With a near 40-percent hit to our 401 (k)'s, foreclosures shooting through the roof, and Wall Street in spasms, most people seem to be in the doldrums. What are we to do?
My wife and I were discussing this the other day, and my wife said: “You know I can just hear President Hinckley now. If he were here, he'd stand at the pulpit and he'd say: ‘Brothers and Sisters, isn't this a marvelous time to be alive?'”
A marvelous time it truly is! This is the time we get to show what we are made of! This is the moment we've all waited for! This is the moment when life got a whole lot simpler! We all spend too much time trying to impress people with money we don't have, only to discover that those we thought we impressed really didn't care. So, this day becomes a grand opportunity to put into practice those old “rules for living” we learned at our parents' knee.
When I was a boy, my family was poor. I say that only with hindsight, because I never thought so at the time. I lived like most of the other families in my neighborhood. I thought we lived like kings! I learned some very valuable lessons in those years. I was born in a very small two-room house, without running water or a bathroom. We took our baths on Saturday night in a double-sized wash tub in the middle of the kitchen floor. We were concealed by a makeshift “modesty curtain” made out of old bed sheets which my mother hung on a line in front of the tub. If we had to answer the “call of nature,” we made our way to the family outhouse. That outhouse was constructed by WPA crews during the Great Depression and my father always referred to it as the “ Roosevelt Monument .”
Hard work was something you just learned in those days, and you learned it from the time you were old enough to fetch. Hard work and frugality went hand in hand. My father kept a bucket into which he would throw old, bent nails. These were the nails that he bent when he tried to hammer them, or they were pulled from a discarded board, or removed from a broken piece of furniture. When he thought I needed to work, he called me to him, handed me the bucket of bent nails and a hammer, and said,” Your job is to straighten the nails. We don't waste a good nail.” So by the hour I would straighten the nails and put them into a second bucket for nails which were ready to be reused.
My father and mother's frugality extended far beyond the nail bucket. My dad kept a second bucket for old screws which were left over from a repair or project. We just didn't throw anything away if it still had a use. We kept good cardboard boxes, good milk cartons, glass jars—anything which might be used again. My mother sewed our clothes, saved the scraps for quilts or rugs, and kept all loose elastic bands which were wrapped neatly around a plastic container in her kitchen “tool drawer.”
Today I still maintain many of the habits of my parents. In my garage I have a screw bucket and a nail bucket. It is surprising, but there is hardly a week that goes by that I don't need a screw or a nail from my bucket. It keeps me from having to waste time and gasoline to run to the store just to buy a few nails or a screw or two. I barely remember putting that many screws into my bucket, but year after year the amount keeps growing and now it is filled to the brim. It has become a real money saver.
My mother extended this thrift to our family dinners. We had many lean times—times when there were more needs than money. I never remember once, however, ever leaving my table hungry. There were many nights we dined on soup made from carefully saved soup-bones from beef roast, roasted chicken, or turkey. My how good that tasted! There were other nights when, just before dinnertime, Mother would take from her oven six, hot loaves of bread. We would feast that evening on bread and milk! Everything my mother cooked was homemade and she was a wonderful cook! Today when I see restaurants advertise their “homemade food,” I have to chuckle. Somehow I can't seem to imagine a chef bringing from home something he made in his kitchen to serve in his restaurant. When I watch our young people dine out more often than they dine in, I remember those wonderful meals my mother cooked, and I feel sorry for them. They do not yet realize that meals prepared at home cost so much less and taste so much better.
A recent trip to the grocery store caused me to further contemplate just how much we waste. I watched as a produce-worker threw dozens of beautiful avocados into the garbage. I asked him why and he told me that they were getting soft. I picked one up. It was ripe, precisely the way I liked it. I asked the man if I could buy these ripe avocados from him at a discount. “No,” he said, “You will have to buy the harder ones and wait a few days for them to ripen.” I was disappointed. The fruit he was discarding was the very fruit I wanted to purchase. Are you aware of just how much food we waste? The Department of Agriculture estimates that we waste 96.4 billion pounds of edible food each year. This is food that isn't bad, isn't molding, and isn't expired. This accounts for one-third of all the food we buy. Wow!
A disease of overabundance has made us soft, and our pride has made us forget that there are still some among us who are needy. My mother always told us to “clean your plate; don't take more than you can eat.” It was what every mother said in our day. My wife and I have tried to continue this legacy. Over the years, delicious stews and casseroles, filled with leftover vegetables and meats, have filled our table. Our gardens were planted, the refrigerators organized, and home-canned goods filled our shelves. In a generation, that way of life has become nearly extinct. I remembered the day one of my sons said, “Mom, I don't eat leftovers. If I didn't eat it the first day, why would I want it the second one?” He laughed and so did we all. My son was only reflecting the viewpoint of our day. Somehow it no longer seems funny! Bent nails and clean plates seem like “wonderful' relics, worthy of rediscovery.
The proverb, “waste not; want not,” is still sound advice. The goodness of this earth is the gift of a kind Father in Heaven. We are commanded by Him to be wise stewards. We are also commanded to care for those who are needy. In the fulfilling of these commands, we learn to become more like Him and the blessings begin to flow. This is a “marvelous time to be alive!” If you have any additional ideas on doing away with waste, e-mail us.
