My first husband's grandmother told me how, during the depression. when she first married that she made their mattress out of striped ticking fabric and filled it with cotton she gleaned in the fields after the pickers had already picked. She was still sleeping on that mattress in 1960 when I married her grandson. Every few years she would open it up, take the cotton out, fluff it up and restuff the mattress. Let's see - that would qualify as a frugal money saving hint, a "living green" hint, a recycling hint, what else? Man, I hope we don't see a depression like that. And she had sewn that mattress on a treadle sewing machine!