Money saving lessons we learn as we grow

Today's post is a little different than some I've put on here. It is an article written by Kathleen Purvis in the Food section of the Charlotte, North Carolina observer. Maybe it will make you think of a money saving habit you picked up from a parent, grandparent, or even a great grandparent. A big "God Bless You Kathleen" ..for the memories.
Recycling lessons from Grandmother

Did somebody turn the clock back?
As drought steadily sinks in,choking the yard with dust, I find myself in the kitchen, remembering again that every bite and drop is precious.
I put a bowl under a colander when I rinse fruits and vegetables , catching the water to take outside to the drooping herbs and the yellowing gardenia bush.
We keep a bowl by the sink all day, too, to catch our melting ice cubes and the dregs from our water glasses, doling it out to which-ever plant looks the most needy.
After making my usual Saturday morning rounds of farmers markets, where the summer produce has slowed to a trickle and the fall vegetables are slow to arrive, I come home feeling like what I found is even more precious than usual.
I find myself thinking more carefully about how to use it all, savoring the fresh lettuce and the first mustard greens, hanging on to the tomatoes to stretch them through the week and finding a way to use every bean.
As I cook with these things now, I picture the faces of the people who grew them, people who work so hard to make it to the markets and then apologize that they don't have more or that the last of the summer squash are small.
I'm just grateful to have any of it. This is the fall that hasn't felt like fall, the year when the leaves turned brown and fell long before they were supposed to turn red.
And with every step I take into reusing, recycling and repurposing, I find myself turning into my mother and my grandmother.
The Depression left marks on them that were never erased. My grandmother rinsed bread bags and clipped them to a clothes line on hr porch to drip dry, unwilling to spend good money on something as silly as sandwich bags. She saved aluminum foil, refolding it carefully and stacking it in the bread box.
Even when "hard times" were gone, I don't think the woman ever wrapped a biscuit in foil that wasn't pre-wrinkled.
My mother was raised by her, in that era when hard times were followed by war and then by scrimping and saving to start her own home. She never lost those habits, either.
In our house, throwing away bacon fat was a crime and putting more on your plate than you could eat would earn you a tsk and a frown. We were raised to cut our tomatoes thin and peel our potatoes thinner.
As I grew into my own home, I thought I would resist those lessons. I swore I'd never be reduced to refolding aluminum foil. I wanted my life to be about bigger things, larger efforts.
I suppose I had to grow enough to understand that the small, daily things are what add up in life. I learned to get a thrill out of saving kitchen scraps for the compost bin, saving an ounce from the trash can to go on to new life somewhere else around the yard.
The other night, I caught myself folding a barely used piece of aluminum foil.
I still haven't reached the point where I can rinse out bread bags. But I save drops of water, and walk them out to the garden.

Most of the times i have something to say at the end of a post ..a smart catchy line about saving money. I think this one stands on its own. Happy saving!