May | 2016 | Discovering Mom

Thrifty Tips By Gail Lee Martin (first published on eHow)

Recycle Pill Bottles

Many people take medicine prescribed by their doctors. Soon the pill bottles start piling up. There should be a use for something like these containers. They have tight drip-proof lids and most are also child proof.

Instructions

To be on the safe side I use tweezers or forceps to dip the containers in boiling water so all medical residue is removed.
If you are saving money by taking a sack lunch to work, these little containers are ideal for taking mayonnaise, relish or mustard for adding to your sandwiches at lunchtime. This prevents the sandwich from becoming soggy between the time you made it in the early morning or even the night before until you are ready to eat it. Most workplace break rooms have a refrigerator to store lunches.
You could take a salad to work and place your favorite dressing in a prescription container to add fresh when it is your time to eat. After using the contents just toss the container in the trash or take home and recycle them again.

Carry a single serving of salad dressing in a recycled prescription bottle.
I use my print shop to make labels for my recycled prescription bottles. They are easy to wash off and add a different identifying label for the next time you use it.
If you need your pills with you to take at noon, use one of the recycled prescription containers for that. No need to buy a fancy pill case.
Prescription pills and supplements to take with your meal.
I also save flower seeds to share with my friends and relatives. Especially my beautiful perennial sweet peas. These small containers are just the right size storing flower seeds. I label them the same way.

Save your flower seeds to use next season or to give away.
Another handy use for these is to store your sewing machine needles in them.

I bet Mom would have liked having a label printer like this one.

Back in 1999, Mom joined the Wichita Postcard Club. Maybe she was hoping for some clues to date the family photos that were in postcard format. We have some those photo postcards in the family albums.

A vintage postcard with a photo from Guy S. “These are my bear dogs. Thanks for the present you sent.”

I can’t read the date on the old postcard but it was addressed to my grandfather, Lorenzo Martin of Madison, Kansas.

Another reason that she might have joined is perhaps she found some intriguing postcards at yard sales. She loved rummaging around in boxes filled with the bits and pieces of other people’s lives.

She placed the newsletters in a three ring binder and kept the club roster in a folder with some articles about postcard collection that she clipped from newspapers and magazines. That leads me to my third guess, that she planned to write about the topic for Kanhistique. That monthly magazine covered Kansas history and antiques.

Here are a few of Gail Lee Martin’s articles that were the cover story.

Over the years, they published quite a few of Mom’s articles. It thrilled her to see her writing in print and even featured as the cover story many times. The magazine, now defunct, paid for the articles which gave her an extra incentive to keep writing for them. Apparently the postcard article never made it out of the research stage.

I flipped through the club roster to find Mom’s name. It listed her collecting interests as El Dorado, Kansas oil field towns, and history. Her father and her husband both worked in the oil industry, so I imagine she hoped to learn more through the postcards about the early days to supplement her writing on their lives.