Everything old can be used again

IT'S important in the modern world to have tea towels that don't clash with the crockery.

Krygsman

WHEN I was growing up in the 1960s we had a metal container in one of the kitchen cupboards that we called "the string tin". And do you know what we kept in the string tin? String.

That's right, my frugal mother saved string. That's what you did if you went through the Great Depression as a kid and through war-rationing as a newlywed, you saved stuff.

I am somewhat ashamed to say that in my own household today we have a cavalier attitude towards string. I am so rich that whenever I want string I think nothing of buying it at the supermarket.

You know how Scrooge McDuck dives into a swimming pool of money - OK, so maybe you don't know, but my research suggests that he does - well, baby boomer kids such as myself dream about diving into a pool of string.

Not only did our household save string but we also saved the tops of Lan-Choo tea packets which could be redeemed for tea towels. Tea towels. For free. Do you know that if my household needs tea towels today we go to a shop and we buy new ones. As many as we like.

I have a confession. When we renovated our kitchen some years ago we threw out several perfectly good tea towels and bought a set "that fitted the new colour scheme". It's very important in the modern world to have tea towels that don't clash with the crockery or cabinetry.

In my aspirational swimming pool of string there will be a deep-end of tea towels. But the thrift DNA of the Depression generation goes further than a penchant for string and tea towels.

By the 1970s the packaging of butter transitioned from greaseproof wrapper into "plastic container with detachable lid". Well, you can guess what my frugal mother did with all those containers: she washed, dried and stacked the lot in the garage.

Why? Because they might come in handy one day, silly. And do you know those containers are still there. Like the silent terracotta warriors of Xian they await the day of their glorious resurrection when they will be transformed into, oh I don't know, a container for Anzac biscuits to give to the grandchildren.

The problem is that the rate of resurrection is slower than the rate of saving. So the saved containers grow like leaning towers of Pisa yearning for another chance at life.

And when these containers do get to my place and the Anzac biscuits are demolished, the container is blithely thrown into the recyclables. And as I drop the container into the bin the whole process seems so wrong: that a container that had been lovingly saved for years by a frugal should be discarded after a single use by a boomer.

The same goes for today's abundance of string and tea towels: consumer goods come and go all too easily for the postwar generations.

Although I will say there is one aspect of the frugal kitchen that has survived the decades.

In the drawers below the string tin, near the tea towel drawer, there was, and I suspect there remains in every kitchen today, a drawer known only as "the junk drawer".

The string tin might be disappearing as is the abomination of mismatched tea towels but there will always be a need for a junk drawer.

In fact not only has the junk drawer survived the decades but it has metamorphosed. Indeed it is no longer a drawer; it has supersized and now commandeers an entire room and is making moves on the garage.

And do you know why we need a junk room today instead of just a junk drawer? It's because we own more stuff despite the fact that we also discard more stuff.

Isn't that funny? Here we are the most green-conscious generation in history and yet our conservation efforts are still being topped by the money-saving habits of the fast fading frugals.

KPMG partner Bernard Salt is the author of The Big Tilt

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