So after my first encounter I asked an aunty why my grandmother and grandfather had bits of newspaper instead of proper toilet paper, and I can hear her laughing response: "To save money!"

That didn't make it any less puzzling, since grown ups had lots of money.

Over the next couple of decades I saw newspaper squares impaled on a nail or held in a bulldog clip in many backyard dunnies, and it's been more than three decades since I've had the privilege. That's a frugality that has gone the way of the frugalities of old, and it's one we can do without, thank you.

Most of us today can do without all the old frugalities but I wonder if we're missing the point, if being frugal is as much about avoiding waste and using our resources efficiently as saving money. Even for those who were on good incomes it seemed in the days of newspaper squares to be as much about not buying stuff unnecessarily and about finding more than one use for the stuff you did buy.

We have lost the art of frugality.

Until the new affluence, when we became so affluent that waste seemed to matter nought, frugality was for at least the working class a measure of respectability, stretching the dollar, a principle of household management, a source of pride for the housewife and homemaker.

Butchers were told to trim a bit more off the cut, brown paper bags were used to cover school books, soap leftovers were combined in a multi-coloured bar, stale bread became bread and butter pudding, and bread was on the table at every meal as a cheap filler. Remember the little lard bucket in the fridge? Fat was poured from the frying pan through an inbuilt sieve, and the lard would separate so that the gritty fat was on the bottom and the cleanest, palest fat was on the top. The lard at my place was used for cooking, as we'd use oil today, but my grandparents' generation used it as well as a butter for bread.

Children and adults took a packed lunch to school or work, shoes were resoled, clothes repaired, children walked or rode a bicycle rather than being chaffeured in the family car, dogs and cats ate meat scraps or butcher's offcuts instead of vet-approved gourmet dishes in cans, jars were reused. A couple of cleaning products did almost everything, and vinegar, bleach and the mysterious bicarbonate of soda did the rest.

Many people had a working vegetable garden that provided all or most of the household vegetables, unlike those today that grow a few plants as a hobby. Householders grew potatoes and onions and pumpkins in serious quantity to provision the kitchen for the year. Chooks were compulsory.

People would go mushrooming after rain, as I did many times as a child, and the excess would be shared, which meant you'd get a bucket of mushrooms in return later. Many people knew a farmer or a commercial fisherman who'd sell to them at friendly rates. Debt was feared and a loan was seldom available anyway.

We're not going back to the days of newspaper squares and the lard bucket, at least not happily, but maybe we should reduce the waste and excess and inefficiency that we seem now to take for granted.

A new frugality seeking efficient use of resources will have little to do with money. It can, for example, be cheaper to buy bottled pasta sauce than to make it, cheaper to buy stewed fruit than to buy and stew your own, cheaper to buy some fruit and vegetables than to grow them, cheaper to buy supermarket fruit cake than to make it, but money is not the only measure.

We need a change of mindset. My old accountant's advice that the best way to save money is to not leave the house is valid no longer, although my wife says the best way for her to save money is to leave me at home when she goes to the supermarket.

She shops to a meal plan for the next three or four days, which is the most efficient way to shop, while I shop for whatever takes my hungry fancy, which is the least efficient. The result is that I will have to bin half a dozen jars and bottles of pickle and sauce occasionally to make room in the fridge for the new haul. I have sworn, by the way, to buy not another bottle of chilli sauce and pickle until I've used the 11 I've just counted in the fridge.

My wife is guilty too. For years after our children's departure she would cook every day for a family of seven, and while it is no longer seven it is usually five! And the vegetables that work their way to the bottom of our fridges' crispers rot there, which is why I refer to the crispers as the rotters.

Fridges? I won't tell you how many we have because I would be and should be embarrassed. Despite the fact that my wife cooks most things from scratch, that our scraps and leftovers go to the chooks, that we have fruit trees and vegetable gardens, we are wasteful. And we are wasteful because we are not frugal. We should be, and it has zilch to do with money or affluence.

Contact the writer: jeffcorb@gmail.com

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