11 Great Depression Era Habits Coming Back In Style: Frugal Skills For Economic Downturn

With so much economic uncertainty, many are turning to the wisdom of Great Depression survivors. Here's why. Click "More" for more resources below!

Great Depression Interviews & Videos:

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0:00-0:40 - Intro
0:41-2:00 - Daily Bread
2:01-3:01 - Save Everything
3:02-4:49 - Gardening
4:50-5:46 - Chickens
5:47-6:33 - Bulk Ingredients
6:34-7:32 - Organization
7:33-8:46 - Repairs
8:47-10:10 - Preserving
10:11-11:21 - Gratitude
11:22-12:45 - Homemade Cleaners
12:46-14:00 - Energy Use
14:01-14:34 - Final Thoughts

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[deeedsall]

I’m 75 and I do everyone of these 11 things! From baking bread to hanging clothes outside to canning, dehydrating foods to making all of my cleaning products including tallow soap to being content. My husband of 55 years is my mr. fix it. He just finished making our chickens a wonderful coop and a new back screen door for me all out of reclaimed wood. I barter for raw honey with my whole wheat bread that I grind my own flour for. And on and on…

[ikoluof]

I am 70 and I remember watching my grandfather cut new soles for his shoes every morning out of cardboard before he walked to work. My grandparents lost their business and home during the depression. When grandpa wrote to us he never used a clean sheet of paper, it was always on the back of insurance letters and forms. He would have us sit near him as we used a hammer to straighten nails for him that he was salvaging for projects.. Grandma baked all their bread as well. A huge Saturday treat was Grandmas " fresh from the oven bread", with real butter and honey. Something we took for granted was that for bath time on saturday we all used the same bathwater starting with youngest to oldest. Sounds kind of yucky now but I never gave it a second thought. Oatmeal was every day breakfast, peanut butter was lunch and we ate an awful lot of potatoes. Mom said it filled up the corners of our tummies. Bean soup and cornbread factored heavily as well. Having an orange was a big deal and usually had at holiday time. Saturday night we were treated with popcorn or homemade fudge. On weekends we would have a meat meal whether fried chicken or roast beef. We drank water and milk. We all sat down together for meals both breakfast and supper, we said grace beforehand. I never thought we were poor but by todays standards we definitely were. We went to church on Sunday and every saturday night we polished our shoes and made sure our sunday clothes were in good order. We wore the same clothes until laundry day. We hung clothes on the line to dry and in front of the furnace in winter. Sometimes when coal ran out we burned trash for heat. We had dignity, mom always said we may not have much but that we and our clothes would be clean! 6 children shared a used bike that was our family christmas gift that year. Grandpa was a barber so all our haircuts were done by him or mom. I loved the huge fluffy brush he cleaned us off with after our haircuts, it made me giggle. Mom made dollhouses out of cardboard boxes and bits of wrapping paper and fabric. We were enchanted and thought she was so clever! All in all it was a lovely childhood full of examples of resourcefulness and creativity!
Another memory just occured, my mom told me this. She would be 100 years old this year. She said the market had crashed, everything changed and Grandpa packed everyone up into their old car and they drove from Ohio to Colorado for the promise of a job . The day they arrived emblazoned on the front page of the newspaper was a headline saying the company had gone belly up due to embezzlemant of funds and Grandpas job was gone. They were out of money. Grandpa found a weekend job as a butcher which was enough to bring home groaceries for the week. They found a third floor apartment and Grandpa walked to work and went out each day to job hunt. My mom contracted Scarlet fever and they kept it a secret because they did not want to be quarantined, he needed to work. For Christmas Grandma decorated a coat rack/ hall tree with her necklaceses as a Christmas tree. Mom was 7 and her sisters were 5 and 3 . They nearly starved that winter. In spring they drove to San Antonio and found work. Mom said it felt so wonderful to be warm again. She said that it took awhile before they could eat normally again. They all got sick from eating a rich creamed soup served to them right when they got there. They all survived and lived well into their 90s. Mom passed at 97 and was in good health until the last year. I miss them all, they were tough people with kind good hearts !

[melvanini]

I never met my grandmother on my dad's side, but he said one of her mantras was "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." We could all do with a bit more of that mindset.

[mommakitty]

Saving seeds has saved our family a lot of money! My father in law went to a pizza restauraunt and liked the flavor of the pepper flakes he sprinkled on his pizza. He put a few sprinkles on a napkin and took them to plant just to see if they would grow. The red peppers that I grow in my garden came from that experiment that took place about 15 years ago

[marysurbanchickengarden]

I grew up in a large family and we were poor, when I say poor I do mean poor. My dad hired himself and the older children out to local farmers and we lived in an old run down house on the property we farmed. My dad and the older boys were hunters and we would also raise a pig now and then. My mom cooked on a wood burning stove and she made us girls clothes out of flour sacks. Back then 24 lbs of flour came in pretty floral pattern cloth and mom saved up several of the same pattern and without a pattern she would cut out a dress in a few minutes and she would put it together on her peddle type Singer sewing machine. She would buy rolls of ricrac to match and the dresses were very pretty. We always had a big garden and chickens for eggs and meat. Life was simple, we had no TV and we worked hard and slept really good because we were tired at the end of the day. Out of eleven children none of us had more than three children. Mom went to heaven some years ago at the age of 86, she was living proof that hard work won't kill you.

[katherinewinkler]

I'm 32 and do all these. I was chatting with my 94 year old grandfather, who was born on the day the stock market fell . And he said " The difference between the great depression and the recession we are facing now, is that people don't know how to do anything ! Everyone gardened, everyone preserved food, people would hunt and fish ! Everyone's mother knew how to knitt and sew . If people could learn to be more resourceful, they would experience a very different recession. "
I always think of that, and always try and be more resourceful. I dry my clothes on the line, and will be hanging them up in my washroom to dry during the winter, I garden and do my own canning, I sew, knitt, crochet ! I actually mended my sheets several times until I just tossed them out cause they are finally too worn thin and the rips are too big, today I'm mending 2 pairs of jeans and darning a pair of socks .
We never eat out unless it's a birthday or anniversary, so about twice a year . I'm a pretty good cook and I always try to look for tasty, healthy, affordable meals .
There are things we can learn and do to make a difference! It actually boggles my mind about the amount of waste so many people do.

[digitalhouse]

I though I would add a tip to daily life. As an experience appliance tech, one of the most COMMON issues I see when working with dishwashers or clothes washers is that people OVER SOAP these machines continually ! My advise for your dishwasher is to buy a high quality soap, like a Cascade Complete (liquid or powder) and use FAR FAR LESS then you think you need to. Using the pre-packaged pillows of soap puts plastics into the environment and plastics into the drain system on the machine clogging up the drain motor. On a my dishwasher I use about a TABLESPOON or less of liquid cascade and have no issues, no lasting residue on the side walls of the interior. If your dishwasher is showing signs of a white build up in its interior (major over soaping) and it will take some vinegar and about 6 empty run cycles or more to get rid of all of that soapy buildup that actually never rises out and ends up sticking to your, what looks like clean dishes. On a washing machine, especially with the high efficient front loaders, if you are using a full detergent jug cap of detergent (major over soaping) honestly it only takes about 1/4 cap of the detergent jugs cap OR LESS to clean effectively. Soap manufactures are in the soap selling business, thats how they get rich, the more soap they can sell you the more money they make. Don't be fooled by their false claims USE LESS Detergent, keep the environment and your machines far cleaner and save money in the end.

[HatedJared]

I'm finally at the point where all the vegetables I grow are grown from seeds I harvested last season, and my fertilizer is just chicken manure from our hens composted down with the fallen leaves and some grass clippings. I am basically at $0 cost to grow a sizeable portion of our food now.

[marilyns]

Hand-me-downs! Use clothing until it is used up. And, I recall having 'good clothes' for school and then changing the minute I got home into 'play clothes' so the good clothes would last longer.

[MarciPrice-cleq]

My maternal grandmother raised me, she was born in 1924...it's called homesteading now a days, it's always been my way of life. Raised 4 children in this lifestyle, none continued. I have 3 grandchildren who want to live the way we do. I've found it more fulfilling, than anything else I've done over my life.

[betterlivingonabudget]

We are currently living in a disposable-mindset society. Fast fashion, cheap electronics, and being 'social media worthy' has created that mentality. I think many of us are rebelling against that unhealthy mindset by leaning into minimalism, and doing everything we can to be self-sufficient. It's so much more satisfying than constantly buying new things we don't need, and overpaying for what we do need.

[lindasmith]

When the Grazon fiasco destroyed so many gardens last year by making purchased compost toxic I got 2 rabbits for their poop! I asked my neighbor to build me a simple compost bin (from scavanged pallets) next to the rabbit hutches, The same neighbor acquired 6 chickens & they get a lot of my kitchen scraps. The neighbor provides me with eggs & I supply them with clean compost.

[johnpruitt]

I remember my grandmother saying they really didn't notice a big difference during the depression because in the South most people grew and raised most of the their food anyway. She said the only thing they bought or traded for really was just coffee and flour.

[carriemacdonald]

If you have the freezer space, keeping a bag for veggie scraps, or meat scraps so you can make your own broth. I've bought maybe.... a quart of broth in the last year (if that), and the resulting broth has gone into everything from soups and stews, to rices, to graveys to making pastas. Onion and garlic ends, carrot peels and tops, leftover tomato ends.... fat trimmings and leftover bones and skins... all turns into loveliness.

[KeithandPamBilyeu]

Number 12….SHARE and ASSIST community!! If you have something your neighbor doesn’t…like a tool or machine share! Share your abundance, skill and know how, barter and help neighbors or family accomplish tasks they couldn’t alone. Your cake baking could mean they snow blow your driveway….

[maggiedolly]

This a great video, and I enjoy reading other people’s comments! So I’ll chime in…. Husband recently built a chicken coop and yard out of lumber he got from a neighbor that was building a house, all from their dumpster. We only had to buy the wire. He had enough material left over to now build a greenhouse using windows from FB Market. Another neighbor keeps our lawnmower running, and if he needs something painted or repaired, we trade, or more like it, just help each other out. I bake all our bread, can, garden, freeze, eat 95% of meals at home. Have no debt, shop at bargain stores, our vehicles are 2001, and 2007. I could go on and on. But the most important thing mentioned was gratitude and being content. I spend most of my days saying thank you, because there’s so much to be grateful for. And, we really don’t have to be this frugal, but it’s really just a rewarding way to live. It takes creativity and that to me is right up there with gratitude!

[TexomaPrepper]

Laundry hack: Instead of fabric softener we use white vinegar. In the rinse cycle it breaks down detergent better so your clothes never have a soap residue and it’s a decent fabric softener besides.

[frankruppert]

"Buying in food in bulk to save money and eating that same food over and over" I purchased a 74 acre property with an 1862 farmhouse just as covid hit that I am restoring. I planted a large garden with vegetables I freeze and dehydrate that last me thru the winter months. I also buy whole chickens when on sale locally for $.99 a lb. I boil, crock pot or roast them and eat chicken almost everyday. With the vegetables I have grown and the chicken at such a low cost my cost per meal has dramatically Decreased. Being creative when cooking helps too. Remember during the Great Depression and before that that it was about eating to survive and get nourishment. Today it's all about going to restaurants, getting home delivery and not eating the same thing twice. Knowing the food you eat and where it came from along with the monetary benefits creates a less stressful environment for yourself. Less Stress is good. I'm going to be raising chickens in the spring for eggs and meat. Thanks for all your inspirational videos!

[heatherbare]

Granny is depression era. If you want Thanksgiving leftovers she'll sent them home with you in old pickle jars, but she expects to get those back when you're finished with them.❤

[heathernotzdaniels]

My grandma saved so many things, not huge amounts of them, but just a few for in a pinch. Things like Bread bags, twist ties, rubber bands, pieces of scrap paper, old toothbrushes, just so they could be used until they were worn out. She used a lot of glass storage containers, which last longer than plastic. She used her cast iron skillets for years, and her copper bottom pots that she and my grandpa got when they got married were still in use 55 years later, with glowing copper bottoms on them, looking like new. Her stove was immaculate, despite being 40 years old. If you take care of it, and have pride in it, it will be useful for years. Even something as simple as a few pieces of folded foil, or wax paper. She saved butter wrappers to use on top of her fresh baked bread when it came out, she would smear them on top of the loaf or rolls, just to clean the paper really well before throwing it out. I learned so much from her, and I value that information today. She was a brilliant woman who grew up in a very uncertain and scary time, but her parents survived with 7 kids, just living very simply off their land.