Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Not a delicacy, just an everyday food that they love. It's in every store and comes in numerous new varieties that never existed until recently.
I'm actually curious to try some of those, but I'll wager there are some varieties that I could find in a Honolulu supermarket but not one around here.
Ten states have such deposits on bottles and cans, many since the 1970s.
I recall when my home state enacted a bottle and can bill. Stores hated it (they were required to be collection sites, initially earning 1 cent per item they took in/passed to the recyclers) but the litter along roads and highways significantly reduced in a hurry. You would see the difference when you crossed boundaries into the neighboring states without such laws.
Oil changes are their "loss leader". They do them for cheaper than you can (usually using inferior oil and cheap generic filters) in order to upsell you by offering all kinds of extra maintenance and unneeded "repairs". One place tried to sell me on the "fact" that my A/C needed work, 2 months after I'd just replaced the whole system and it was working excellently. Bait and switch baby!
This is one reason I do my own oil changes. I pour some oil into the filter before screwing it on, Mr. Pimple Face at Stupid Lube is unlikely to bother. I buy my oil and filters at Bi-Mart, a PNW discount store. While a shop might be able to buy them for less, they would price them out to me for *more*, and my cost, not their cost, is what I care about. As for used oil disposal, all the chain parts stores around here will take the oil for free.
The stupid upselling you get at most chain oil change joints is another annoyance I avoid by DIY.
I have heard stories where Mr. Pimple Face actually drained the transmission on a victim's, I mean customer's, car, and dumped 5 more quarts of oil into the engine. Of course, leaving the drain plug loose or overtightening it, or cross threading it, is pretty common. Wrong grade of oil, dumping in 5 quarts even if your car needs more or less, etc.etc.
If I were so infirm I couldn't change my own oil, I would go to a real shop, I know a few around here, who I could count on to do the job right.
We've always hung our stuff to dry. First, because we had no dryer, then because I wanted my clothes to LAST and not shrink at all. We have to hang them inside on the shower rail since we're in a condo. But my mom dried everything outside and we grew up affluent. She still had the Depression-era mindset so that was imprinted on me.
We cook everything from scratch and always plan for leftovers. So when we feel like cooking, we do it but otherwise have leftovers which we love.
Never used a coupon in my life, but I wash out and reuse ziplocks over and over. Even baking paper since I can't always get it. And we save all our yogurt containers for reuse.
We grew up with hand-me-downs despite having money, and I don't think anyone is doing that anymore.
I agree with you that most of the things you list here are not obsolete save one:
Hanging clothes out to dry in the open air.
Clothes actually smell better when you do that (even if you use scented detergents and dryer sheets), but the hardware for doing so, which was once quite common even in suburban developments, is no longer part of the package offered to homebuyers in new subdivisions. Washers and dryers are considered part of the standard appliance package. I suspect that if you asked a builder to install a clothesline in your backyard, you'd get funny looks.
But yes, we can dry outside or on the veranda in most of the country all year in most of the country.
Most people also have a clothes dryer and most apartment blocks ban washing on visible verandas. But my kids will have racks in the laundry or spare room and just use the dryer on occasion. Electricity is quite expensive here.
I used to sew but by about 1995 or so it was not worth the effort.
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?
When I cook from scratch, I always make enough for several more meals. I'm not doing all that work for one meal and anyway it's always something I really like.
Washing out margarine tubs and cottage cheese containers to use for refrigerating leftovers.
.
From the Jeff Foxworthy routine "You Might Be A Redneck": If you have a matching set of salad bowls and they all say Cool Whip on them, you........" (or thrifty).
All our juice glasses were dried beef jars. Most of the tall glasses came free with a gas fill up or had jelly or peanut butter in them originally.
When we went on vacation, we hardly ever ate out. Mom would pack enough food to feed an army and we ate at roadside rest areas (which weren't "fancy" like they are now; they were usually one splintery picnic table, a fly-infested trash can that hadn't been emptied since the Truman administration and the restroom facilities consisted of "over behind that bush or behind that tree").
When we stayed in motels, Mom always had an electric frying pan, a toaster and a coffee maker along. Pay for breakfast or lunch for a station wagon full of hungry kids who then wouldn't eat hardly any of it? Horrors!
My mother knew how to squeeze a nickel until the buffalo's nose bled....
From the Jeff Foxworthy routine "You Might Be A Redneck": If you have a matching set of salad bowls and they all say Cool Whip on them, you........" (or thrifty).
All our juice glasses were dried beef jars. Most of the tall glasses came free with a gas fill up or had jelly or peanut butter in them originally.
When we went on vacation, we hardly ever ate out. Mom would pack enough food to feed an army and we ate at roadside rest areas (which weren't "fancy" like they are now; they were usually one splintery picnic table, a fly-infested trash can that hadn't been emptied since the Truman administration and the restroom facilities consisted of "over behind that bush or behind that tree").
When we stayed in motels, Mom always had an electric frying pan, a toaster and a coffee maker along. Pay for breakfast or lunch for a station wagon full of hungry kids who then wouldn't eat hardly any of it? Horrors!
My mother knew how to squeeze a nickel until the buffalo's nose bled....
That reference definitely dates you.
My grandparents did the same thing for road trips that your parents did, but by the time they started taking road trips cross-state — first just to see St. Louis, then to see relatives who moved to an Illinois-side suburb — the Interstates were in place, and the rest areas on those were better than the "roadside parks" with picnic tables and no facilities on the primary state highways.
I don't know what Missouri's Interstate rest areas look like now, but I suspect they're even better equipped than the ones in the 1970s.
The reference to squeezing a nickel till the buffalo's nose bled is really obsolete since the last buffalo nickel was minted in 1938. But I just thought of another one: electric. Companies sometimes offered light bulb service about 30 cents for several bulbs, a lot less the retail price. Became obsolete with the advent of CFL and LED bulbs.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
