FFH 035: Old Fashion Frugal Living Tips, Grandma Used Every Day to Save

It’s easy to get caught up with needing new things. New things, better things, and need more. But that can put you into debt and keep you in the poorhouse. But we can use these old fashioned frugal living tips to help us save.

Generations of the past had to get by with little. They knew how to make things last, wear them out, and use it up. Because they had no other option.

Those frugal living tips can help us today too. We can live a happier, simpler and more frugal life when we use these old-fashioned frugal living tips grandma used every day.

Wanting to be intentional with our money, made me look more to the past. I notice now more than ever more people going back to old-fashioned ways to get by and live a better life on less.

That’s what my husband and myself have strived to do. We want to make the most of all we have and looking to our grandparents and great grandparent’s generations have helped.

In today’s Frugal Family Home podcast, I’m sharing frugal living tips I learned from my grandma and great grandma. Listen below…

If listening isn’t your thing you can read the tips below in the show notes. The show notes don’t contain the podcast word for word but it will give you the general tips shared.

Old Fashioned Frugal Living Tips

My great grandma raised 12 kids on a farm and had to get by with what they had. It was hard work be everyone helped and did their jobs.

Now I never got to visit my great grandma’s farm when I was growing up, it was long gone and the family had moved away.

But I still learned a great deal of how to live frugally from her. Even though she lived at the time in a small apartment with a small garden area.

She still did many of the things she did on the farm even in that small apartment. So even today even if you live in an apartment you can make these frugal living tips work for you too.

15 Old Fashioned Frugal Living Tips

1. Make Do

So many times we look at a recipe or something we want to make but we don’t have what we need. That wasn’t a problem for my grandma she knew how to make do with what they had. Substitutions can be made, other items can be added or subtracted to use what you have on hand and make do.

2. Use it Up

Often it seems like that bit left in the bottle isn’t worth digging out. My grandma never would waste even a small amount of a product or food item. She would use it up. Because if you don’t use what you have you might have to go without.

3. Reuse

Reusing items is old fashioned recycling. My grandma would reuse mayonnaise jars to fill them with food she was canning. She would use empty jars to store buttons off of worn out shirts. Or as storage for bulk food purchases and more.

Old shirts and other clothing items were saved. The buttons were removed, the good pieces of fabric were fashioned into new items, like quilts. And worn out pieces of fabric we used for rags.

Reusing was a way of life and can help you save too.

To get you started…

Try making a pillow out of a T-shirtMake yarn from a T-shirt

4. Grow Your Own

Even though my great grandma lived in an apartment when I was growing up that didn’t stop her from growing her own f...