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Greetings from my Small Business Called Home
http://www.financiallearningnetwork.com/articles/17/1/Greetings-from-my-Small-Business-Called-Home
Jennifer Gandon
Jennifer Gandon spent over 15 years in New York City in the advertising and cosmetics fields in both marketing and product management roles. Jennifer left the corporate world to become a full-time, professional mom and CFO of her Small Business Called Home (SBCH). As a full-time pro mom to two beautiful daughters under the age of five, Jennifer happily accepts the challenge to get more for each SBCH dollar that she spends by seeking out sales, clipping coupons, searching for online offers and writing humorous complaint letters to nationaly recognized companies if they dare not meet her expectations. Jennifer lives in the Bronx with her two daughters, three cats, nine goldfish, two algae eaters, two newts and her one somewhat annoying husband whose primary redeeming quality is that he eats any of her cooking experiments that don't quite work out.  
By Jennifer Gandon
Published on 11/18/2007
 
Greetings, and welcome to what I hope will be the first of many articles touching on money-saving ideas. Let me start off by saying that none of these ideas will guarantee you enough money to pay off your house. They are small strategies that will start you thinking in a new direction. It’s a way of taking care of the small things that translate into a larger picture. Rethinking how you use the resources available to you can save time in the form of hours you would have to work to earn the money to buy things, and resources, by re-using the items you have on hand and keeping them out of landfills
Greetings from my Small Business Called Home

Greetings, and welcome to what I hope will be the first of many articles touching on money-saving ideas. Let me start off by saying that none of these ideas will guarantee you enough money to pay off your house. They are small strategies that will start you thinking in a new direction. It’s a way of taking care of the small things that translate into a larger picture. Rethinking how you use the resources available to you can save time in the form of hours you would have to work to earn the money to buy things, and resources, by re-using the items you have on hand and keeping them out of landfills

 

For example, my husband and I just refinished our daughter’s bedroom. Actually, we’ve finally furnished one with matching furniture, coordinated bedding, etc. They are two and four, and quite frankly, a matching bedroom was not a priority for them, so it was not for me. They were very happy when they could have their Sesame Street sheets and their Pooh pillowcases at the same time. I let that lead me in the direction that décor didn’t matter so much as long as they were happy with what they had. Now that they have outgrown the toddler bed and crib (mismatched, but both freebies given to us) and we have the time, energy and resources, we put together the typical pink and purple princess girlie-girl bedroom. First I acquired the bedding – finding two lavender coverlets/quits at the local warehouse store. I then shopped the chain stores and found coordinated sheets and accessories. I scanned the sale flyers each week, waiting until they went on sale. Then I swooped in like a duck on a June-bug first thing on a Sunday morning a bought them. The savings there of about $30 doesn’t seem like much in the big picture, but since we also bought three gallons of paint on sale for $15 a gallon, it was like getting two gallons of paint for free. Patience is a virtue when saving money is a goal. It took me about three months to acquire everything, including the paint, that we needed to start the job.

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We bought the furniture at a chain store specializing in self-assembly furniture and saved on delivery charges. We then flattened all the cartons and let the girls loose with crayons. They had a blast, and when they were done, we bundled it all up for recycling. My husband even noted that the cartons were cut and folded in a way that used no glue, which was a cost saving step for the manufacturer. We donated all the old mismatched furniture we could (don’t forget to get a receipt!), but since the center doesn’t accept cribs, we took it apart, took the metal off for recycling and put the rest out for trash. Since my oldest was crying that the crib was to be thrown away and no-one else would get to use it, she and I decided to use the metal frame that held the mattress to trellis string beans in the garden. She felt a great deal better afterwards when I joked about the frame going from a toddler bed to the garden bed!

 

The new dressers have very wide drawers, and the sock, tights and underwear got all mixed up, so I took the very narrow drawers from the crib unit, took off the handles and all the hardware, trimmed the fronts off and dropped them in the center of the drawers in the new dresser. It neatly divides the drawer into three sections. I could have gone to a hardware store for new materials, or one of those fancy “container” stores for fancy dividers. The point I’m trying to make it that by re-using what I had on hand in a new way, I saved on my own money, natural resources, and kept items out of a landfill. Will it make a huge difference? No, it won’t. But many of people doing many small things makes a huge difference.

 

Will you get new furniture and have the same needs and resources as me? Probably not. What I hope to pass on are not only money saving tips, but to help get you thinking in a new direction that will let you utilize your skills and resources to their maximum ability. See you next month!