Lessons from my grandma

Kitchen sink.
(Photo: FreeRangeStock.com)

My grandma cooks a big family feast every year on New Year's Day. Usually, my mom helps her with the bulk of the cooking, and I contribute by bringing a raisin pie. But this year my mom was baby-sitting one of my sick nieces, so I helped Grandma instead.

For the first time, I contrasted the way she does things with the way I do, and when I left that day, I had insight into a few ways in which I could be less wasteful. Here's what I learned:

I fill up the sink unnecessarily. When I'm washing dishes, I fill up both my wash and rinse sinks within about three inches of overflowing. My grandma, on the other hand, fills the sinks only about one-fourth full, if even that much. I've seen Grandma do that thousands of times, but for some reason, this was the first time I had given it much thought. At first, I thought maybe it was deliberate because she's on a fixed income, but then I realized she has probably done dishes like that her whole life.

The house in which my grandma grew up, back in the hills of rural Oklahoma in the 1930s, didn't have running water, so she and her sisters would haul water in buckets from a nearby creek. It makes sense that they wouldn't use any more water than necessary, because the more water they used, the more trips they had to make to the creek.

Picturing them being miserly with their hauled water made me realize that there is no reason for me to use as much water as I do.

I don't need hot water to rinse my dishes. On New Year's Day, Grandma ran piping hot water into the dish washing sink but only cold water in rinsing sink. I imagine she's done that her whole life, too, again, going all the way back to her childhood. If they had to haul water, then they had to heat water, and just in the interest of saving time, they probably didn't heat more than was necessary.

I, on the other hand, have always used hot water in both sinks, believing that it's more effective at killing germs.

After seeing Grandma's way, though, I've been rethinking it. If a dish is washed in hot water, is using hot water to rinse it necessary? Seeing how my Grandma is in her mid-80s and still going strong, I think she's been doing an effective job at killing germs.

I have too much trash. My grandma repurposes a lot more things than I do. She reuses tinfoil if she's able to wash the food off of it. She reuses sandwich and freezer bags after giving them a good washing. She also reuses plastic tubs that butter, whipped topping, potato salad and other products come in. She throws nothing away if it can be used again.

While I've saved aluminum cans for recycling on occasion, I've always thrown everything else in the trash. We don't buy tubs of butter or whipped cream often, but we go through sandwich and freezer bags and tinfoil rather quickly. But from now on, I'm going to save and reuse what can be reused.


So those are the habits I've been trying to change since the first of the year. And change isn't easy, so on occasion, I've found myself with a full sink of dishwater, and I didn't remember to check whether the aluminum foil I used to cover a casserole had any stuck-on food on it until after I'd already thrown it away. But I'm trying.

Have you learned environment-friendly habits from your parents, grandparents or other elders? If so, feel free to share your story in the comments.