Mom was right.
I grew up in the 1950s in a small Midwestern town. My Mom had 4 kids in a 7-year time span. I don’t know how well thought out the four of us were, but she was young and that’s what everybody else was doing. My parents had to be frugal. Because money was budgeted carefully, there were certain things we did because Mom said so.
Most of her rules came from her childhood – 7 siblings, living on a farm with no indoor plumbing, experiencing the gritty reality of the depression followed by World War II. Abundance was not in her vocabulary.
If we stood in front of an open refrigerator one second longer than was necessary her internal alarm clock sounded – “Shut the ice box door now!” It was a refrigerator but for most of her early years it really was an ice box.
We didn’t have air conditioning so keeping the doors and windows open in the summer was okay. But in the winter we were reminded often that we were not heating the whole neighborhood, when we didn’t close the door quickly enough.
And for heaven’s sake, when you leave your room, turn off the light. She knew electricity didn’t grow on trees. I don’t remember when she finally got a dryer, but I do remember when the weather permitted, we hung the laundry on the clothesline in the back yard and when the weather was nasty, it dried on the clothesline in the basement. My Mom should have been given an energy star rating.
We recycled and re-used not because it was ecologically important to do so, it was economically required. Hand me down clothes and furniture and toys were fine. When someone grew out of something or didn’t need it any longer, it meant they passed it on.
My Dad loved to build things. He built the home where my Mom still lives.
My room, where I allowed my brother to stay, had a built in desk and bookshelves. He fixed everything he could. Most of his nails and screws and hundreds of parts and pieces were kept in jars that originally housed peanut butter, jelly, mayonnaise, etc. He never threw a tool away; he repaired and refurbished them. He actually bought an old upright piano for my siblings and me. It was really in bad shape but he knew he could spiff it up for us, so he took it apart one piece at a time and covered it with some type of colored plasticized cloth that was just hideous and we loved it.
Now we recycle because it is important for the planet. It’s pretty easy being green these days with the help of Mom’s rules and the many committed organizations and people who are helping us all make a difference.
Check out http://www.throwplace.com/ where you can give away your excess goods to others who can use them. List things to donate there. Every item listed on Throwplace.com is FREE. Another cool website is http://www.freecycle.org/ whose mission statement says "Our mission is to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community."
My parents were green before it was essential to be so. I like to think of them as light green. The principle is the same even if they did it merely out of financial need.
Mom didn’t know that her example would be one that is to be emulated. Thanks Mom, I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much I appreciate your green lessons. They served us well then and still do. Turns out you were right all along.
Comments