Living With Less : Recession: Shoppers are banding together to learn how to cut one-fourth off grocery bills. Parents are trading baby-sitting stints with other couples.

In Sherman Oaks, children aren’t bringing as many things to school, and the lost and found stands pretty much empty these days. There’s a class at Mission College that teaches people how to stretch their food stamps. And at the Sagebrush Cantina in Calabasas, the line for the free happy hour buffet started growing much longer back in June.

Signs of the recession are showing up all over the San Fernando Valley.

Shoppers are forming coalitions to help learn how to save a fourth off grocery bills with coupons. Since money is tight, people are joining bartering clubs to engage in the oldest form of commerce--trade. Parents looking to escape the children for an evening are bartering too, in baby-sitting co-ops that trade sitting services with other parents.

People are searching for ways to do more with less, and local experts say it is possible to scale back without completely giving up a lifestyle.

“The best indication that things are bad in the Valley is when I went to the Northridge Fashion Mall the day after Thanksgiving and I found a parking space,” said Eloise Fernandez Cantrell, dean of vocational technical education and economic development at Mission College in Sylmar. “That was freaky, where were the shoppers?”

Cantrell teaches people how to save money and cook frugally, but she said these days even a few unplanned trips to McDonald’s could wreck a family’s budget because it adds up fast.

It adds up so quickly that many college students who have lost their part-time jobs and overextended their credit are considering bankruptcy, said Christina Watkins, director of the Consumer Resource Center at Cal State Northridge, which has seen double the number of students come in for help since last semester.

“A lot of students who have come in are really in a pickle and they have nowhere else to go,” said Watkins, herself a struggling graduate student who works part time at the Salvation Army. Her husband is a financial analyst, and she has studied finance, so they are figuring out ways to trim expenses.

“We don’t go out much, gas is expensive and I never buy anything unless it’s on sale,” Watkins said. “I haven’t bought clothes in two months. When you have to decide whether to feed your stomach or buy a shirt, the choice is simple.”

Watkins stopped dry-cleaning clothes, ceased long-distance calls, uses a fan instead of an air conditioner and wears more layers of clothes instead of cranking up the heat. She said thrift stores, such as the one she works at in Van Nuys, get a bad rap.

“I bought a $50 coffee table at the Salvation Army and I saw the same thing for $300 later in a store window; that made me pleased,” Watkins said. “It’s nice to know it’s possible to save money with all the . . . layoffs.”

Bargain Hunting

Sue Heraper, a Canoga Park housewife with three preschoolers, was a bit nervous when her husband, Dave, lost his computer programming job of 11 years this past summer. Even with 1-, 2- and 4-year-olds, she took a part-time job as a travel agent to bolster their income. Her husband found another job, but the Herapers kept the lean lifestyle they had so quickly adopted.

“Once you realize how much you can save in a few easy ways, there’s no sense in going back,” said Heraper, who saves at least 12% with coupons at Ralphs each time she shops.

For three years, Heraper has also cut expenses by baby-sitting in an informal co-op of West Valley families who help each other with their children. “I have three preschoolers; I tend to stay home a lot.”

A similar Van Nuys family group called Creative Parenthood also offers advice, lectures and social events, as well as baby-sitting, to a coalition of 75 families. After 20 years, the group is in its second generation of parents who have passed thrift tips to each other.

“This group saves my sanity,” said Creative Parenthood President Judy Kessler, 33, who lives in a Sherman Oaks apartment with her daughter, Tami, 4; son, Steven, 8, and husband, Evan, who works on commission in advertising sales. To help with the income, Judy Kessler does word processing from home and she also does a lot of baby-sitting. Even with her mother and mother-in-law a 15-minute drive away, she depends a lot on the co-op.

“When you leave your most precious pride and joy with a kid of 13 or 14, that teen doesn’t understand when the child has a little gas or gets night terrors,” Kessler said. “The cost is absolutely obscene.”

Day care at her local temple is $216 a month, Kessler said, but she, with friends, has formed a private co-op nursery school that costs only $70 a month. Co-op preschools, which can cost up to $125 a month, are at city parks in North Hills, Studio City, Encino and Sherman Oaks. Families pool their money and hire one teacher, but each parent is required to help out one day a month.

Most baby-sitting co-ops are set up with a system of coupons or points, collected when you watch someone else’s child and redeemed for your own baby-sitting needs. Each child is left with a medical release, and some co-ops require a parent to know cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

“With movies and dinners so expensive, that $5 an hour that used to go to the girl next door tends to add up very quickly,” said Kessler, who credits the co-op with teaching her children how to socialize. “My daughter used to have to be surgically removed from my leg when I was leaving, but after getting to know other families, she asked if she could go to people’s houses. It’s good for children to see different houses. There are new toys, new rules. Maybe they say their prayers differently; maybe they don’t at all. But they all have to brush their teeth and go to bed when they’re told.”

Creative Parenthood started out of a Lamaze class when the group’s founder, Pamella Treves, noticed that no support groups exist after a child is born. Families meet in each other’s homes and bring speakers to discuss everything from gardening with children to potty training. The annual cost is $36.

“You save lots of money in the long run, and I’ve learned about economizing through the group,” Kessler said. “If I don’t take at least 25% off my grocery bill, I’m disappointed.”

Shopping with Kessler is amazingly scientific. She sorts through a batch of coupons and discards brand-name items that are priced higher even with the discount than their generic counterparts.

“I buy only products I need; I don’t try something new,” Kessler said. On a recent trip to Ralphs to shop for her son’s earthquake preparedness kit for school, Kessler had an initial bill of $12. After a flurry of coupons were passed to the cashier, her bill came to $8.95. She walked out with three cans of tuna and coffee for free.

“People aren’t very happy when they get behind me in line,” Kessler said with her stack of clipped coupons. “My biggest coup this past year was at Vons, where I had a $342 bill and got it down to $240 with all my coupons. I saved $100 and there’s a lot of things I can do with that.”

Kessler explains the family budget to her children. Since it costs $8 to carve a pumpkin and $5 for a hayride, they also realize that it isn’t always cheap to have fun. Luckily, her children haven’t become brand-conscious, but they do have particular tastes.

“Steven gets hand-me-downs, but Tami needs the right color leggings with the right color sweat shirt and barrettes in her hair. She’s only 4! There are lots of pressures at school with fashion. The 7-year-old girls at my son’s school are wearing lipstick,” said Kessler, who sews most of her children’s clothes and buys fabric only when it’s on sale.

“In the past six months, the Valley has been hit hard and everyone I know is having to cut back,” said Kessler, who abandoned plans this year for a new car. “I know many people who have been laid off. A friend took a temporary part-time job so her unemployment won’t run out. What happened to her 35 years of experience? It’s a shame.”

But for Kessler, evidence of tough times is not much farther away than her son’s school, Dixie Canyon Avenue, where she volunteers. “There isn’t much left in the lost and found anymore,” Kessler said. “Either they’re not being as careless because they know it can’t be replaced, or they’re just not bringing things to school. Now that shows budgets are tight.”

Things are so tight for Catalina Campos that she pays $400 a month to live in a garage in Pacoima with her 12-year-old son, Cesar, and 9-year-old daughter, Paula. Campos, 41, trained as a secretary in El Salvador, is taking classes to improve her English so that she can work in a bilingual office.

“It is not so easy to live. I go to swap meets and yard sales to buy things for the children--not toys, we have no money for that, but for clothes and things for school,” said Campos, who has managed to get $1,500 a year in financial aid for the English classes at Mission College.

Campos is also taking classes from Sandi Lampert, who teaches a “Life Management” course that helps Campos budget her income, and a nutrition class that helps her stretch her $60 a month in food stamps into more meals.

“Sometimes I don’t know how these people live on what they make, but they do it,” Lampert said. Campos works as an aide at the college and makes $6.20 an hour. Campos also makes tamales and other Mexican food to sell on the street.

Meanwhile, Pacific Bell has put Campos on a low-cost program so that she can keep her phone as she tries to figure out other ways of saving money.

“We stop everything we don’t need because we want to get out of here,” Campos said. “We must share the bathroom in the house, and the neighborhood always has shootings. I’m worried for my son, Cesar. We live on a shoestring now so we can move soon.”

A year ago, Ruth Barrara was homeless with her 2-year-old daughter in San Fernando. With help from county workers, she gets $326 a month in welfare and $60 in food stamps, but pays $40 in rent, $30 in Pampers, $20 on bus fare and $200 for a baby-sitter. Plus, Barrara is taking 18 units at Mission College. For her, frivolities are the clothes her boyfriend buys for her.

“I worry because if it gets worse again, maybe I am homeless again,” Barrara said.

Business Deals

After an initial recession slump, happy hour attendance picked up at Stanley’s Restaurant & Bar in Woodland Hills, partly because free barbecued chicken wings are being served. More meals on the menu are being shared.

“I do it myself,” Stanley’s manager Terry Walk admitted. “I always split an order of Chinese chicken salad.”

The free happy hour buffet at the Sagebrush Cantina in Calabasas was getting so good that the restaurant recently cut back on the number of warm dishes served at happy hour, manager Margaret Palumbo said. “We used to joke about how people would come in with their children and order one Coke and eat for hours, but it wasn’t getting funny anymore,” she said. “We used to offer quite a spread, with tacos, ribs, baked potatoes. But sour cream and butter is too costly. We’re serving more salad now.”

The Sagebrush even did away with the two employees paid to monitor the buffet line, so everything is now self-serve. “Our lines for the happy hour buffet are a good monitor of the recession,” Palumbo said. At the beginning of summer, restaurant employees noticed the lines getting much longer, by as much as 30%.

But an economic crush doesn’t have to mean cutting out pretty things, such as flowers. Steve Saul of Elite Florist in Sherman Oaks said people are buying more live potted plants and dried flowers. He also recommends stock flowers that look like snapdragons, can fill up a house with their fragrance and cost less than $5 for 10 stems.

“You can buy flowers economically--a blooming plant will come back next year if you plant it in your yard, and don’t buy old flowers that will wilt in a day because for $1 or $2 more, you can buy flowers that will keep a week,” Saul said.

Designer clothes at a discount exist at second-hand clothes stores such as Jean’s Stars’ Apparel in Sherman Oaks. Owner Janet Snyder said women who spend $100,000 a year on their clothes and can’t wear the same thing twice bring in their clothes to sell at rock-bottom prices.

“Business has improved 20% directly because of the recession, and my customers are women driving Mercedeses, Rollses and Jaguars who aren’t embarrassed about coming in,” said Snyder, who shuns calling her business a thrift store, preferring to call it a “pre-owned, gently worn, gently used” clothes boutique.

One customer flies in from San Francisco to get a $600 sweater for $45. “It more than pays for the trip,” Snyder said. Bargain prices can be found on such designers as Gianni Versace, Yves St. Laurent, Chloe, Valentino and Bill Blass.

“More women are feeling good about wearing the same thing again; there’s less conspicuous consumption these days,” Snyder said. “But they still keep my store a secret from their friends unless they’re a different size.”

Although sales are up in the resale shops, business is down 30% for magician Joel Bauer of Northridge. The 31-year-old performer, a member of the Magic Castle’s private club of magicians, accomplishes an incredible sleight of hand by transforming his act into dry cleaning, contact lenses and dentistry. He trades.

“It keeps you working, and you’re getting something for it,” said Bauer, who has joined the bartering club of the American Commerce Exchange, based in Toluca Lake for 10 years. “It’s easy to offer your services and with this group, I can trade 10 hours of my act to pay for an attorney consultation or five cappuccino makers.”

Just before the holidays, bartering club President Mark Tracy hosted a trading spree for its 500 members from Pasadena to Malibu, most of whom are in the Valley. “Trade is the oldest form of economy, two chickens for a goat,” Tracy said.

People who have excess inventory or a service to trade can join for an initial $300 fee, and the buyer is charged 15% for each trade, brokered through a credit card-like system.

At the trading show, Darwin Lamm, a Westlake Village radio advertising salesman, was exchanging radio time for some jewelry for his wife, Leslie. He also bartered for appointment books, Christmas wreaths and a case of wine.

“I think more and more people are going to have to do this as the economy gets worse,” Lamm said. “A lot of people are holding back and waiting to see what happens.”

Art and photography studio owner Ed Weston has seen a slowdown in his 10-year-old business in Northridge, but the Chatsworth resident has faith in the bartering club. Displaying original artwork, including paintings by actress Elke Sommer, at the bartering show last month, Weston said: “I was slow this past year, but if my roof leaks or my refrigerator is broken, why am sitting here sucking my thumb with my artwork; I say let’s exchange. If I have a gallery opening, he has cases of wine, we’ll trade.”

At the show, Weston told his secretary to pick something as her holiday gift, and he looked for something for his wife, Ann. Last year, they bartered for their vacation, a trip to Cancun.

Carting out a vacuum cleaner and lots of Christmas gifts from the bartering show, Lori Farless said she and her husband, Carl, a dentist, have been bartering club members since 1983.

“It saves us from having to shell out $1,000 for this stuff,” Farless said as her husband continued moving their newly traded items out to the car. “With the economy the way it is, everything is down, and with trade, we don’t have to change our style of living.”

They trade for hotel rooms when they attend dental conventions, and the $9,000 worth of furniture and artwork in Carl Farless’ North Hollywood dental office was all secured by trade.

“He still has a student loan to pay off; that’s why this is so good for us,” Lori Farless said. “I guess I got this from my mom. I used to watch her save $30 with double coupons.”