Life can be tough nowadays, but most of us are lucky enough to have never known true hardship: the type that our grandparents and great grandparents faced during the years of the Great Depression. But despite how hard life was back then, where there was a will, there was almost always a way.

So many people suffered extreme financial hardship during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and in turn that led to some pretty extreme frugality. The phrase “use it up, wear it out, make do or do without” was popularized during this era, and for good reason.

People had to get creative to make ends meet, and one of the ways they did this was by saving, reusing and repurposing absolutely everything. What we wouldn’t think twice about tossing today was as good as gold back then.

The most valuable items were, well, pretty much anything. But in general, the more uses you could get from a single item, the more valuable it was.

In a war-torn country, several items can become difficult to acquire due to various reasons such as disrupted supply chains, damaged infrastructure, economic instability, and restricted movement. Some of the items that may become hard to obtain include:

1. Food and water: War often leads to scarcity of food and clean water as agricultural production is disrupted, markets are destroyed, and supply routes are blocked. This can result in malnutrition, famine, and waterborne diseases.

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