Thank you for sharing your experience! that's an amazing story. I can relate the home made clothing at least some of it. Sounds like you had an organic experience that thought you important life skills. Something many lack as the generations get disconnected from people and more to the internet. I remember the glass bottles. Actually come to think of it, much of our packaging could be turned into other household dishes. Here in Canada, we had mustard glasses I like to call them. They were mustard jars but well decorated and as we emptied them regularly over the years, they would make nice set of drinking glasses. It was designed that way. Once they turned glass into milk cartons, we started to cut them in half and use the bottoms as plant starters for tomatoes and such since in Canada with winter, we had to grow our seedlings in the house for a few month before the ground thawed so we had time to get a full crop/harvest cycle. We could get bumper crops that way on some stuff too.

I know everyone thinks plastic is more convenient but, I like the glass re-using aspects the world once had at least in part. Canning is a lost art too. Even today, I like to buy the premade spaghetti sauce in jars for a quick meal, they are actually packaged in Mason Jars if you take the time to wash and peal the label. Some companies are still pretty good so it is do-able on a mass scale. Just a question of consumer conscious decisions and putting the effort.

Even in Eastern Canada, childhood in the 80's had similarities to yours...gardening, foraging, the limited plastics we had even if it was a ziploc baggie or a piece of tin foil, better believe it was getting washed and reused until it just couldn't hold stuff anymore. I was young but I'm pretty sure I grew up in a significant period of economic depression/recession. Skills that need to come back. No money is certainly a challenge for many families but it builds character and strength that all the riches in the world can't buy. Obviously I don't wish it on anyone for the sake of " mental strength" nonetheless. Some weeks there were $25 dollars a week to feed 5 people left over after all the other household things. My grand-parents were better established in life but being from the great depression of the 1920's and WW2 era right after, well they were full of money saving/wealth building tricks just the same. Even those who had money thought me how to live frugally or maximize the value gotten for a dollar.

I think the way the first world economies are going and faster dollar devaluation, it will be important to know hot to return to the "basics" sooner rather than later and find a way to accommodate like your family did if we like it or not.