I’m in the desert and we now only get a bit more than 7” of rain a year so are getting creative with water saving techniques. If I must rinse I give it a light scrub with a wet sponge instead.
Our morning dishes get a dunk in a small bin of water before going into the dishwasher. Dinner dishes are scraped, not rinsed, and the dishwasher runs every night.
I didn’t either, they were always homemade and if we needed something like a certain style of shirt or pants for it, we went to the rag bag (thrift store) to find it.
Ah yes, the party line; we actually still had them in some areas when I was kid in the Midwest. These were farms with hundreds of acres though, out in the boonies where it took an hour to get to town.
Soap box away! Lol. I agree it’s a pretty sad state of affairs these days. I actually complained in a school meeting about kids not learning cursive for the reasons you mentioned. How will they even know their basic rights if they can’t read the Declaration or the Constitution?