Making Do Monday- Getting creative with your resources

One of the most challenging parts of this spending challenge has been to come up with ways to do the things I need or want to do, without spending any extra money. It’s fine to go without sometimes, but what about birthdays? Road trip food? Unruly hair?

It’s often a matter of creatively evaluating the resources available to you. There are usually more options and resources available than we think!

Here are a few of the ways that I or my family have done that this month:

• Need a haircut? I asked a friend who enjoys styling hair to give me a simple trim to tide me over
• Need a birthday gift? My daughter’s aunt made adorable star shaped cookies for her birthday, instead of spending money on a gift (what child doesn’t like cookies???). For my Mom’s birthday this Friday, I am making an online album of pictures of my children.
• Need a babysitter? Trade nights with a trusted family from church, if you don’t have family living nearby
• Need food for a road trip? Rather than stopping for a meal on our recent 4 hour drive to Seattle this weekend, we pack a mix of car friendly foods, such as bananas, trail mix, pepperoni sticks, tortilla or potato chips, cheese slices, dried fruit, water bottles, etc.
• Need to send a card or invitations? Try sending an e-card, from a site like DaySpring Cards or Blue Mountain. For creative and cute invitations (and a built in rsvp function) try Evite, which I just used to make my daughter’s lovely 3rd birthday invites.
• Need a particular item? Borrow it! I needed tea cups and saucers for my daughter’s tea party this Friday, so I asked a friend to lend me some, rather than buying them from the thrift store.
• Need a thank you? Give something homemade. For my daughter’s birthday, we are going to make homemade pink playdough or clay, wrapped up all pretty, instead of a goody bag for the guests. Or what about homemade baking (or a baking mix) for an adult?

Not spending money need not hamper our ability to meet many of our basic needs, or to celebrate our loved ones. What are some creative ways that you have used your resources to do or get something that you
needed or wanted?