The Last Best West.

I recently finished reading Eliane Leslau Silverman's The Last Best West, which is a collection of anecdotes from women who lived and worked on the Alberta prairie between 1880 and 1930.

This isn't a book I can imagine too many people scrambling to get their hands on, since it's an old book, and even I could only find a copy at a second-hand bookstore. But it was well worth the $5 I spent on it.

Aside from the general interest in the lives of pioneer women, the sadness and struggle they all went through when settling and cultivating a barren wasteland of a place, I found one of the themes of this book particularly apt to write about on this blog.

Just about all of the women who told their stories had the attitude of, "we made do, because we didn't have a choice."

Now, I'm all for choice. Choosing the ways in which we live is one of the freedoms I love. We don't have choices for everything, but we have enough to make ourselves feel truly free.

But the sentiment of these women, making do because they had to, is so very different from the attitude in modern society that I think it's worth contrasting.

I think a lot of it comes down to choice. We live in a much more affluent society than the women back then did. We've got so many luxuries, so many choices, so many paths we can take.

But these choices are a double-edged sword, and come along with a bit of society hypocrisy. We've got all kind of fancy new technological advances, little luxuries to make our lives easier, all manner of wonderous things to buy. And we do buy them, make no mistake, because they keep selling.

And yet, it's often said that a family cannot get by on a single income anymore.

Maybe they could if we all stopped being so obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses, with buying the newest and shiniest gadget just because it's new.

I think we've lost the sense of what it means to "make do". We don't make do anymore, we struggle along from paycheque to paycheque. We spend our money on the newest toys, sometimes more in the urge to show off to others than to enjoy it for ourselves. "Look at me, I just bought a new computer and flat-screen LCD TV!"

We've lost a lot of "making do" skills, because society teaches us we don't need them. Why bother learning how to cook when so many prepared meals are available? Sure, they're more expensive, but they're less work. Why learn how to sew or knit or crochet or weave when going to a department store will be cheaper. The clothing might not last as long, fit as well, or be the style or colours you want, but hey, it takes less time to get and doesn't require actually doing anything beyond getting in the car and spending money.

And then when lean times hit us, when we lose our jobs and can't afford to keep up our old lifestyles, we don't know how to get by on the little we have left.

An old coworker once bragged that "nobody lives within their means anymore." That isn't completely accurate, but in the age of credit cards, where all you have to worry about is making the minimum payment each month, people live outside their means all the time. Using a credit card might be a nice way to get a new TV right now, but with interest, you end up paying more than if you'd just had the patience to save up in the first place.

Debt is commonplace, and some people actually expect to die before they pay off their debt. Houses stuffed full of expensive technology while people struggle to put food on the table is just the norm these days. We live in a time where once-essential skills to survival are no longer a part of our lives. They're hobbies, at best.

And the thing is, they could be enriching our lives at the very least. In a time of serious financial crisis, knowing how to cook a decent meal (that isn't Day-Glor orange and from a plastic container) might be the difference between eating and not eating that day. Knowing how to sew might be the difference between looking presentable and going out with holes in your pants and shirt. Having a little windowbox garden might only give you enough for a single meal, but it's a meal you don't have to go out and buy.

The old "making do" frugal skills might actually stand us in good stead these days. That's why I love reading about those women, and how they lived. Their past can enrich my present and my future.

Learning about tomorrow from yesterday.

I'm a big fan of looking into the past to learn how to better live today. One of the things that my friends often hear me say is, "People did it that way 100 years ago and got along just fine." Now in some cases, I'll grant you that isn't true. People used lead-based makeup 100 years ago and I can't in all honesty say that it was good for them. But there are plenty of things that we can learn by looking at what people used to do before they had access to all the fancy trappings of today's society.

Maybe "trappings" isn't even the right word to use anymore. It implies that one is, well, trapped by the luxuries we share. And to be honest, a lot of people are. Some people can't imagine going a day without checking their email, having light blazing in every room of the house, having three TVs on at once. They can't imagine another lifestyle because they haven't known another lifestyle. They are, one could say, trapped. But day by day, more people are learning how to break out of that trap, and learning that there's a whole world out there beyond the computer screen.

Years gone by teach us that people got along quite happily without a lot of modern conveniences. I admit, I'm quite the fan of video games. I enjoy the stories behind a lot of the role-playing games, and can spend hours playing them. I can also spend hours sitting and talking with my roommate as we both work on a cross-stitch embroidery pattern or knitting pattern. Sometimes doing this is far more entertaining for the both of us.

We have a lousy heating system in our apartment. It's common for it to blow freezing air into the apartment in the middle of winter. So when it does, we cover up the vents, put on a sweater, and bury ourselves in comfortable blankets. We've spent entire power-utages under blankets, in complete darkness, just talking. We don't need more than that.

Stoves used to serve double duty in that they not only cooked the food but they heated the house, too. Our stove does that in the winter. The heating system doesn't extend into the kitchen, so having the stove on while we cook delicious food warms up the entire back area of the apartment. And at the end, we get fresh-baked bread to munch on, or a nice chicken-and-vegetable dinner.

People used to use herbs before they'd turn to chemical medicines, and I try to do the same thing. I know that most medicines originally came from plant extracts, and some have argued that taking herbal remedies is no more "natural" than taking an aspirin. I disagree. A lot of modern medicines are synthetic compounds that are only mimicking the original plant extracts. It's a different kind of chemical entirely, even if it does the same thing. I feel much more comfortable using herbal remedies for my ailments than pumping my body full of chemicals that it could probably do better without. I have, in some cases, had better luck with herbals than with modern medicines. I used to suffer terrible migraines, and had been on different kinds of preventatives, and they worked with varying degrees of success. Then I was told about feverfew and a natural migraine preventative, which I tried. It stopped a migraine better than the prescription drugs, and kept them away longer. Mint and chamomile calm nausea better than Gravol, and they don't leave me feel sleepy afterward. Rachel has a digestive disorder that is helped somewhat by prescription medicines, but is helped quicker and more consistantly by an herbal tea, herbs which have long been used to treat the very problems she has.

Old recipes were often designed to make the most of every little thing, and lots of old cookbooks had specific sections for things you could make from leftovers. Today, most leftovers get thrown in the trash? Just had a turkey dinner? The skin and trash go into the garbage, or for some people, the compost. Why not use the skin and bones to make a soup stock instead, and all those little leftover pieces of meat that were too small or fiddly for people to eat can get thrown in there and eaten in the soup.

Most people who have frugal living blogs know well the saying, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." This is something I take to heart. I'm a knitter, and often my yarn comes from sweaters I get at second-hand stores. I unravel them and then reknit them into something else that I want. Good yarn at a fraction of the cost of buying it new. Old pants get cut up and turned into blankets: jeans get made into heavy-duty blankets, velour pants (so comfy!) get turned into soft throws, and sweatpants can even be used in place of quilt batting. There's a way to reuse just about everything, if you're creative enough.

People back then also understood the value of stillness. Human history has been filled with progress, and that means hard work, day-in and day-out. So people appreciated all the more the little times they could stop and enjoy something as simple as a pretty flower, a glorious sunset, or just a moment in the day when they could rest their bodies and relax a little. Nowadays it's always rush rush rush everywhere, do as much as you can in as short a time as possible, and the only time we stop is when we sleep. I can't live like that. I need the beauty of those sunsets, those moments of stillness.

This is the kind of life I lead, and also the kind of life I want to lead more of. I'm not doing too badly at the moment, but there are areas in which I could do better. I'm hoping that having this blog will prod me into paying closer attention to things, to find a way to reuse yet more items around the house, and to remind myself that I need to stop and smell the roses more often. As I say all the time, living simply and frugally doesn't mean going without. I expect the quality of my life to keep increasing as I decrease my spending and my need for spending.