Self-sufficient lessons from World War 2

During the Second World War, everything was rationed in the UK, not just food but many non-consumable goods like furniture and clothing. The rationing got tighter and more restricted towards the end of the war, and people were forced to come up with inventive ways to get by or risk going without.

People had to get creative and take frugal living to a whole new level, but this didn’t necessarily mean they went without and were suffering, but rather finding cheap and accessible alternatives to things they had before. If you are into frugal living and like to save money, then some of these things they did to get by might just help you too.

The mend and make-do campaign

In 1945 citizens of the UK were allowed 1 full set of clothing each year since it was so difficult to import fabrics from abroad, and farmland within the country was being used to produce food. The minister of information came up with a campaign called “Mend and Make-do” to help people make what they had last longer.

The idea was to teach people how to repair and extend the life of their belongings, such as learning how to sow being one of the most heavily encouraged skills to learn. Fixing your own clothes on a long enough timeline will effectively skip you a few sets of clothing and reduce your costs. The government advertised local sowing clubs where people could learn the skill for free from other locals who already knew it, and everyone got on board with fixing their clothes. Also washing certain fabrics more carefully or by hand can increase their lifespan, and knitting your own wool socks and hats could provide things you simply couldn’t buy.

Tools were also on the list, with regular maintenance on high-quality tools being much cheaper in the long run than buying cheaper ones that break more frequently, and proper maintenance on decent tools could see them last a lifetime.

Wild foods

Foraging can be time-consuming and you can’t guarantee you’ll get the plants you want unless you already know specifically where they are. However, there are many foods that grow wild that most people today wouldn’t even think about eating, like nettles for example, but on a nutritional comparison, nettles are very similar to spinach and can be cooked in the same way.

With a good pair of gloves the nettle stem should be grabbed at the base, and then with a firm grip run your hand up the stem, pulling off all the leaves as you go. If you’re in the UK like I am, then you can go almost anywhere outdoors and fill a bin bag with nettle leaves using this method in less than an hour, and all of those leaves can be thought of as a spinach alternative. If you do this over a year, and can happily eat them of course, the amount of food you could produce would be huge, and save you a good amount of money.

At the time of writing this a 200-gram bag of baby spinach leaves from Sainsbury’s costs £1.50, I live in the middle of a large town and if I left right now, I could be back in no more than 10 minutes with several times the amount in nettle leaves, which gives an idea of just how much money you could save over the course of a year.

Drinks

Tea and coffee were very limited during the war since they came from such a great distance away. The chances of the boats being sunk on the journey were quite high, so people had to go without and lacked flavors to their drinks. Instead of sitting around with cups of water the people turned to the wilderness and came up with their own creations to spice up their beverages.

Blackberry and Elderflower cordial were the most popular and accessible choices, offering a tasty flavoring that if made correctly, could last for several months at least. Cordial is easy to make and the ingredients easy to find, with another advantage being that you can create so much flavor from the wild without having to put aside growing space to provide it.

Another big money saver was alcohol, with home brewing being very common indeed. Today the average shop-bought bottle of wine sells for about £7.50, and won’t last most people longer than a single evening. Home brewing equipment is rather cheap and gets cheaper if you forage the berries yourself, and after the initial buying of equipment, you can make a 5-gallon batch of wine for less than £10.

Alternative recipes

This one may not appeal to everyone, but towards the end of the war when things were becoming even rarer than the previous years, people came up with alternatives to create the things they couldn’t buy, such as mock orange juice. This recipe involved using the natural sweetness of carrots and a little sugar to get something close to orange juice, it wasn’t as good but it was something.

There were many strange alternatives to things people couldn’t buy at the shops anymore, but some of them turned out to be rather resourceful and tasty recipes. The mobile kitchens and works camps provided meals like onions in white sauce, which was nothing more than boiled onions in a sauce made from mixing cornflour in some heated milk, a simple three-ingredient recipe that’s surprisingly filling and pleasant to eat. Another popular choice was meatloaf, a simple dish that can turn any amount of meat into many times its volume, and is far from unpleasant to eat.

Soaps and shampoo

Soap can be made with nothing more than animal fat and lye, a substance made from mixing wood ash with water, and preferably something to make it smell nice like lavender. It was common for people to make their own soaps from leftover fat, and shampoo from things they could get for cheap or from the wild.

Soapwort is a common weed that can be turned into a surprisingly good shampoo. It has a pleasant smell and even throats up slightly when whisked. It can be made by simmering soapwort leaves before straining the water through a cloth and squeezing it out. The green liquid won’t dye your hair but will leave it feeling fresh and clean, and it’s also soft enough so it doesn’t strip off all the essential natural oils.

Stretching out foods

The most important lesson to take from WW2 cooking is that you don’t have to buy expensive spices and ingredients to make tasty and nutritious meals, but rather you should learn to work with the things you have and can produce yourself.

The second world war is an excellent example of how to make things go further, and also how to produce better things with what you already have. When it comes to applying this to being self-sufficient the lessons are quite clear, get inventive, make things last, and go foraging, if you get good at these things then the amount of money you save in the long run could realistically number in the thousands.