They were always alert for waste of any kind - electricity, food, heating, time spent on the phone, toilet rolls, paper, you name it. Wastage basically meant anything "unnecessary", i.e. anything not strictly essential for daily survival.
Woe betide us kids if we left a light burning, left some of our food, chattered too long on the phone, turned the radiators too high, or used too much toilet paper (that was after we finally replaced torn-up newspaper with toilet rolls).
Nowadays a lot of people seem to be going to the other extreme and using as much as they fancy of everything. The idea of waste seems not to occur to them. There are houses in which all the lights are blazing, radiators are red-hot, and surplus food is regularly thrown away.
Jenny and I have never moved far in that direction. Childhood habits are deeply engrained, and the idea of waste is still very much alive. We plan our meals carefully so there is seldom any surplus food. We turn off lights we aren't using. We keep radiators at a modest heat. We're still prey to the notion that we're being unduly "profligate" or "extravagant", and we watch our consumption accordingly.
Mind you, given we're now both retired and have a limited income, avoiding waste is probably a sensible goal rather than a post-war hangover.
Then again, we often drive a coach and horses through our thriftiness by splashing out on something special, like touring New Zealand, giving the garden a make-over or updating the kitchen. We've spent lavishly on holidays over the years, and that will only stop when one of us is too decrepit to travel.
Damn, I think I left a light on....
Pic courtesy of Laura Taylor on Flickr
