Looking back: Grandmotherly Conservation

My grandma was obsessed with aluminum foil and plastic bags. She never let anyone throw them away. She would wash out plastic bags with soap and use them to cover her pastry pens while they were still full of pastry. She would also use plastic bags to store bedding, towels and clothing items so they wouldn't smell like mold when she went to use them again. (Brazil is humid and mold is a problem in every household.) As for aluminum foil, she would use it gain and again -- wiping it clean, folding it up and tucking it away until it was needed again. Even when she came to visit my family in Rio, she would save the plastic bags and aluminum foil she brought with the desserts she made and take them back home with her. 

It all seemed crazy and cheap at the time, and more trouble worth than it was worth. But I look back and realize more simply that my grandmother wanted to get the most use she could for whatever she bought. Now, in the face of tough times and an environmentally challenged world, my grandma's behavior doesn't seem so strange. Going to such lengths to get your money's worth (and then some in my grandmother's case) benefits your bottom line, and perhaps more important, it benefits our planet .  ~JS