My Mom seperates 2 ply tissues and uses one at a time- we laugh at this but my parents raised 4 kids on my Dad's pay doing stuff like that (Dad worked for the town highway dept.) we never went without. Now my parents are able to spend 2 winter months at Garden City, SC in an oceanside condo-they earned it! I hang our clothes up to dry in the winter- we heat with a coal furnace so there's lots of "free" heat to dry with- I figure my dryer will last twice as long this way too. During the summer I use the clothesline outside, we plant a garden, I love to shop at the Salvation Army- AND I really only like to shop there on Wednesdays when it's 50% off day! I love to buy scrap fabrics at my LQS- they put the odds and ends in a laundry basket and sell it for $4.50 a pound- this is great for scrap quilts and my Dear Jane that I'm working on.