I read recently that our society, with its instant everything, is losing two important things:
patience and resourcefulness. The book pointed out that throughout most of history America has often relied heavily on those two things.

So, how resourceful are you? If you need something, can you come up with a viable alternative, or do you just buy what you need? Can you figure out alternative ways to do things?

With the kids' crafts projects, I often substitute what I have for what is needed instead of going to buy exactly what is called for. If I need something done around the house and dh isn't available (or interested- like moving around furniture just to see how it looks), I think: how would I get this done if I were a single mom?

I just read about the MS member who needed extra cash and has taken a paper route That's very resourceful.

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I don't believe in miracles; I depend on them

I think I am pretty resourceful. It is something that my mother instilled in me. Growing up my mom stayed home and my dad worked long hours. If something needed to be done, it was up to us. I can't remember us ever hiring someone to do something at our house.

We have a couple do-it-yourself books and did everything our selves. My mom is very frugal so the idea of paying someone to do something we could probably do ourselves was unheard of!

We put down new carpet, fixed toilets, drains, carpentry work, everything you can think of. And no we didn't go out and get all the fancy parts for a lot of it. We made do with what we had. I am still this way today.

My dh laughs at me all the time b/c we have a pretty fair collection of tools, and none of them are his! His dad is a real mr. fix it type but dh never has been. So if it needs to be fixed, its on me. Especially since dh is gone a lot.

So home repairs, craft projects, cooking, etc. There is always a substitiution that can be used. Be creative!

I consider myself mildly resourceful. Sometimes I'd just rather take the easy way out instead of racking my brain for an alternative. It's a bad qualitly, but I'm chaning slowly but surely!

When we bought our house 6 years ago (built in 1948), we became very resourceful. It is amazing what you can accomplish on tight budgetary/time constraints.

We do a lot of bartering for services and goods, and we get things second hand if we can. We just got a toilet off of freecycle to replace our cracked one...nothing wrong with the free one, they just remodeled. A new one would have cost us around $200-$400 for your average, run of the mill white model. DH was a little uncomfortable having a toilet in the back seat of his car while he was at work, but he got over it.

One thing we never skimp on is electrical work.

It depends- when it comes to cooking from a scant pantry, I can usually make up a meal with what I have in the house. Also, with things for the kids to do, I can usually take a craft idea and find a substitution for what we have available.

Other things- I don't know. I try, but am not as handy as I'd like so would probably go buy a shelf rather than rig one from pieces I find in the garage.

I'd say I'm pretty resourceful in the areas that I know how to be. I have actually made a lot of games for my kids at home and in my classroom from things around the house, like a bowling game with coke bottles. I reuse a lot of things and I think in general I tend to see how things can be used twice. I think this is an inherited trait b/c my dad is a mr.fix-it and I can remember my mom teaching us to whittle on bars of cheap soap, then we used the soap as "guest soaps," she also made a lot of our toys from scraps. I had a toy octopus made from leftover mismatched yarn with leftover tinfoil as the insert for the head. I may be the only person as young as myself who actually had a doll made from a corn cob. And dad gave me a box full of nuts and bolts once as a treat. I probably spent hours screwing them all together

love to shop but I hate spending money especially frivolous money. Their are ways to make your purchases and yet feel good about buying by receiving incentives. I subscribe to Upromise, most of you have already heard about this site. It's a great way to earn for your children's tuition on groceries, online shopping, gas purchases and so on. My children love the treasure hunts at the grocery store, looking for the upromise logos.

Another site I found is through a new site called bigcrumbs. It's similar to upromise, but instead of going to a 590 college fund it's a cash fund. I purchase items online. It't a great way also to compare shop prices. I don't like to pay for shipping so I research online for promo codes if I can't find any, I move on to another site. You can also get big discounts on items with these promo codes. Do any of you Ebay? I do, it's a treasure trove of bargains galore. If you can get it at a bargain by bidding in contrast to paying retail. I say go for it! I buy my gift cards on ebay as well. Going back to bigcrumbs, when you purchase items through their site like through ebay you can earn 36% of the seller's fee. Same goes for purchasing at online retailers. I renewed our magazine subscriptions recently; four magazines altogether. Not only did I save on stamps, writing out a check but I used a promo code that I found online that save me $5.00,my total $49.52. The best thing about it I earned $8.76 cash back from using bigcrumbs. You also earn from others who shop that you referred. It's FREE, it's new so not a lot of people know about it yet. Check this site out... and please let me know what you think!

http://www.bigcrumbs.com/crumbs/fron...r=sheryllrobyn

Oh by the way restaurants.com is a great site to buy gift certificates to your local restaurants at discount prices.

The Thrifty Shopping Queen

[quote=jnbythesea]I read recently that our society, with its instant everything, is losing two important things:
patience and resourcefulness. The book pointed out that throughout most of history America has often relied heavily on those two things. [quote]

Along this same vein, I am always amazed at how frequently people feel they need to hire "professionals" to do things with their kids. Is this the result of buying into the marketing or laziness or insecurity?

I never understood what Gymboree did for a 6 month old child (when the mom had to be present anyway) that the mom couldn't do at home. The same goes with reading and math tutoring in the younger grades, intro to music lessons for toddlers, art appreciation for toddlers, etc., etc., etc.

Unless the child in question is special needs, we can do all of these things very well ourselves. Why do people feel that they have to pay someone to do this for them?