Waste Not Want Not

As I have mentioned, I am a Midwesterner at heart.  My mother came from a long line of German farmers - a frugal, no-nonsense bunch of people if ever there was one.  Which is not to say they didn't enjoy their fun.  A weekend down on the farm getting drunk with the boys, followed by a boisterous round of fisticuffs, was one of my grandfather's favorite pastimes. But for the most part these folks were all business.  The concept of waste was alien to them.  In fact, if had they written their own Ten Commandments, the first one would have been "Thou shalt not waste."  (What the remaining nine would have been is a topic for another day.) 
My mother took this commandment to heart.  She was legendary for not letting anything go to waste. In fact, she was a recycler long before it became fashionable.  Her brand of recycling did not involve letting someone else recycle her cast off items, however; to Mom recycling meant that before she would allow anything to be thrown in the trash, she would carefully consider whether or not it could be put to some other purpose - and usually it could.  Whether it was margerine containers, milk jugs, coat hangers, stockings, diapers, t-shirts, buttons, or even those styrofoam trays that meat gets packaged with, she would find another use for it.  Margerine containers were handy for leftovers. Gallon milk jugs were cut in half and the bottom half was perforated with an ice pick so that she could drain her garbage before throwing it away (in the days of paper trash bags, it would never do to have wet coffee grounds soak through the trash bag). T-shirts were great for buffing rags for polishing shoes (or polishing the car).  Speaking of leftovers, no quantity of food was too small to put back into the fridge for another day.  One never knew when one might be just a little bit hungry for last night's leftover corn. But when heating such a small quantity, it seemed pointless to dirty a big old pan, so Mom confiscated the frying pan from my toy cookware set.  She used it for years.  It would be surprising if none of this frugality had rubbed off on me.  I do in fact save margerine containers, jars, plastic grocery sacks, paper grocery sacks, and even those little blue plastic bags that the newspaper comes in (they're great for picking up cat or dog poo).  The other night my husband actually threw away an empty spaghetti sauce jar, and it distressed me, even though I knew the reason he had done so was because there was no room for it under the sink in my jar cabinet. I remember once I was having an argument with my mother-in-law.  I don't remember exactly what it was about, but her parting shot was, "At least I don't save margerine containers." That was one of those moments in life when one is forced to see oneself from another's point of view.  I realized then that something I considered as natural as breathing might actually be considered quirky or eccentric to someone else.  The realization did not change my behavior, but it gave me a fond sense of kinship with my mother.  I may be a bit eccentric, but I come by it honestly.