Grandparents: Experts On Green Living (PHOTOS)

"Going green," may seem like a new movement, but the concepts behind it are not. As we ring in a new decade today, we thought it would be fun to look at great green practices from the past. You may already have some green experts in your family, known to you as your grandparents. Those of us that had grandparents grew up during the depression, "reduce, reuse, recycle," wasn't just a way to care for the environment; it was the way to live. Check out nine ways that your grandparents were living green, long before it was cool.

Hang It Out To Dry

Our modern dryers are electricity guzzlers, especially compared to our grandparents low-tech option: the clothesline. Reduce your electric bill and increase your green contribution by hanging your clothes out to dry in the sun.

comments(284)

Top Green Habits (Current Rank: loading...)

Better left in the past Great idea!

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Now Make Your Own Top 5

And Share with Your Friends

Average rating: loading... out of 10

Top Old Fashion Green

loading...

Top Old Fashion Green

 | Become a fan

Picked These as the Top 5 Slides in the Slideshow

Top Old Fashion Green

Users Who Voted on this Slide

loading...

loading...

HuffPost Community Top 5 Slides:

«»

 | Become a fan

Top Old Fashion Green

 

Get HuffPost Green On Facebook and Twitter!

Comments

[ny10013]

10:00 PM on 01/04/2010

This is the best HP article I've seen in a while.

[mp3sevdam]

03:46 AM on 01/04/2010

Gardening is fantastic, but when you live in the projects and your yard is concrete, you can maybe grow something in a pot in your kitchen, or on a fire escape, if you have enough light amidst the concrete jungle of congested buildings to do so. Community gardens are great but most have waiting lists a mile long. cont...
http://akcigerkanseritedavisi.blogcu.com/

[Olofio]

12:55 AM on 01/04/2010

All great ideas! Clothes lines, gardens, canning, and sewing clothes are all ways to reduce our carbon footprint. But why stop there? I've dug a latrine in my back yard. Really! My family of four used to flush the john 20-30 times a day, at about 1 1/2 gallons/ flush. That's close to 50 gallons/day! Now that we've gone truly green, we're saving over 18,000 gallons of water per year! I encourage everyone to make this adjustment in their lives. It really isn't as far fetched as you may think.

[inthelandoftheblind]

11:05 PM on 01/04/2010

You should know that this is a very risky, dangerous practice - a health hazard that can kill...just to save a few bucks! It's illegal for a reason.

Human waste will get into the ground water, and during rainy periods, when the earth around your house becomes saturated with water, the smell will be unbearable & unhealthy for your family & for anyone who has a well for drinking water, it can easily become deadly.

If you can afford it, you might consider a composting toilet - no hook ups to city water required. Beyond that, I can't tell you all about them. I have looked up - considered one for the basement, but saw only products for sale, and not the science of how these effectively "compost" human waste, or where / or at what stage it's in when the drawer is dumped out.

[Olofio]

12:33 AM on 01/05/2010

First, I'm not in it for "saving a few bucks". Yeah, the little saved on the water bill is nice, but this is the planet we're talking about! We only get one Earth, and we each have to do everything we can to save her. Second, the smell is nonexistent. We have a really deep hole, and we use lime to keep down the odor. Third, no one around here has a well: it is all municipal water. The well for the city is over five miles away! As for a composting toilet, what am I supposed to do with the waste after it is composted? Throw it in the trash? A hole? I'm already doing that!

[Olofio]

01:35 AM on 01/05/2010

I don't know, it's working pretty good for us. No real side effects, and the benefits far outweigh the problems.

[MED1025]

12:03 AM on 01/04/2010

Hey, I have a treadle sewing machine and it still works. It belonged to my great grandmother.

[hulagirrrl]

03:25 AM on 01/04/2010

Ya, same here, I also have an electric, but the manual still runs, just does not do fancy stitching.

[LolaP]

01:57 PM on 01/03/2010

apart from hanging your clothes out (unless you live in the country side) these are great tips

[Prevailing Wind]

01:51 PM on 01/03/2010

Clotheslines are all well and good if you live in an area with little air pollution. If you live anywhere near a well-trafficked road, the road filth in the air will have you running back to your dryer in nothing flat.

[hulagirrrl]

03:26 AM on 01/04/2010

You can hang in the bathroom, or garage if you are afraid of the outside pollution.

[hulagirrrl]

05:48 AM on 01/04/2010

ooops, hang the clothes I meant

[little old lady]

01:35 AM on 01/03/2010

Interesting story and comments. I am child of people who lived through the Depression. Some learned from the Depression, some needed to hoard goods after it was over. But most all saved money and were careful of it. I have lived the way most of the slides depict, but I don't sew anymore. It's so much fun to buy clothes at the thrift store! I've been composting since 1962, and my grandmother since 1889--don't think sustainable gardening practices were mentioned.

[inthelandoftheblind]

11:49 PM on 01/03/2010

Bravo to you & your grandmother for composting all these years. I see my neighbors put out multiple bags every trash day.I compost & don't eat foods that come in a box,other than the occasional pizza, but make them,usually, if I do have it, so only put out one small bag per month or more.

My town recycles glass, plastic, paper, & cans.Some super markets recycle plastic store bags.The city also pick up yard waste, incl. branches & limbs & then composts it all - for 3 yrs,'til it comes out so black, soft & rich.We gardeners love to use it to feed our veggies, flowers, shrubs & trees! As a feeding mulch - it also looks great - holds down weed growth, plus conserves moisture.

They give it out free, to whomever wants it! Otherwise - this stuff would've ended up in the landfill, so it's a win-win for area gardeners,landscape cos & the city budget, to do this instead of paying per ton to just dump it! And - while I'm chirping - we have also managed to keep fluoride out of our water system, despite a powerful & rich lobby who come in & throw their weight around, every few years, but they always get trounced.

[Jesster]

05:14 PM on 01/02/2010

We try to follow Grandma's BEST advice: "STAY OUT OF DEBT" and you can survive anything.

Unfortunately, we could not survive America's magnificent health care system without going into debt so deep there is NO light at the end of the tunnel. (And yes, we do pay (an arm and a leg) for our "First, DO NOTHING" health insurance plan.)

The current bill does include some improvements on a bad system - which is good! But we stil have a long long way to go.

[John Bell]

02:57 PM on 01/02/2010

One warning: people with allergies, especially to pollen, should avoid outdoor line-drying.

[inthelandoftheblind]

04:31 PM on 01/02/2010

That's a good point, also- you reminded me - one of my daughter's friends told me when little, she was stung by a bee that had landed on her bath towel. Her mom wrapped her in it - without noticing the bee!

[Niqueth]

02:08 PM on 01/02/2010

Kids today think the world revolves around them. In my day, the sun revolved around the world, and the world was perched on the back of a giant tortoise.

[hulagirrrl]

03:29 AM on 01/04/2010

Yeah, but we made the kids believe that.

[Niqueth]

02:06 PM on 01/02/2010

In my day we didn't have MTV or in-line skates, or any of that stuff. No, it was 45s and regular old metal-wheeled roller skates, and the 45s always skipped, so to get them to play right you'd weigh the needle down with something like quarters, which we never had because our allowances were too small, so we'd use our skate keys instead and end up forgetting they were taped to the record player arm so that we couldn't adjust our skates, which didn't really matter because those crummy metal wheels would kill you if you hit a pebble anyway, and in those days roads had real pebbles on them, not like today.

[inthelandoftheblind]

04:35 PM on 01/02/2010

Well, so much for the good ol' days, right?We've definitely made some improvements - but we can also learn to save hard earned cash where we can - like growing our own vegies!

[lilyorabrown]

01:29 PM on 01/02/2010

I'm already doing most of these things...plus have decided to eat like my grandparents. They lived forever and never gained weight on all that country ham, biscuits, sorgum, and homegrown beans, corn, tomatoes, apples, peaces, blackberries and strawberries.

"Preserves" and pickles of all kinds were staples for our grandparents. Every fresh fruit they could get their hands on was "preserved". If not canned or frozen, it was made into jelly or jams which were eaten liberally all winter. And next to everything was pickled or made into relishes. Even green tomatoes were picked and made into "green tomato relish".

Now, does anyone have any suggestions on how to teach your cat Fluffy to live like his great-great-great-great-great-great granddaddy and "go outside" and eat scraps instead of iams?

[Niqueth]

02:07 PM on 01/02/2010

In my day, we didn't have fancy health-food restaurants. Every day we ate lots of easily recognizable animal parts, along with potatoes drenched in melted fat from those animals. And we're all as strong a AAGGKK-GAAK Urrgh. Thud.

[Suntio]

03:23 PM on 01/02/2010

I suspect they never gained weight because they did a lot of physical work, thus expending all the calories they ate. Today, we work from chairs all day long.

[GuidedByEwoks]

11:59 AM on 01/02/2010

REDUCE....It is the most important of the three R's. Ever seen the walk-in closets in an old house? That's right, they didn't have walk-in closets. I recently moved into an older apartment and the lack of closet space has made me seriously rethink my accumulation of stuff. And it also used to be a treat to eat meat. The mass production of meat for cheap consumption is having serious environmental impacts. Meat used to be expensive for a reason. Vegetarians have about 1/8 the carbon footprint of their carnivore peers. And you don't have to go cold turkey to start making a big impact.

[MadHeart]

01:44 PM on 01/02/2010

Yes. We've done so in consumer goods, preferring to frequent thrift shops and recycle back and forth. Yet, my son and I cancel each other out in the food dept--I'm a vegetarian and he's not. But he does ride the bus into the city because we think one small car is enough. We also live in 1100 sq. ft, plenty big enough for 2 people, although more have lived here in transition. Our water heater is kept on 120 deg. and we have no dishwasher; heat is kept at 68 when the temp drops to below around 45, and we use fans and open windows below 80 deg. I have a sewing machine when I need one. When cooking, it's easier to do large batches and freeze, if necessary--you use the same amount of energy in making small batches of food most of the time. Also, using small appliances is more energy efficient (110V vs. 220V for a range). Plus, we're one of the few houses in this neighborhood who have trees surrounding the house, because my son insisted they not be cut down by the developer. Our carbon footprint is quite small compared to many.

[VOTER]

11:40 AM on 01/02/2010

My mother and father came from large families, 10 to 12 siblings.
My mother and father raised a family of 4.

One of the most advanced & practical Green Living available to
us today, IMO, is Family Planning.

[inthelandoftheblind]

05:49 PM on 01/02/2010

Yes, population growth is a HUGE problem, and now, resources such as water are already getting in short supply, around the globe.Back when people raised big families, for some, it was to offset the relatively high chance of childhood mortality, prior to anti-biotics, etc.

Large families, pre-industrial age, were a matter of survival, too. When families had all they could do to grow their own foods, including livestock, & food for the livestock, cut their own wood - an ongoing job to provide heat , & to cook foods, make their own clothing, etc., they needed larger families just to provide for their basic needs, & to get a days work done.

[SvrWx]

10:43 AM on 01/02/2010

One of the best pieces of advice I received from an elderly lady was describing how they use to keep the baby milk and formula cold...they would lower the bottles into their well and let the cool temps work their magic.

[fleabell]

11:12 AM on 01/02/2010

The "green" thing to do would have been to breastfeed, not use formula.

[SvrWx]

11:23 AM on 01/02/2010

Well, this was during the 40's and 50's and formula could have just taken off and people didn't know that it wasn't a Green thing to do...Oh wait...the whole concept of being Green wasn't really the political religion of the day. At any rate, that is what she told me so get off your high horse.

[inthelandoftheblind]

06:01 PM on 01/02/2010

It's just about that time - the 40s & 50s when we went off track. People were led down the path to where we are today - scratching our heads wondering how we got here - it wasn't always like this. We were seen as a largely untapped source of income.

The old ways were considered backward, in the 50s, breast feeding considered vulgar, to some.Women back then were actually told formula was better for their babies, and breast feeding seriously declined.In recent years, women breast feeding their children in public were scorned - some even had to go to court over it!

Advertising - post war, began grooming the population for selling everything they could think of - to people who had no idea they were being brainwashed into forking over their money for all kinds of things - seen in magazines, then on tv.Just about everyone bought into modern ways as being scientifically superior - or more efficient.