Do we really want these in vintage???

[veg-o-matic]

Tom!

Your grandma used plastic runners too? I hadn't thought about them in years!

Did your grandma use a carpet sweeper? Mine did, and to this day, I think of it as a "grandma sound."

veg, who uses one, too

 

[deeptub]

Hi, Veg!
Not only did she use plastic runners, but she had cut up a couple worn oriental carpets into runners which she had laid out on the parts of the house that weren't carpeted. Similarly, she bought a new couch and kept an old bedspread over it, "to keep it nice". I'm glad I didn't inherit the "cover everything with crap so somebody else can enjoy the things I worked so hard for" gene.

She had a carpet sweeper, but by the time I came along, it was put away in the basement. Her compulsion allowed her only to use the vacuum by the time I came along. There is a story that my grandfather's sister Anna came for a visit. After watching my grandma run her dustmop around the hardwood floors for the third day in a row, Anna demanded to see the dustmop, and as she expected, after dusting the floors of the whole house, it was still clean. I'm also glad I didn't inherit the compulsive cleaner gene.

Which reminds me of the Compulsion SNL commercial (from Calvin Kleen). That was exactly the way my grandmother was. While everyone else was having cake and coffee in the living room, she was cleaning the oven. Always volunteering to sit on the sharpest nail, as a friend puts it.

T.

 

[bobbyderegis]

Plastic runners and couch covers? She couldn't possibly have been Italian, could she? Do I smell something cooking in the basement kitchen? (Sorry Rich, couldn't resist!)

Bobby in Boston

 

[deeptub]

Bobby--no, not Italian. She was Slovenian and she did have the stove from their old house in the basement. I don't remember her using it, but it was there, all hooked up.

I just remembered, she kept a pair of slippers in her Sophia Petrillo purse, and whenever she came to our house she took her shoes off and put on her slippers. My mom told her she really didn't need to do that, but grandma said she didn't want to wear out our nice carpeting. Mom told her (BTW, the grandma in question was my dad's mother) that if the carpet wore out we'd get a new one, and my grandmother was HORRIFIED at the idea.

She was a saver too--she saved cottage cheese containers, bread wrappers, the plastic tabs from the bread wrappers, egg cartons, rubber bands, twist-ties, and water--if she needed hot water, she collected the water she ran while waiting for it to get hot into plastic milk jugs that she'd saved.

Here's to colorful grandmas.
T.

 

[hoover1060]

My grandma had a carpet sweeper

a Bissell that she used regularly. She'd use the carpet sweeper every other day or so and vacuum once a week.
Grandma also had a little Hoover Handivac from the late 60's... it used a paper bag and she was always well supplied with bags. Still she would un-stuff the dirt and re-use the bag when it got full.
Too many years of using an Electrolux model XXX and Hoover model 28 to get used to disposable bags!

 

[bobbyderegis]

Hi deeptub. Isn't it amazing how our grandparents valued every little thing they had, and how thrifty and smart they were? I can remember my grandmother melting down the slivers of old soap bars in a pot and adding something to the mess so she could get a few more bars out of it. How I miss her!
Bobby in Boston
(and she had a carpet sweeper and plastic everywhere, too!)

 

[deeptub]

My other grandma saved soap remnants. Heaven knows why. She didn't do anything with them. When she died we found boxes of them. She also saved string, the selvege edges of fabric (to use when the saved string ran out, presumably), and, in cigar boxes, every pay stub my grandfather brought home.

It IS a shame that people aren't thrifty anymore. I'm trying to be, but pragmatically. I mean, aren't cottage cheese containers better off getting recycled into more cottage cheese containers rather than taking up space under my sink?

But I know the grandmas, bless them, are rolling in their graves.

T.

 

[brettsomers]

When my grandma bought a new sack of sugar, she would empty it into a canister, then she would get scissors and cut apart the paper sack, including separating the different layers of paper. seems she got an extra spoonful or two hidden in the folds and layers of the sack.

 

[toggleswitch]

My granny was told to START smoking to boost her circulation.

Anyhoo- she had a pipe cigarette hold and would smoke in the morning the first HALF of her cigarette with the filter attached and the afternoon HALF (unfiltered) in the cigarette holder pipe.

Ditto seltzer- the small bottle; half at a time.

She briefly had an electric stove in one apt and would cook at 4 pm. (after the soap-operas, of course!), By the time she was ready to serve dinner (at 6pm) it was stone cold. One day I went to re-heat the food. WELL! You would think I set out to ROB her of her assets, how she carried on about the cost of electricity!

ah the good old days.

PAY $ for CABLE TV??? She would have split an artery.

 

[toggleswitch]

oh and one more.

As grandma aged, she would allow me into her kitchen, so I went to cook a pot of pasta. It was a chance to help out and to learn her one-pot-meal "trade-secrets". Her southrrn Greek cooking was WAY diifferent than my mother's northern Greek cooking.

{Ever see newspaper on the GAS stove- with pilot lights- as masking when frying? Beleive me it is astounding.}

She nearly died when I filled the pasta pot with cold water..

WHAT ARE YOU DOING? she was horrified. *MATIA MOU* (love of my eyes; akin to CORAZON en espanol) *We always use HOT water to start cooking, the landlord pays for that.* Oy VEY, In my mother's house we used cold- cleaner and fewer minerals.

Frugal? HA! Tighter than a clam's @$$. This is the same woman who said *Husband not cooperating? Plug it up for a few weeks (usually means your mouth) and they will give you anything you want.* I thought I would die. My Greek was better than she thought it was, apparently.

 

[brettsomers]

where else could we go from sexual aids to frugal grandmas?