Making do when things go missing or aren't available

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@TheHorse wrote recently about having to buy a new pair of scissors when he couldn’t find his old pair. In my early days on the farm, things like scissors often went missing and we’d be searching through innumerable drawers trying to find them. I remember being unable to find an eraser or sticky tape. We only ever seemed to have one each of these types of things. I made a silent vow at the time that, when I had my own house, I’d buy multiple scissors, erasers and sticky tape. We have enough of each in our house now. But back to my main point – when we couldn’t find/didn’t have an eraser, we would use a piece of bread. This was reasonably effective on pencil but of course’ no good on ink. When it came time to cover our school-books in brown paper, Mum would make glue by boiling flour and water. I think it was boiled. When Mum would make jam, she often used old beer bottles which had had the narrow necks cut off. Double thickness circles of brown paper would be glued over the tops using the flour-and-water glue. Did your Mum have some old-fashioned recipes/ideas that she brought out from time to time? The photo is of my mother (on the right) and her two brothers.