2024 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Laura_Elsewhere

I think I would struggle horribly with full rationing- we get through A LOT of cheddar, plenty of hard Italian cheese and some mozzarella and Roquefort...! I would also have been badly stricken in the years when onion-blight meant an onion was genuinely an appreciated gift if you went to dinner at someone's house and a single onion could be the top prize in a local pub's raffle or WI whist-drive...! 

We are still playing Tetris in the sitting-room but we now have just over half the room in use which is a huge advance. We have plans for the rest over the coming months, with the next phase of major change happening in September-November. I shall be very glad to have it all done, but it is pretty much an episode of one of those tv shows with Stacey Solon (she's great in that series of hers) or Nick Knowles, in which a team of people empties out a home, and lays it all out in a warehouse for the people to get rid of over 50%, whilst a team redecorates and re-furnishes the home. Only we don't have the two teams nor the warehouse... and we're still living here. And we didn't actually intend to do all of it but now we've got this far...!

I have been living in my red-linen pinafore dress made from the 1929 instructions for a full-length petticoat-slip (in a book I bought online as PDF from Mrs Depew, iirc: "Easy Ways to Pretty Frocks"!). I have just bought some second-hand upholstery linen in cream, to machine-dye blue, to make another one, possibly with variations to the skirt, possibly just the same. 
No coupons as it's second-hand, but I shall make a note of it in my signature as I'd like to keep track of all acquisitions whether they need coupons or not, plus of course it's going to count for my own unofficial "reverse-couponing" in which I try to make enough clothes to have cost 66 coupons had I bought them  

MrsCD

Were foods like barley and lentils on the ration? We were just talking, DH and me, about how cheaply you can make a pan of filling broth, compared to a ready meal where you feel hungry after an hour or two. I made a pan yesterday with a leek, 3 bendy carrots, 3 small bendy parsnips, a few old potatoes, stock cubes and a good handful of red lentils and barley. It made a good meal for both of us yesterday and today, but I don't know how many people would be prepared to stand and do the veg.

Laura_Elsewhere

I don't think they were rationed, but availability may well have been a bit of a nightmare...! And vegetables never were rationed so I bet they made up a bigger and bigger proportion of meals!

Watty1

Love the conversation and it has really been helpful as I've long thought  I needed to move more to home cooked meals in my freezer. I did this in the years before leaving my ex as I was always worried about being snowed in but the absence of heavy snow falls for days at a time over the last 4 years has meant I've rather slipped.   I do cook mostly from scratch and many years ago soup was one of my favourite things to cook.  I was recently gifted a bread maker by another forum person and it is such a joy to have real homemade bread again.

Laura_Elsewhere

@Watty1, five years ago we had a family medical emergency that meant my husband was very late home most nights for months, and I got into a habit then of freezing homemade ready-meals- everyone always says how quick and easy it is to pop a pan of pasta on, but I find it's even easier for me to let a pan of pasta boil over and go everywhere and be near-impossible to scour off without damaging the hob...,! So we tend to boil up a load of pasta, add a bit of oil, then freeze portions of pasta at one end of a tray and the portion of sauce at the other end; ping from frozen for 30-60 seconds til you can tip them out, then ping in a bowl til piping hot and there you are  
We re-use the plastic trays from the ready-meals we used to buy; because we only ping them briefly, they are lasting very well. 
We have a couple of pasta recipes, and also soups and stews- often once they have frozen solid I take the soups out of the tray and have several in a freezer-bag separated by sheets of cut-up cereal-bag in the freezer. 

TC77

Really enjoying the conversation about food hoarding and the 7day supply rule. 
I have been reading along but real life has been v busy so not had a chance to review what I spend when at the start of the year. Although I am wearing the new and new to me clothes rather than keeping ' for best'. 
Still working full time I am.now mainly on my own ( with youngest dd at uni) and oldest dd left home but at uni late. Having been on my own with them for many many years and difficult ex I realise i had got into a scarcity mindset and have too much of lots of things and lack of confidence in what I like and need. 
This is being addressed but has been slow and hoping joining here as well as my decluttering thread will help me. 

florianatwobob

I have to admit that at the start of the r pandemic with some things being limited I did feel like I was undergoing rationing. Feeding 4 adults did stretch my creativity at times. Fortunately mum and dad both grew up with rationing and rather than being taught how to follow a recipe mum taught me how to cook. 

As I was also involved in ‘war work’ at that point I was eligible for front line supplies in supermarkets however I had ways and means (including access to an excellent fruit and veg stall who started doing deliveries) so left those supplies for proper front line colleagues without the luxuries I had. It did take me a while to work through my stash of chopped toms though….they appear to be my culinary security blanket! 

 

Laura_Elsewhere

@TC77 - well, you have company if it helps! I too struggle to let go of things and part of that is due to many years in which I had no confidence my possessions would be left untouched, so I am still getting the hang of the idea that my possessions are now safe, so I don't have to look after everything and keep everything, to keep it safe... 

thriftwizard

New challenge! Yesterday at the recycling warehouse they had a number of large (2.5m x 1.45m) !KEA linen curtains in a mustardy brown colour; I paid 50p each for five of them. Four were pretty much pristine & went straight off this morning with a re-enactor friend ("A perfect medieval colour! This stuff is about £27 a metre new!") But the fifth has some biro marks in the centre, which haven't washed out. So I'm going to make myself a cross-over apron from it, with BIG pockets, decorated with some pieces of shibori I did on a course last year that have been waiting for the right project. I'm hoping there'll be enough left over to make a couple of sturdy shopping bags, too.

florianatwobob

@thriftwizard you could try full fat milk on the biro stains, it can work wonders. (One of Mummy Floriana’s household tips, hairspray can also work but can lift colour too)