My coworker helped her grandmother move out of her home recently. She was 94, she’d broken her hip and now had to move from a small house in the mountains to a residential care facility in the city. The whole family helped pack up her things and prepare the house to be rented. Like almost everyone who lived during the Depression, she had saved everything. In the attic they found a medium-sized box that was labeled: pieces of string too short to use.

(Originally published on October 9th, 2005)