Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, or Do Without

Living through the Great Depression was probably best summed up in this one statement. I am facinated by the Great Depression and spend alot of time reading about it. Not because I would want to live through what many of those people lived through, but I do admire and respect their amazing ingenuity and how they took NOTHING for granted. Food wasn't thoughtlessly thrown in the trash, paper wasn't tossed out because it had a scribble or two on it. Clothes and shoes weren't discarded because they had a little tear or were a little faded or "out of style". Most people had very little, but were thankful for what they did have.


I am so amazed to see pictures of women during this time. Such as a woman standing in the kitchen of her tiny clapboard house, with a pan or two, a wood stove, a pump outside the back door for water, and very few plates or cups. But the kitchen is clean, the table is set neatly, and she is overseeing a simple pot of soup on the stove.



My grandmother was just beginning her family during the Depression. Her first child, my grandma, was born in 1931. She would have 4 more children after that. Then after the Great Depression was over, my grandmother was left a widow with 5 children to care for by herself. She was an amazing woman who could stretch a penny into a dollar!
This picture is my grandmother (top right) with her five children. The house they lived in, pictured here, is actually an old chicken coop with a tiny kitchen area added on to the back. My grandmother was given this place to live and a small salary for helping a man run his farm.

Being extremely thrifty was a way of life for people back then. I enjoy reading about those times, and love even more to talk to those who lived this way...because there is so much to learn from them. Not only how they were expert financial managers, but they had skills that are being lost in the culture of today.

Skills such as homemaking, budgeting and thriftiness, sewing and mending, cooking, gardening, canning, preserving, even how they conducted themselves in their marriage, and the "duties" of being a wife/mother...all these skills that most every girl knew when my grandma was a girl are almost unheard of today.

There is a darling lady on YouTube who has become rather famous for her "Depression Era Cooking" videos. Her name is Clara, and she is going to be 94 this year. They just finished producing her first DVD, and I DO hope there will be more to follow. She also has a cookbook coming out on Amazon in the fall. Here is a link to the first video she had on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuMkW35BwK8 There you can also view all her other You Tube videos and find the link to her website where you can order her DVD, which has videos on it that were never loaded on YouTube. She cooks a simple meal, and tells wonderful stories of living during the Great Depression. I hope you will check it out. I think you will enjoy it!

Till Next Time~
Angela