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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in a household that never really got over the Great Depression or the austerity of World War II, so a lot of this "reuse" thinking is in my brain. Especially when it comes to containers and cooking fat.

But my wife had the opposite upbringing, so she thinks I'm old and stupid because I wrap her Christmas presents in old newspaper and string. But you know what? A lot of those pages from the New York Times are more colorful and decorative than any wrapping paper. Plus, they're unique, and once you learn to tie string well, it's an incredibly useful skill.

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Having grown up in small town India where in the 90s $100 per month was the norm for most and $500 per month would quality you as the top 5% in that town, I still find it hard to throw away things like empty bottles or cardboard boxes or paper towels (and that's with a silicon valley engineering wage).

I'm just getting used to being ok with wastage as I constantly have to force myself out of my old mindset in order to think bigger.

Partly as a joke and mainly being less wasteful, I often wrap presents to my closer friends with last-year's wrapping paper. They are always wrapped nicely, but with purposely mixed and (un)matched designs/patterns to make it visually obvious. Total patchwork.

I do this mainly because the alternative is to keep an obnoxious growing collection of partial rolls in the corner of the closet year-round. Last-year's wrap pack flat and aren't constantly in the way. I line the bird cage with them when they get too worn.

A friend got me back once by duct taping a present to me in a brown paper bag from his local grocer, and another friend has taken up the habit full out for several years now. Once she even used a wallpaper sample which looked quite foofy. I love it.

Reuse can sometimes seem a little over the top. Why not own it and make sure it's irretrievably over the top?

My parent grew up WWII Europe and had the same thrifty mentality. The one thing that sent me over the edge was this shitty knife my mom would always use. It started life as an okay cook knife but over 30 years after repeated sharpening started looking like a filet knife used clean fish with a worn out wooden. So it was not performing well. I had to take all the old knives and replaced them with a fancy set of German knives. Mom and dad thought they we nice but said the old knives were fine. sigh! Buy them nice Egyptian cotton bedding, into the steamer truck they went because they were too nice to use. What? sigh. And there are many other examples.

I usually try to find a recipe to cook that uses the rendered bacon grease before it gets too old. We don't generally fry our food so I'd love to know how you store and filter the cooking fat between uses.

I typically filter through a fine metal sieve. It’s not 100% effective, but it gets out most of the big bits that would burn. I sometimes use a coffee filter or paper towel in the sieve if I’m filtering enough oil to be worth the paper consumption.

It’s key to have an in-jar that you add to and an out-jar that you cook from so that you can properly rotate through the oil rather than continuously adding new oil on top of old.

A teaspoon on sautéed greens gives a divine mouthfeel.

Honestly, I don't do much to it.

I have one pickle jar that I use to store old bacon fat. I just pour it into the jar and put the jar in the refrigerator when it cools. I use that fat for things like eggs, meats, and certain vegetables I want to add bacon flavor to.

The other pickle jar I use to store leftover frying medium for things like potato chips and french fries and such. I fry in lard because that's what I grew up with.

I don't filter or refine or anything. I just pour the liquids in their jars and scoop out what I need when it's time to use it.

I don't know how long it's possible to keep doing this because my wife throws the jars away every few months and I have to start over. But there's a restaurant in Philadelphia (Bookbinders?) that is famous for re-using its cooking fat for decades.

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