Take it from the stash

Welcome to Monday! This is still a new blog carnival for me so I'm not used to getting this post ready for early Monday mornings. I'll get there!

Make-Do-Mondays are hosted by Ann Kroeker. She says -- "It’s a place to celebrate creative problem-solving, contentment, patience and ingenuity. It’s a carnival where we encourage each other not to rush out and get the next new cool thing if something we have on hand can get the job done." Several others are jumping on the Make-Do carnival, so be sure to go see what everyone is doing this week!


I have been thinking about what I will post for Make-Do-Monday for the past two days. I know that I make do with a lot of things, but as with so many things, I'm just so used to it that it doesn't seem to be a Make-Do type of thing!

Finally, I came up with something -- actually a lot of things and it all happened for one event.

My husband just started a new business (friends and family - yes, another business!) and he had a booth at the Jacksonville Home Show this weekend. The business is a garage organizer system called Monkey Bars which you can see at Gorgeous Garage, if you'd like. So, he had to fill the booth with items typically found in a garage to show how the system was used. He kept telling me that he was going to go out an buy...a rake, a shovel, a cooler, a ladder and/or plastic bins and I kept insisting that he didn't need to. He felt his booth wouldn't be Professional Looking if he didn't have brand new items. He also asked me at one point to go to the store and get some cleaning supplies so he could put them on the shelves.

I was not having any of that. We have plenty of those items right here in our house and at our garage unit. I don't care if it would "just cost a hundred bucks" to get all new - we didn't need to spend a penny and we didn't need to duplicate our already bulging inventory of lawn and garden items. I had him go to our garage and gather the items he wanted to use, I picked out a few manly cleaning supplies from our closet (Sportman's laundry detergent - totally unscented so the deer can't smell the clothing - windshield washer solvent and Armour All) and then I gave everything a quick dusting or used a little Sparkle & a papertowel.

This should be a Mastercard commercial...

Shovel $0
Plastic Bins $0
Cleaning Supplies $0
______________
Happy Wife - Priceless

The booth looked real nice. It also looked real. We didn't have bright shiny stickers on the tools and the coolers had some scratches on them, but everything was in its place in the "garage" and lots of people came in and could see their own stuff sitting on those shelves. The booth looked very professional.

That's my Make-Do-Monday. I made do with the stash of items I already had, instead of buying new. Oh, and a Magic Eraser on the plastic of a standard cooler does wonders!! Those coolers looked brand new. I think the last part of the Make-Do-Part was keeping my cool and not jumping down my husband throat when he kept mentioning new, new, new. I made sure to stay calm and not raise my voice, which really did help him be more receptive to the idea of gently used.

Please go visit Ann and see what the others have posted. Thanks!

Have a great day!
Kristin