I remember a Sunday drive home from my grandparents after lunch. I was about 14 years old and a bit sarcastic. I poked fun at Grandma’s ways and asked my mother why Grandma would bother to save the wax paper out of the cracker boxes. She had a drawer full of cracker wrappers, foil papers from snacks, and pieces of string rerolled into balls. Was Grandma so tight that she couldn’t buy wax paper, foil and string, I asked?

Mother explained that my grandparents were indeed very frugal, but it was how they had learned to survive. Grandma and Grandpa were married in 1932 during the Great Depression and had a houseful of children by the time economy turned around after World War II began.

With 14 eating at the table, they learned to make do, and were fairly self-sufficient their entire married life. Raising and butchering their own beef and pork, canning and preserving every fruit and vegetable imaginable, milking cows, making lye soap and even goat cheese.

Fuel-efficient? You betcha’ —except for the rare trip to town, travel for my grandparents was pretty much limited to driving the family’s 1950 Plymouth to the little country church just down the road. They were stewards of the land and of everything God gave them.

Lately on television and in print, we’ve been bombarded with tips to save money, manage debt and slash energy costs, etc. — all of which make perfect sense to me. We all, undoubtedly, need to curb our bad habits.

Survey results released Friday from Citigroup Inc. found that 63 percent of American consumers asked said the way they spend and save has been forever changed.

Please don’t think I’ve lost my mind, but here are a few ways to cut corners that I’ve found to work successfully:

•Drying most of our clothes on a line outside in the fresh air and sunshine. Our electric savings the last two months combined = more than $150.

•Make my own soap for washing clothes and the dishwasher. It’s a simple recipe, works great and costs only a few pennies per load. Plus, no plastic bottles are needed.

•Recycle everything — newspapers, glass, plastic. I believe God teaches us and expects us to be good stewards of His land and air.

•Patronize yard sales and local used clothing stores. Also, donate to and visit local mission projects like Goodwill, St. Vincent dePaul and, in Montgomery, the Helping Hands Mission store. It’s like the old adage, “One man’s junk is another’s treasure.”

By no means am I living a perfect, unwasteful, green life. You will still find me driving my gas-guzzling SUV, but I truly hope the generation I’m helping to rear will be taught to live a little more frugally like Grandma and a little less like the old me.

But please, don’t ever expect me to stir up a batch of goat cheese.

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Melody Brunson is now playing “Grandma” to her daughters’ new cats. “Cinderella” — one of the cats, which was already living out the third of its nine lives, rode into town this week atop Grandpa Maust’s minivan. Thankfully, it survived.