Hi everyone. Do you remember how our parents and grandparents lived. They did not make the kind of money we are making, but they also didn’t have the kind of expenses we have. The only bills they had to pay were water, phone, electricity. They did not have TV’s and certainly did not have TV’s in every room. Today we have cable, internet, cell phones and other things we need to pay for. Besides nowadays, everything is made to last a few years and things become obsolete. I have old laptops and desktops that are sitting around because they are not fast enough or don’t have enough memory to run today’s programs. Same thing with Iphones. Our parents used things that lasted a long time. Very rarely disposable things were used. I remember when we were little, my mom used cloth diapers. We used cloth napkins to wipe tables and floors and washed and reused them, instead of tearing a paper napkin and throwing it out after one use. Do you know that one third of landfills is paper? We used stainless steel utensils, not disposable ones. My mom used to use tamarind or lemon to clean the utensils. In our village, my grandmother used to use mud to clean the utensils and wash them off. We had clothes lines inside the house and we dried our clothes instead of spinning them in a dryer. I don’t remember my clothes getting static charge.  All these things not only saved us money but they were also environmentally friendly. My grandmother would have flipped if I told her I pay a dollar for bottled water. Think of how much plastic is ending up in landfills as well.

So I would like to request that we try and live like our parents whenever possible or adapt something they used to do. Not only we will save money, but also help the environment.