Our grannies knew how to save money and waste less – here's what we can learn from them

Amanda Jones is one of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on sustainable living and decorating a home in way that is good for the environment. See the rest of her articles here.

The ‘Cottagecore’ aesthetic crept into many of our homes back in 2018. It captured our love of nostalgia, and cosiness. It gained even more traction during the pandemic, when many of us were forced to stay home, and it’s lingered ever since.

Cottagecore, romanticises and simplifies the past, tunes into our need for a slower life. I want us to push those boundaries further, embrace the aesthetic, but also adopt the mindset of our Grannies (and Grandpas). I think we have a lot to learn from them.

Most of our grandparents would have known hard times, understood scarcity. My grandparents lived through two world wars and the depression. They knew how to make a little, go a long way. There were no guarantees, on wages, food, homes, nothing was certain. If you had a surplus of anything, you knew how to make that surplus last, how to use it wisely.

So, let’s not just embrace a nostalgic aesthetic of cottagecore, let’s embrace the ethos too. Bring back those wise old sayings and learn from our grandparents. Here are a few I particularly love.

‘Watch the pennies’

‘And the pounds will take care of themselves’. I heard this a lot during my childhood, and it’s become part of my psyche. The thing is it really works. In the fast-paced world we live in, we can often discard those pennies as ‘insignificant’. It’s not hard though, to develop ‘penny watching’ habits, that don’t take up a huge amount of time or energy but can save you pounds in the process.

I always check receipts, and if I’m paying in cash, my change, mistakes can be made. If I’m running low on an item, I check supermarket offers, see if that item has been reduced, if so, I’ll buy several and stock up for the next 3-6 months. You can save a lot of money doing this. Always try and get the best deals you can, when you are purchasing something, watch those pennies, and your pounds will surely grow.

‘Save for a rainy day’

Our grandparents, especially those born before the establishment of the welfare state, would have understood the need for household resilience. Very little financial help was offered for illnesses or job losses. Today, there’s no such thing as a ‘job for life’ anymore. It’s wise then, when we can, to put some money aside, for a ‘rainy day’.

I’ve written before about building resilient homes. Part of that might include having some emergency savings put away, for a new washing machine, or to offer support during illnesses and job losses.

Another way to build household resilience is to have an emergency pantry. The Government have recommended 3 days’ supply of shelf stable food and water, which would be a good start, you can then build it up over time. There plenty of advice online on how to do this, even with a small budget.

Recently I was in a situation where I couldn’t access my bank account for a couple of weeks. Having a little cash to hand, a full petrol tank, and a well-stocked pantry, meant we didn’t have to panic, and we could still eat and travel, whilst this was sorted out. This bought home to me the importance of being prepared, those rainy days will inevitably arrive.

‘Waste not, want not’

How did we become such a wasteful society, with a ‘throwaway’ mentality. We put food that only last a few days, into plastic packaging, that will last hundreds of years.

I dislike waste, of any kind, food waste, product/packaging waste or financial waste. It’s not good for our bank accounts, or our planet.

Do you produce a lot of rubbish? For many years I tried to go plastic free, and it’s not easy. There are things we can all do to reduce the plastic waste we produce. Again, think like your granny (or grandad). Swap over to renewables. Renewable water bottles, food containers instead of plastic wrap to store food in, and bar soap, instead of hand wash in plastic pumps. Buy in bulk where you can, that reduces packaging waste. When shopping, if possible, opt for glass, tin, cardboard packaging, these can all easily be recycled. A few changes and we can all reduce what we put into our landfill or recycling bins.

Do you waste a lot of food? Meal planning, and regular pantry/cold food checks can prevent this, always use up what’s starting to soil first. Rotate panty foods, being mindful of best by dates etc. Any food peelings and vegetables can go into a home compost bin, they don’t need to go into landfill.

Do you waste money? A spending audit, just for a month, will enable you to assess what you bought, and reduce and financial waste. Write down everything you spend, what was essential, and what could you have done without. Our grandparents would have tracked their expenditures much more closely than we do, it’s so easy to spend mindlessly in the ‘click and collect’ of today’s culture.

There are so many ways we can reduce our spending by being more mindful of what we buy, I’ve written an article about how I stopped my impulse spending, which you can read here.

So, whilst I quite like the cottage-core aesthetic, I’d love us all to start thinking more like our granny did, to adopt more of her ways. To be careful how we spend our money, to be a little more prepared for difficult times, and for our households to stop producing so much waste. Our grannies were wise, we should be too.