World War II Magazine Emphasizes Frugality

Reader Contribution by Linda Holliday
Published on February 18, 2014
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I can’t imagine housewives today saving used cooking grease in a can to take to the butcher in exchange for a few cents and extra meat rations, yet that’s what millions did during World War II.

Reading through a 1944 Good Housekeeping magazine the other night, I began to comprehend the extent of wartime frugality I’d heard about from old-timers through the years.

The movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” reminds us about scrap metal, rubber and paper drives, but I never really considered how rationing affected people daily.

I should have learned from my mother, who was a youngster at the tail end of the Great Depression and war. I attributed her thriftiness to a poor childhood. The seventh of nine children, my mother’s household (with only one wage-earner) grew to 16 with the addition of an aunt and five cousins after my grandmother’s death.

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