It was spring of 2005, and my husband and I had just taken possession of our old farmhouse in the country. We were working frantically to meet the 30-day deadline we had been given to qualify for homeowners' insurance. Among the list of repairs we had to make to insure our property - and thus, qualify for financing - was to "make the barn safe".
The old post-and-beam wooden barn was packed to the gills with several generations worth of "stuff". After taking 5 pickup truck loads of metal to the scrap yard for recycling, and filling half of a large dumpster with the remainder, we tried to determine what the mystifying term "safe" meant to our insurance agent, who would give us no more specific directives. We finally decided that if it looked safe, it was safe, and set out to repair it as much as we could in that short time period.
A number of the old boards were warped and had to be removed. After that was done, we had planned to go to the home center store to purchase treated lumber to replace them. Having made a pile of discarded barn board, we realized that not only would the purchase of new lumber be expensive, it's use would detract from the aesthetics of the old barn. Thus, the scrounging began.
There was a fair quantity of old wood in the barn, and we used virtually all of it for repairs. After cobbling the openings shut with reused wood, there remained one 3-foot gap where no usable piece had been found. By this time, however, we were working by our truck headlights - the inspection was the very next morning - and the building materials store was closed.
All that was left was the stack of warped boards we had already removed. So, not expecting to find a suitable board, we started tossing the warped wood into our truck. At that point we realized that one long board, curled at both ends, contained in the center a section straight enough - and just long enough - to make the repair. My husband cut off both curled ends of the board, and we triumphantly screwed the remaining piece in place.
You and I won't always have a stockpile of usable material to resolve whatever problem or need we have at hand. But we have been conditioned, in our consumption-driven culture, to run out and purchase a solution whenever a need presents itself. I am NOT advocating clumsy, jerry-rigged solutions, but often it doesn't even occur to us to first look at what we might already have on hand.
My sister and brother-in-law do this. They live in a lovely home in an upscale neighborhood, and could afford to purchase whatever gadget or material they might need to perform a task. But rather than driving to the nearest store for a special hanging rack for their laundry room, they simply hook clothes hangers on top of the doorjamb when hanging up clothing fresh from the dryer. No expense, no installation project, and nothing extra to maintain or replace.
We won't always find a suitable solution to every problem with what we have on hand. But by first taking inventory of our options before we run out to spend cash, we'll often find something which does the job. If not, we can spend money for a solution knowing that we are purchasing something we actually need. If we do find we can utilize something we already have on hand, we can use our money for things which are more important to us - as my husband and I were able to do with our barn repairs.
We drove home that night in 2005 with a new perspective on purchasing materials to repair our property, which has served us well ever since. And, to our enormous relief, the next morning, the barn passed inspection.
-- Susan Rodebush © 2009
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