Thrifty Scots?

When I first started showing my dog, Buzz, I took him along to the venues in a travelling box and carried a little bag with a brush and a comb and a little bottle of water for him. Later, when I acquired another dog I had to carry 2 boxes plus the bag, which, at some places,(viz. Ingliston), entailed quite a walk from the car park to the hall and I thought I would end up with arms stretched by a good 12 inches. This is when I replaced the bag with a rucksack and eventually invested in a trolley, a very sound investment. I have been asked if I am doing a "flitting", with the amount of gear we sometimes have piled above 4 cages nowadays. The wonder of it all is that it is a custom built trolley, nothing extravagant, but "bought" nevertheless. We don't buy--we make! I did covet other people's little aluminium grooming tables but the price, I thought, was extortionate, so I bought a little folding,wooden one in a sale in Ikea for £4, a 2 foot length of ribbed, rubber matting ("why so little?"asked the stallholder) and glued a piece of it on top of the table, all for under £10. My parents would have been proud of me! They had both lived through 2 world wars and knew what it was to be thrifty. (That could be a good word for stingy or mean.......and we were/are Scots!!!)
Mother hardly ever threw out anything, she could always re-hash it into something else of use; shirt collars were turned around when they became worn and she always had a huge pile of mending. She never sat idle.Even after the advent of television, she would be darning socks etc. as she viewed and this blooming pile of darning even went on our caravanning holidays in later years! (I bought "Blaxnit" socks for Chic, which had a lifetime guarantee but was not amused when, after 25 years, a hole appeared in the toe of one--should I have taken it back to the shop?) After the death of my father she made aprons for herself out of his shirts. Clothes which no longer fitted were kept and she was famed for making costumes for her grandchildren for school concerts or hallow'een.
Father would buy anything, if it was second hand--("it might come in handy!") and we had an attic room full of his purchases from sales. My husband had a short spell of this kind of activity and bought a load of pots, drums and barrels of "stuff", all with no labels, only some sort of hieroglyphics marked on the sides, from a sale at a government depot which was closing down. On inspection it included, among others, about 40 gallons of green paint, later offered to all neighbouring farmers, for the doors of the steadings, about the same of linseed oil and a 50 gallon drum of aircraft polish(it had a small label). I remarked to him, "Oh, good, all we need now is the aircraft!"
To get back to my little table, my husband often asks if I have to take all that equipment with me--chair, table, rucksack, food-in addition to the dogs. I don't think he realises that we sit about, waiting, for hours, and to pass the time we have to eat and drink, just to be sociable, of course. This is where the table is invaluable. Maybe I would have been wiser to have the metal version, judging by the state of the legs and the crossbar. Now who could have chewed that?