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UWMW: USE IT UP, WEAR IT OUT, MAKE DO, OR DO WITHOUT
It took creativity, duct tape, and some stuffing of shame, but our bashed-in, totaled minivan looks pretty good.
It’s my best example of “making do,” one of the Amish community’s most fantastic ways of saving money.
“Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without,” said Andy, the Amish boat cover maker, with a big smile. He’s not the first guy to spout that maxim, but the Plain folk really take it to heart, and so they save big.
The Amish are keen menders, going to great lengths to fix what is broken, patch what is torn, and repair what is repairable.
I like the dictionary definition of mend: “to restore something to satisfactory condition,” or “to improve something or make it more acceptable.” But that’s not the American way.
We ladies and gentlemen of the World often think nothing of chucking our less-than-fabulous cars/clothes/ furniture/you name it and replacing them with new cars/ clothes/furniture at the first sign of wear and tear. We like our things to be new and shiny, because most people are essentially like birds. (Yes, birds, flapping our wings excitedly whenever we spy something glossy and gleaming.) And after watching the Amish, and seeing their patched pants, darned socks, refurbished equipment, and even mended fences, I realized I was being a bit of a birdbrain myself by not “making do” much more often.
We like our things to be new and shiny.
I can’t sew on a button (though I learned to thread a needle in Pioneer Girls years ago), and I’m about as handy as the cast of The Real Housewives of New York City. But I did find out that I was pretty darn dexterous with a roll of tape.
Besides, making do is more of a mental exercise anyway. Can I emotionally deal with a wood-paneled microwave, a camera that’s been dropped one too many times, or the world’s ugliest tray tables? That was the real question.
So I took stock, listing things in my home that had more “wear” left in them, and committed to making them last. But it wasn’t long before my main revamp project became abundantly clear. One morning, on my way to the bank, I was rear-ended by a genius in a conversion van, yapping away on his cell phone. Well, he rear-ended a guy in an SUV—with tow hooks poking out the front—and that guy rear-ended me.
Boom! Crunch! Ugh.
Other than a little whiplash and a seriously shaken psyche (I have a little PTSD from previous, serious car accidents), I was okay. But the van, a 2000 Oldsmobile Silhouette, was definitely on the bubble. It was never going to win a beauty contest anyway, but now the vehicle was uglier than sin, pockmarked with two twin holes in the back bumper, where the SUV driver’s tow hooks had punctured them.
Surprisingly, it was still drivable, and I drove off to the banker anyway.
Soon we learned that our trusty white van was totaled. I immediately thought this meant that we were going to have to take out a loan for a “new” used van, since our savings were scraping, as Bishop Eli said, the bottom of the barrel because we were moving. Truth be told, I was tempted to get another van, even if it meant a car loan we couldn’t afford. Though I had never been “car proud,” as they say (once I had to be told what “detailing” was because I had no idea), it’s one thing to drive an older-model car with tinges of rust, and another to drive the Unsightlymobile.
And if I can be very shallow for a moment here, it didn’t help matters that our son plays hockey in the city’s wealthiest area (not because we live there, but because it’s close-ish and has a great hockey program). It was hard for me not to feel self-conscious about driving into that parking lot six times a week and parking that dreadful-looking, aged, smashed-in clunker beside thirty-five-thousand-dollar SUVs.
This is where I needed to just suck it up and try to rise above it.
The Amish, with their upside-down values, would probably look at my van and think highly of me, although this was small comfort to me when I parked by a friend’s sparkling new Volvo. “We admire someone with a new car or a new house,” said Banker Bill. “But the Amish look at this completely differently. They look favorably on someone who is not living ostentatiously, but is instead living a modest and simple life. If someone is living high off the hog, the Amish would look at him and think he was abandoning their faith.”
Unsightly though it may be, we drove that car another seven months before we finally figured out a cheap way to give it a little makeover. Doyle, my husband, helped a friend of ours—a body-shop guy—replace the crumpled van door with a new door. The brilliant “Grandpa George” also artfully covered the four-inch holes with white duct tape to match the van. Our cost? For parts, $120, a whopping savings of $3,880, as we would have spent around $4,000 on a comparable used van. Oh, the tape is visible to the naked eye, but just barely. I love it!
Like I said, that was the major “make do” project in our lives, but there were definitely more where that came from.
FANCY DOIN’S
Andy’s business making and repairing boat covers and reupholstering boat seats turned out to be one of those enterprises that prospers during a national money pinch. “You can’t sell a boat for its value these days,” he said. “People are hanging on to their boats because they can’t sell them. Instead, they are fixing their boats up, repairing their canvases and having the seats reupholstered.”
In short, people are making do with their old boats, so Andy’s business dovetails perfectly with his Amish ideals.
In a recession, though, even us Fancy folk are finding ways to “make it work,” as Project Runway’s fashion design mentor, Tim Gunn, likes to tell his designer contestants. Here are a few ways regular people are doing just that:
• Caryn: “Instead of paying $90 for a compost bin at Home Depot, I used a plastic bin (we had paid $4 for it) and poked holes in it. I do have to go out and stir it myself. Who knows if it’ll work well in the long term, but I feel pretty thrifty.”
• Erin: “Just yesterday I needed (desperately) to mow the lawn, and the lawn mower is not functioning all of a sudden. I tried to fix it, but I don’t know enough about small engine repair. I know we’ll fix it later this week when we have time to take it all apart, but in the meantime the grass was shamefully long. I pulled out the manual push mower (you know, the kind that doesn’t require gas) and cut the grass today. It doesn’t look great, but it is (mostly) shorter.”
• Lorna: “Early in our marriage, when we didn’t have an extra penny to our names, I would darn my socks. I didn’t have a wooden mold that you are supposed to put in your socks while you’re darning (like my grandma did) so I put a lightbulb into my sock to help me do some pretty fine handiwork!”
• Linda: “I had a pair of jeans that started to fray at the bottom hem, so I trimmed them up about five inches, and now they are pretty cool cut-off capris. I’m thinking of finding some flashy ribbon at the fabric store to stitch across the edge to keep them from getting more cut-off shag. Also, I save, then reuse, the plant containers from new plants so when it’s time to divide others, I have something to put them in, then give them away.”
• Denise: “For years I didn’t have an electric mixer because I had found a little handheld one (the kind that you crank by hand really fast) at a garage sale, and it worked just fine. The bonus was that I got a workout every time I used it!”
• Tracey: “I use the paper from my kids’ art easel after it has been painted or drawn on for wrapping paper.”
• Hezra: “We have five kids, so we pass clothes between several families. Our kids are all different ages, enough that it usually works. But we have specific kids our hand-me-downs go to; then they circle back. We seriously have some of the girls’ clothes that have been through seven girls.” (Hezra’s tip is super Amish. Every Amish mom I talked to said she either passed on clothes her children had grown out of, or used clothes that have been passed on from family and friends.)
• Ellie: “When we lived overseas, we would come home every summer and bring a whole lot of stuff back with us. One summer we had two backpacks and two pieces of luggage. Our suitcases were so full of books and other heavy items that we had to pay over $700 because we were a few pounds over our limit. We panicked, and then went into problem-solving mode. We asked for a huge plastic bag, then put the two backpacks in the bag, making it one piece of luggage. Then I ran up to the second floor and bought the cheapest little knapsack I could find. It turned out to be $17. We stuffed all our heaviest items into that little bag. We again had four pieces of luggage, all under the weight limit. We saved ourselves $683 by improvising and reorganizing our packing. With a little creativity there’s always a way around a problem!”
Caryn made the most of a plastic bin and kept $86 in her wallet, $86 that could be in Home Depot’s cash register, while Ellie got real creative real fast, and the result was a savings of $683. Incredible! As Daniel Miller, a sharp young Amishman, likes to say, “My dad always said, ‘It’s either my money or it’s theirs. I prefer it to be mine.’”
So often, when we start thinking in terms of “Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without,” we keep more and more greenery in our bank accounts.
So often, when we start thinking in terms of “Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without,” we keep more and more greenery in our bank accounts, and keep out that same lucre from the bankrolls of home improvement stores and car dealerships.
Seeing the hard numbers from Caryn’s and Ellie’s make-do success stories caused me to ponder how many dollars I could be saving by really, truly “using it up.”
A quick survey of my household items yielded a few things I could put to use (or put up with, more like it) awhile longer:
• A digital camera. We bought it new a few years ago, and since then it’s been dropped a few times by overzealous kids and doppich (clumsy) Mom. It’s way clunkier than the sleek, pretty, new models, but more than that, the battery compartment has to be closed by duct tape or it will slide open and the batteries will fall out. Also, for some reason the dial turns on with the slightest motion, so slight we don’t even notice it, and as a result, we are always out of battery juice, an incredibly annoying thing when a beautiful Kodak moment unfolds. Still, a comparable camera, bought new, would be $170.
• The world’s ugliest tray tables. We got these tray tables for a wedding present, in 1991, and they were ugly even then. Oh, these aren’t plain wooden tables with a few scuffs. No sirree. These are microcosms of every bad fad that ever afflicted the late eighties and early nineties. The only thing missing on these tables is a photo of a guy with a mullet. They do, however, have a bold, unforgettable motif of stylized swans and bulrushes, with a palette of dove grey, dusty rose, powder blue, and a shock of black lacquer to just give the whole effect some focus. What I’m telling you is, they are ugly to the point of being fascinatingly so. Perhaps the Smithsonian will want them if they ever do an exhibit called Ghastly Home Décor from the Early Nineties. In the meantime, we can always throw a tea towel over them and call it good. Cost to buy a new set of tray tables: $40–$179.
• A wood-paneled microwave. Why don’t we have a normal microwave? It’s a long story. The one we do have is also, like the tray tables, a throwback to days of yore. It’s like a small station wagon that warms things up, from the late seventies, when “high-speed cooking” was nifty. Anyway, about three years ago, our then two-year-old pushed her musical table over to the microwave, hopped up on it, pulled the knob off, and nuked it. When I got out of the shower, the house smelled like charred plastic. Since she was prone to such “mad scientist” operations, we decided to keep the microwave and simply turn the metal stick center of the knob with pliers. (“Pliers?” said a friend of mine, when I told her the story. “I see you, and I raise you.”) We still use pliers to this day, because up until recently, our scientist did not have the manual dexterity to operate the pliers. Once, she tried to cook some noodles and went about five minutes over the allotted time because she couldn’t turn off the microwave. The whole house smelled like charred food. Now every time we microwave anything, the unit gives off the stench of a nasty convenience store. Doyle: “It smells like someone has been smoking cigarettes inside that thing for twenty years.” Cost of a new microwave: $65–$202.
As Freeman the goat guy said, “We try and make do, but then sometimes my boys will say, ‘Datt [Dad], it’s too long since this has been new,’ and they are usually right.” Obviously, it’s been too long since our microwave was new, and I think we will be browsing the fliers for a replacement.
To this list of not-quite-worn-out items, I would add luggage (darn those cats and their claws!)—new: $100– $300; a cell phone (mine’s positively antediluvian)—new: $99.99; and an alarm clock radio I think Doyle brought into our marriage—new: $19.99. If I hold out until these items actually do die a natural death, I would be “making do” big time, keeping a minimum $495 of my money. (Well, $495 minus $65, because the microwave is verging on the unendurable, and after thirty years of reheating service, we want to put the old gal out to pasture while she still has a shred of dignity.)
Four hundred-plus bucks! I like the sound of that! Just hearing the number gave me major oomph in my quest to “use it up” like the Amish do.
How about you? How much money could you keep by using things up until they are truly worn-out? I guarantee when you tally up your own list and dollar amount, you’ll be happy you did.
AMISH HOME REMEDIES
The baby’s colicky, it’s 10:30 at night, and it’s raining—what to do? The Amish certainly wouldn’t hitch up their buggies and make a Walgreens run; they would “make do,” naturally, with items mostly attainable in their cupboards, gardens, and cellars (in baby’s case, they prescribe one teaspoon of fennel tea every thirty minutes to an hour). Home Remedies from Amish Country boasts more than six hundred tonics and tinctures, salves and supplements, to cure everything from fussy babies to gallstones. Some of the highlights:
• For “anemia”: “Put 1 T. blackstrap molasses in a cup of hot water and drink. Take this mixture every day until you feel more energetic,” asserts Mrs. Andy J. Byler.
• For “fluid retention”: Lizzie Yoder swears by drinking one cup of horsetail tea a day.
• For cataracts: “Use better than half of honey and Heinz Vinegar (slightly more than one part honey to one part vinegar), put a few drops in eyes, it hurts but saves money,” claims Amos Miller.
• Laxative: “Take one pinch of Epsom salt for three days,” says Gideon Gingerich. “I had very good results with this.”
• Insect stings: “To ease the pain, mix a teaspoon of unseasoned meat tenderizer with a few drops of water to make a paste and then place this on the injury,” says John Eicher. “This will give your child almost instantaneous relief since an enzyme in meat tenderizer dissolves the toxins the insect has injected with its stinger.”
—Home Remedies from Amish Country (Millersburg, OH: Abana Books, 2005)
Four Ways to Make Do
1. Shop Your Own Closet
The Amish don’t have to deal with the matter of things going in and out of fashion, because, of course, a cape and kapp never go out of fashion in Leola, Pennsylvania! But the concept of looking at what you already have, clothing-wise, and shuffling things around a bit to get more mileage out of them? That’s garbing yourself on the cheap, something the ladies of Leola would endorse.
Now, before you huff and puff and say you know what’s already in your closet, and that would be nothing to wear, give this tip a whirl, girl. According to “Serena” of the penny-pinching blog Style on a String (www.stylestring.com), there’s a method to the madness of shopping in your own closet. Her words of wisdom:
“The first step is to organize your closet so you can find everything easily. Treat it like your own personal store. Arrange it by clothing type (T-shirts, dresses, jackets), then by color (think Taylor on The Rachel Zoe Project!). After you’re organized, you can start seeing different ideas of what you could mix and match.”
By trying this tip, I found that my newish mint green cardigan goes stunningly with a four-year-old brown satin camisole top. Who knew? I do, now! When I wore it to church with dress pants last Sunday, I felt like I had a spiffy new outfit on.
“You’ve only got one pair of feet anyway,” Serena continues. “So make what you’ve got, the best that you’ve got . . . Only buy items that are classic, basic staples before you start experimenting. If you’re looking for a pair of knee-high brown boots, start with a flat, simple, plain-looking pair that will go with everything. You can always enhance your shoe wardrobe later, but if you’re missing the basics, you won’t be able to tie together your pieces.”
Preach it, sister!
And finally, “don’t buy anything unless it is really different than what you’ve got. So don’t buy another sweater that you already have 5 duplicates of.”
Who would buy five of the same look? I must admit, before the Amish thrift started to sink in, I routinely would like a certain trend and end up with far too many of the same sort of thing (hello, ruffles!). Check out page 148 for a creative way to weed out some overindulgences and possibly get free new-to-you clothes. Because, as Serena said, “Style has nothing to do with money”; shopping your own closet is green, frugal, and fabulous!
2. Shop Your Own Home
You might be surprised at how many cool finds are already there. According to Nate Berkus, home design expert, the greatest hurdle to jump for “home” shoppers is that once we find a space for something, we never even think of moving it.
“Walk into your bedroom and think, ‘Would that dresser look great in my dining room? Can I take these lamps off my table and use them next to my sofa?’” Berkus advises, because, as he points out, “nothing is nailed down” (“DIY Home Makeovers: Light on Cash, Heavy on Creativity,” The Oprah Winfrey Show, August 13, 2009, www.oprah.com/home/ Nate-Berkus-Tips-for-Budget-Home-Makeovers).
Almost immediately, I envisioned the perfect spot for a neglected lamp and gave it a new home where it positively glowed. After years of collecting dust on a bedroom chest of drawers, my marvelous 1930s-inspired lamp got a new lightbulb and lit up a gloomy space atop an antique steamer trunk lugged across the ocean and the prairies by my Mennonite forebears. Beautiful! I felt exactly as though I had gotten a new lamp.
Shanna, from the wonderful blog My Favorite Everything (www.myfavoriteeverything.com), had a similar experience, moving an armoire she had bought in college from her bedroom to her daughter’s room, which had no closet. Her husband added a closet rod inside the armoire. Freeing up space in her own bedroom, Shanna swapped out a smaller armoire, and it became a TV stand.
“I wanted to show you that in de-cluttering and reorganizing, you don’t necessarily have to go out and buy something new,” she told her readers in a 2009 post. “Sometimes you can shop in your own house and find a solution (Did you hear that, Honey? I didn’t buy anything to complete these projects—well we did buy the felt moving pads, $11. And the closet rod, $4.)” (www.myfavoriteeverything.com/2009/baby/put-your-helmut-on-and-get-ready-for-2010).
Talk about making do. So schmart!
3. Grocery Shop Your Own Cupboards
Instead of going out to buy new groceries or ordering takeout, build dinner around what’s in the fridge, pantry, or freezer already. I know, I know, a rotisserie chicken sounds sublime right now, but unless you only have a jar of mayo, a Diet Coke, and half a box of bran cereal, you can most likely get creative and save some cash. I mean, if I can do it, you certainly can!
Let’s say you did grab a rotisserie chicken a couple of days ago. It’s not going to feed a whole family for a second night. How about some chicken quesadillas or soup? There’s broccoli, eggs, and some shredded cheese. What to make? You’ve got most of the ingredients for a crustless quiche.
Don’t feel like cooking? Me neither, sometimes! So I have started to keep family-size cans of tomato and chicken noodle soup on hand, plus bread and cheese, so we can whip together a no-effort meal of soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. About half the time, having easy stuff on hand curbs the urge to make a pricey run to the deli or call the pizza man.
I challenged myself with this idea a few days ago. Groceries were low, but I didn’t want to spend twenty dollars on pizza. I made myself look at every row of the pantry, even the bottom row, with its cans of beans and things, the stuff I usually buy for a recipe and then end up not using for some reason. I knew I had brown sugar, molasses (enough for a gingerbread man convention), and two big cans of beans—your basic baked beans ingredients. When I saw the box of Jiffy mix jammed into the corner of the pantry, I knew the Craker family’s dinner destiny: brown sugar–baked beans and cornbread. It was simple, tasty, filling—and economical (about eighty cents per person!).
The meal reminded me of Ella Yoder and her favorite frugal meal in the dead of winter: “Tomato soup, made with canned tomato juice, milk, and a little butter—it’s my husband’s favorite.” She utilized what she had on hand, and the result was make-do noshing at its finest.
The average American household spends 42 percent of its total food budget on dining out. Grocery shopping in your own home helps you eat out less, especially when you brown-bag your lunch instead of eating out.
4. Fix It and Forget It
No, I’m not talking about Crock-Pot cooking, though that is a little addiction of mine. (You mean you can dump five things in a pot, turn on a button, and—voilà!—dinner is served? That’s not even cooking—it’s can opening!)
In our first year as landlords of our previous house, we have learned that fixing stuff, either ourselves or by employing a pro, is super economical. Now, did I mention that I am just not handy in any sense of the word? Doyle’s fairly handy, but he doesn’t know how to get a dryer to start behaving like a dryer, not a lint trap that rolls our clothes around for an hour and leaves them damp.
This year, we’ve called the appliance guy three or four times, between our two houses. First, the dryer got worse, and I thought it was on death’s door. Clothes had to be run through the cycle four or five times before they were reasonably dry. But much to my delight, the appliance guy worked on it for fifteen minutes and declared it good for the next ten years. Cost: $100. New dryer: starting at $300. Savings: $200.
Similar scenarios unfolded for the fridge (something about a coil) and the oven (it smelled like gas—very bad!).
Fridge repair: $120. New fridge: starting at $400. Savings: $280.
Oven repair: $40 (it was “just a wire”). New oven: starting at $400. Savings: $360.
Total cost of repairs: $260. Total cost to replace the appliances new: $1,100. Total savings: $840.
(Of course, if you and yours happen to know how to replace fridge coils, etc., you could keep the entire $1,100.)
Doyle recently fixed our portable DVD player ($119.99 new), and now that I’m keeping track, I’m sure his fix-its over the years have saved us tons of money. But even if you don’t have a DIY (do-it-yourself) bone in your body, as you can see, sometimes calling the appliance repair people can be a low-cost way to “make do.” Talk about “restoring something to satisfactory condition,” and “improving something or make it more acceptable”! What’s more acceptable than a large wad of cash, un-parted from the warmth and safety of your wallet?
Sadie Says . . .
“We use things until they wear out,” said Sadie. “It’s that simple.”
Over and over again, the Plain people told me how they save money by truly wearing things out and getting the most possible use out of them. These are the folks who cobbled a working maple syrup evaporator ($3,000, new) out of scrap heap finds. They are without a doubt the most resourceful, adaptive, and imaginative culture out there. It’s all about being thoughtful and careful about spending.
And it is rather simple, once you start thinking like the Amish, and making “UWMD” (Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make Do, or Do Without) a mantra in your life. Once you start tallying up the amount of money you’re keeping, you’ll be all over it like lint in a broken dryer.