My parents are children of the depression. Both were raised on farms in Oklahoma at a time when most folks didn’t have a lot, or even a little. What they did have they used the hell out of… tools, food, clothes, everything.

Their retained impulse to save everything has long been a source of eye-rolling and exasperation amongst my siblings and I. After all, who is ever going to need an entire drawer full of used bread bags? (I’m not kidding.) Their reluctance to throw food away borders on the dangerous, their refrigerator a biohazard.

Yet in this day where we have clearly endangered ourselves and our planet by making too much and using too much, I’m rethinking how I view their habits. After all, they were re-using and recycling long before there were special bags for it.

This photo series is the beginning of an on-going documentation of their unconscious and automatic reusing of things, as well as some of the thoroughly used objects in their lives.