowd there.

We went to the solid waste center to shovel sludge into garbage bags to fertilize the garden.

There were probably a lot of cheap things we did that we thought was just normal. Complaining was not allowed.

 

[jollystomper]

With 7 kids, the only restaurants our parent went to as a family were Chinese restaurants. Maybe that is a factor in me marrying DW, who loves chinese food.

Hand-me-down clothes. I was the third son, so at least half my wardrobe was from my older brothers. When My siblings and I married and started having kids we would pass infant clothes among each other like this.

We drank lots of kool aid. The little packets into water and then add probably too much sugar. I do sometimes use the little sugar free "single serve" koolaid packs.

We ate a lot of liver in the home, as that was the cheapest cut of beef. As an adult I do not eat liver. However, given its health attributes, that may have contributed to me and my siblings rarely getting sick growing up.

Mom would reuse lipton tea bags to their limit. That habit I finally stopped 10-15 years ago. I mainly drink decaf tea and have "graduated" to fancier english breakfast brands . But as times it still feels a little strange to throw out a tea bag after one use.

We had a washboard that was used if you only had to clean a few things. While not cheaper, we went to laundromats to wash clothes until I was 13, when our parents first purchased a washing machine (2 years after we moved into our first house).

Clothes were dried by hanging them on clotheslines or putting them o the radiator. I still find it interesting that none of us suffered burns from being around hot, exposed radiators when young. We have a dryer now, but we do have indoor clothes drying racks that are used mainly by DW.

Saving bacon grease. I do this, but only to fill up one bottle. It makes my bacon caramelized onion dip oh so delicious .

Many empty glass jars because drinking glasses. We rarely save them these days, like the one of use for the bacon grease.

One pair of sneakers, worn until a hole appeared. Then put in a couple of pieces of cardboard until the next birthday or Christmas, and you knew what present you would get. Now I have 6 pairs of sneakers, blow that dough!

Adding water to ketchup and mustard to make sure we used every last drop of those condiments. I will do this these days if (a) we are eating something that I want to put those condiments on, (b) practically empty bottles are all that is left in the house because we forgot to stock up, and (c) I am too lazy to drive 5 minutes to the store to buy a new bottle.

Many more I can think of. But in truth, at the time, we did not think of these things as cheap, that was normal to us.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

We took "Navy" showers, where water was turned off when not rinsing. If water ran too long there was a loud bang on the bathroom door accompanied by a shouting father.

Vacations were taken camping in a tent, and later in a folding trailer. Loved it. Hotels were for "rich people." We went nearly cross country over three weeks in one tent with a family of five.

Like everybody else, cars were washed in the driveway, lawns were mown by the kids, and anything that broke was fixed by Dad except maybe the TV. Even then, he's take a crack at it since it was often just a tube that needed replacing (remember those tube testers at the store?).

Oh, and turn that light out if you're not in the room! I've only lately stopped doing that so much, especially with LED bulbs.

 

[iloveyoga]

I grew up the oldest of six kids. We went camping for vacation which was super fun. But we never ever stayed in a hotel or motel or ate out. Mom would bring all of our food and cook, so no vacation for her. Like I said we had a blast but it was definitely on the cheap. We only did free things for entertainment.

 

[Slotracer]

Big garden, government cheese, patches on pants knees, never had a tradesperson do anything on the house or vehicles (Dad and Grandpa took care of things). Rarely ate out - main exception was at the start of trips to visit relatives a few states over, stopped at Der Weinerschnitzel and used coupons to get 10 hot dogs (and one large drink) for the 6 of us. Never stayed at a hotel - relatives' places only, even then sometimes we kids slept in cars or tents because Grandma's or Auntie's house was overflowing. I agree that, to we kids, it was all normal.

DW had similar upbringing. We don't eat out much by today's standards, still garden (but for fun, not sustenance), still do work on the house and vehicles ourselves. Occasionally stay at a relative's place. But not hesitant to book a hotel, spend money on eating out, or pay someone to do work (okay, a thought process occurs on the work thing).

 

[pacergal]

So many of the same experiences, never thought of them as cheap, it was simply the way it was--
Mom sewed most all of our clothes, vacations were in the car driving across the country to family reunions, Mom kept an old coffee can in the freezer for bits of leftovers then made soup with them for dinner, bacon grease was saved and used--made so many things taste wonderful!
Dinner out was rare and usually a drive to local A&W. Eggs or beans were a frequent low cost dinner for 6.
Mom canned veggies and fruits, made most of the breads/pastries/cookies--rarely had store bought. Wonder bread, PB&J was a treat!

 

[CO-guy]

As a young child, every year around the holidays we would go somewhere with a giant room full of toys and I would get to pick out whichever toy I wanted to take home. Many of my friends would get taken there too and so we all had new toys to play with around the holidays.

Years later we realized that the reason we all had this 'magical' toy experience was because our parents were too poor to afford to buy us toys.

 

[1242Vintage]

Dad had an old used Chevy pickup truck when I was a kid. We lived near the ocean and the old truck would get rusty … so … once a year it would get a coat of fresh white paint to cover up the rust. No body work to repair the rust, just paint over it.

Good as new for another year.

 

[iloveyoga]

I grew up the oldest of six kids. We went camping for vacation which was super fun. But we never ever stayed in a hotel or motel or ate out. Mom would bring all of our food and cook, so no vacation for her. Like I said we had a blast but it was definitely on the cheap. We only did free things for entertainment.

We would also go to the ice cream shop and each kid got a 5 cent cone. Mom and Dad got a regular treat and we were all thrilled. In later years my youngest sisters said they got their own regular sized treat. I had to wait until I could buy my own.

 

[braumeister]

One vivid memory is that my dad's union went out on strike every few years, and the strike would usually last for at least a few months. During that time our meals often consisted of onion sandwiches.

We were also on the ocean (well, bay actually) so in the summer I would ride my bike carrying a long handled net and a burlap sack about five miles to where you could find crabs. If you got there just before sunrise you could fill the sack with crabs and have a great supper.

The especially poignant thing about that is that very close to that point was a big sign put up by the NYC Dept of Health saying "No Shellfish to be Taken from these Waters"
They recognized the pollution from nearby sewer outlets, but didn't do anything about it except put up the sign.

I figure I'm probably immune to most water-borne diseases as a result.

 

[Sunset]

Never had the money to eat at restaurants. If we had to leave and travel a lunch was made to eat. We were poor and made do without so many things and compromised for about every area of life. But life was good and wouldn't change it for a better way.

To this day when my wife and I eat out my thinking is we really should not do this.

Similar, lots of picnic lunches when going on a long drive.

We did eat at a restaurant a few times a year, Christmas and to celebrate a birthday.

 

[easysurfer]

Save the crust ends on a loaf of bread. They are great to use for making meatloaf.

 

[GBcycling]

School lunch consisted of a room temperature fried egg sandwich between 2 slices of buttered white bread. I can't remember what else as I have never recovered from that.
We left the house at 9am. Dinner was at 5 or be home before dark. We were all over the county. Drive in movies and chasing lightning bugs for the jar. Grand parents still lived on the farm so lots of chicken coop, barnyard, hayloft, backwoods adventures. I think we had 2 what we would now call vacations when I was growing up. Much of what I saw of the Midwest was through scouting.

 

[Walt34]

We did ALL of our vehicle maintenance, except once I remember Dad taking the car to a shop for a front-end alignment and that only because we didn't have the tools for that and buying them wasn't feasible. Knowing how to do most vehicle maintenance saved me a bundle in adulthood.

Brown-bagged lunches both to work (Dad) and to school for the kids. This also became a necessity for a while in adulthood and saved me a bundle.

I was in HS before I saw the inside of a restaurant, and that was on my own dime from a gas station job. We stayed in a hotel (Howard Johnson's) once during my childhood. I forget what the occasion was.

On every other trip, which was only to grandparents, was to drive straight through to Tyrone, PA from near Washington, D.C., and once a year then on the next day to Buffalo, NY to maternal grandparents. On the way back one year we stopped for a few hours in NYC to see the Empire State Building. That was the extent of sightseeing, except for the rare day trip to Washington, D.C.

Two or three times a year a rare treat was a six-pack of Coke and a box of Ritz crackers. We ate lots of fried chicken on Fridays and rarely, some steak. I didn't like steak because my mother always bought the cheapest cut and (I suppose) didn't know how to cook it. Anyway, steak was always tough to eat and I preferred the chicken.

My mother had an electric sewing machine and used it a lot to make clothes for the kids, especially my two sisters. Occasionally a shirt for me.

All that said, we never went hungry and didn't have to dumpster dive for food or anything else.

 

[splitwdw]

I think the buns are great when used to make a peanut butter sandwich for a midnight snack.

Maybe I'm overly tired from cleaning up from wind damage but your post got me laughing. Still laughing. Thanks.
Our family "cheap" thing was hand-me-down clothes. We still do this. My one sister gained weight and she gave me some nice sweaters that no longer fit her. I just gave them back because she worked hard and lost the weight. Yay!

 

[mcso]

It is just all so different these days. Eating at a restaurant was a big deal. Normally at the A&W at the end of our street. I would get a foot long coney dog. I should look like one I ate so many of them over the years. I still like them and I'm near 60! My parents (god rest their souls) would be appalled at a $15 burger which seems the norm these days.

Someone mentioned graduating to paper lunch bags when lunch boxes were no longer cool to be seen with. My BIL asked for and received a Roy Rogers lunch box (with thermos btw) for xmass. I received a picture of him and said box proudly eating in the company lunch room yesterday!

I may have missed it but am I the only one that drank TANG everyday?

I remember watching "the dukes of hazard" on Friday nights with Tang and popcorn (jiffy pop that one made on the stove, that enlarged up the foil!!!!). On rich weekends mom bought Doritos! BTW I recently watched an episode of Dukes and I can not believe how fake everything was. Sitting in paarked car with movie of moving countryside in back window. I can't believe I bought into all that as a youngster!

Someone mentioned shoes until there was a hole in the sole. I remember going "school" shopping late summer. Mom would purchase my once a year white leather sneakers. I want to say they were reebox but I can't be sure. By spring they were a medium grey.

I remember wearing bread bags inside my boots in winter to keep dry. In reality I probably sweat more than my feet would have gotten wet.

Good memories peeps, Keep them coming.

PS: anyone else have a pool cue under couch to turn off tv?

 

[Just_Steve]

 

[djsander]

When we went to the drive-in movies mom we make a big batch of popcorn in a big pan on the stove. Popcorn was dumped into a large paper grocery bag, salted and buttered. Then she would make a large pitcher of kool-aid. Load us in the car and off we would go. Not sure how we didn't spill the kool aid. I still make popcorn on the stove but use a whirly pop.