Are You Ready for the Economic Collapse?

Are You Ready for the Economic Collapse?

Are you ready for the worst case scenario? Are you ready if the dollar falls and our economy collapses? There have been predictions that just that could happen and we could be headed for another depression. I’m not really worried because I was raised on stories from my grandpa. I’m only 45, but my dad was fairly old when he started his family. My dad was 33 when I was born. My grandpa was born in 1907. My dad was born in 1932, so the depression had been going on for 3 years already. Grandpa had to borrow money for the wedding ring that cost $15 when he married grandma. And he married her 17 days before my dad was born. But that’s neither here nor there.

If times get tough, America will have to live like the stories I grew up on. Grandma taught me to crochet. She made a lot of things with crochet. She seldom used patterns. She made all kinds of things. Her sister taught my dad how to knit, and he taught me. Grandma said she didn’t have enough fingers to knit. I throw my thread, but my aunt must have tried to teach her the continental method. Grandma also sewed all her clothes. I’m sure it started out with mending. She didn’t make grandpa’s clothes, but she made most of her clothes way up into the time frame that I knew her. She didn’t make her “dress clothes,” but she still made her everyday clothes. She made all my Barbie’s clothes, too .

My other grandma taught me how to quilt. Both my grandmas could make quilts. Grandma Waldo made tie quilts that where hand made and hand sewn. Grandma Robinson used a sewing machine (when I knew them). I don’t know how they did it during the depression era. Grandma Robinson crocheted a lot of blankets, too.

Grandma Waldo also did a lot of canning. That’s something I’m new to. My mother-in-law has always put up stewed tomatoes, and the past three years I’ve helped, so I know how. This year is the first summer that I actually did it all by myself. If tomatoes go down to 29 cents a pound again at Fiesta, I’ll do it again. I know now that it takes about 8 pounds for four quarts of stewed tomatoes, along with a half of a green pepper, a couple stalks of celery and a half of an onion and the spices. I would also suggest that you get an older Betty Crocker CookBook. I have one from the 1980’s. They have canning recipes in the back. When fruit goes on sale, you can put up jars of fruit, too. A dozen canning jars only cost about $12 at Wal-Mart.

Now, fall is coming so you can’t plant a garden, but it’s the perfect time to start a compost pile for the garden you want next spring. I have a patch laid out in my back yard. You can do it a couple ways. I’m not real good at this, so I’m doing this on my father in law’s advice. I’ll let you know how it goes. He suggested one of two ways. Either you put yard waste (leaves, etc.) and let it rot, which is the long way, or you put dirt and food scraps, but you can’t do both. He said the yard waste would cook the earthworms that come to the food scraps. So I have a patch for my food scraps that I constantly bury. I’ll be doing that all winter, so that come spring, I’ll have great dirt to plant my little patch of vegetables in. I have a patch up close that I discovered is not good for vegetables (new house) but great for herbs. A good book for this is Lasagna Gardening. By Patricia Lanza, if you can still get it. I got my copy from a library sale. In Texas, it's really too hot for lettuce, so I'll probably grow some lettuce in this patch, too.

So, when spring gets here, plant a garden of what vegetables you think your family will eat, and you think you can grow. If you don’t have enough land on your property, or don’t think you do, another good book is Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. I believe he even goes into container growing. He tells you how much space is needed to grow what vegetables. If nothing else, grow a “salad garden.” That’s what I always did. Then I only had to buy the lettuce. I had everything else to go in the salad. That alone will save you money. And if you have left over tomatoes, stew them at the end of the season.

Invest in a dehydrator. Get one with an adjustable thermostat. The lower the temperature that you can dehydrate, the better. At least that’s what the health nuts will tell you. I set mine outside during the summer, but bring it inside during the winter. Might as well, because I could use the extra heat INSIDE. I just dehydrated my basil leaves. I was afraid the plant would go to waste, getting close to the temperature dropping. Now I have my own dehydrated basil leaves. Also if you buy bananas, and they are getting too close to going bad, you can slice them and dehydrate them into banana chips.

And speaking of heat, during the winter months, use one of those dryer vent things so that your dryer air is used to heat your house. It hooks to your dryer, and then goes into a little square box that you put water in. It not only allows your dryer to supplement your heater; it puts humidity into your house every time you do a load of clothes. I got mine from one of the catalogues I get in the mail all the time. You could make one with a coffee can duct tape if you were creative. Just make sure the thing is ventilated.

Learn to recycle as much as you can. Remember all the crafts we did with our kids? Keep that mentality. Think of the things you throw out all the time and try to think what you could use it for before you throw it out. The plastic things that strawberries come in? Could you use them to organize your junk drawer instead of buying a drawer organizer? Hand clothes down to younger kids, or relatives. You might be surprised that they hand things down to you. I don’t worry too much about trying to find ways to MAKE money anymore. I worry about how to make what I have last. How to use what I have for other things. There are other people out there trying to make money, too. Unless you can come up with something extremely unique, there’s going to come a time when there just won’t be people with money to spend. My husband collects soda cans off the road, because aluminum can still be turned in to recycling centers. It’s amazing how much scrap aluminum and copper is just laying on the side of the road.

If you don’t use the reusable bags, and you bring home those plastic store bags, use them in your wastebaskets. Use them when you walk the dog. I remember my grandma crocheting bags out of them to make store bags that were water proof. She also cut up juice bags and made me a purse way back in the 70's. I saw one the other day and it's back in style. If you start to make quilts, use clothes that you would have thrown out instead of buying new material. I once made a quilt with old jeans cut up. I made a purse out of a pair of jeans…came out really cute, pockets and all. I used the front zipper as a phone pocket by lining it. You can use a fuzzy blanket as the “batting” and a sheet as the back side. Be creative. If the idea of all that stitching to put it together scares you, do a tied one. If doing a full size quilt scares you, do it one square at a time, and then sew the squares together. That's called lap quilting.

The greatest gift my dad taught me was how to read directions. He told me that if you can read directions, you can teach yourself how to do anything. There's going to come a time when we may all need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and go on. My worry is that this younger generation, the Me generation, will become the Take generation. Except for those who were taught better by those like us. We need to educate ourselves now on how to take care of ourselves.