Open Writing

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Little drops of water, little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean, and the pleasant land
Old Sunday School chorus.

Mony a mickle makes a muckle.
Where there's muck there's brass.
Keep a thing seven years and you'll find a use for it.

Wait seventy years and the old proverbs will be useful again.

Here's some Anti-Tip tips

There's more at the bottom

When you come to the bottom of a plastic bottle of something—anything from a shampoo to a cleaner—cut off the top, and you will see there is more left at the bottom that you can still use. And it will turn out to last longer than you expected.

If it is a shampoo or a gooey cleaner or tomato sauce or such, just add a bit of hot water to swirl around wash out to USE all that is left in the bottle.

With jars of sauces and jams, adding warm water to what's left at the bottom, and swirling, will give you more serves of sauce for casseroles or desserts.

Soap Jell

This is the Widow's Curse for every purpose needing soap, including laundry and dish-washing. Keep all your old bits of soap in a plastic milk-bottle with the top cut off but leaving the handle on. Add hot water so that the old soap starts turning into jell. As you use the jell, add more hot water so more old soap jells. It lasts for ages.

Clothes Pegs

They use up a surprising amount of the world's trees and plastic. Many people mistakenly think they save time keeping them on the clothes-line to rot in the rain and sun, and having to buy new pegs quite often. But keep the pegs in an old large honey-bucket with handle, or similar, and when you use pegs, you can hang the bucket on the line or leave it in the clothes-basket. You save the time and energy of clicking the pegs back on the line and then off again—and your pegs will become collectors' items because they last so long. One of my pegs is a wooden dolly-peg now over fifty years old, and I have bought no new pegs this century.

Mend

This is a surprising idea to many people under thirty years old. And indeed, socks and sheets today wear out so quickly all over that there is no point in darning heels or turning sides to middle. However, there is a lot in 'A stitch in time saves chucking out' for many garments, since spending 'nine stitches' later may now seem unthinkable. And if you are really lazy and do not like physical exercise of any sort, even sewing on buttons, let's pretend that safety-pins are ornamental on clothes, not just in noses.

Re-using

There is a slightly silly activity in schools for children, to think of as many uses for a brick as they can. Sometimes teachers have to limit the number of destructive ideas that are thought of. Better to think of how many re-uses they can think of for things that families throw out, especially what cannot be re-cycled—lolly-sticks, margarine tubs, ice-cream tubs, corks, unrecyclable bottles, bottle tops, paper serviettes and cups, plastic-dish packaging for foods, old plant-pots and seedling containers, old shoes . . . even, to be cynical but perhaps practical in arousing children's thinking, uses for baby brothers, older sisters, mothers-in-law and octogenarians.

Collecting tips

It is environmentally irresponsible to build a house that does not have somewhere to save things that may be usdeful at some future time. In the roof, under the floor, in a shed, in a cupboard—but somewhere, so that the baby's equipment does not have to be renewed with every child, and other things bought sail out the back door almost as fast as they come in the front door because there is nowhere to keep them.

You can collect more tips, like stamp-collecting for yourself or for charities—which is also a way of saving and enjoying what otherwise gets thrown out on envelopes. It is amazing what thousands of dollars are raised from those little bits of paper.

Tip – leave at least 5 cm all round when cutting stamps off envelopes.

© Valerie Yule