Second Wind

Making Do 

or Repurposing Things on Hand

​

“Motherhood is the necessity of invention,” I told my daughter and granddaughter the other evening. They laughed and corrected me with: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” I’m always messing up quotes, but I think in this case both ways fit. The fact is that some of the most creative people you would ever meet are folks with very limited incomes or those that don’t have easy access to things, although today's technology makes it way too easy to spend money ordering online and having most anything delivered to our doorsteps. That used to not be the case, though.

In the mid-1960s, my family lived at Salt Flat, Texas, which was 20 miles from the nearest school and churches in Dell City, and 90 miles from the nearest doctors, dentists, and sufficient grocery and other types of stores in El Paso. My parents became experts at making do with what was on hand. The once- or twice-a-month trips to the grocery store meant stocking up on plenty of canned goods as well as bread, meat, and milk, which were frozen until needed. Mom stretched meat further in meals by combining it with a lot of pasta, potatoes, rice, and other vegetables for our family of six. Picky eaters we were not. Later in life she liked to tell us and everyone else that she had to knock us away from the table when we were young. Dad learned to repair just about anything since we were so isolated, and I’m sure he learned by trial and error or from others who had learned to do the same. 

Making do can also involve hand-me-downs and secondhand items. Looking around my house, most of the furniture and decorative things I see would fall under that category. They have saved me a lot of money over the years, but they’ve also filled up my house to the point it is too cluttered. I’m still working on remedying that, though.

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed the challenge of creatively making do or coming up with solutions with whatever I had on hand or using less expensive substitutes. The following gallery includes a few ways I’ve done this around our house, along with other creative examples that friends and family shared with me. 

​

Double-click the big picture to open up captions. Note: This is best viewed on larger devices.