Do-It-Yourselfers

This post is for all you Do-It-Yourselfers! This is another way to save money. If you are handy with a hammer, screw driver or paint brush, why not do it yourself. Today I will show you a few things that I do myself or with a little help from my husband and children. Knowing you can do the project yourself and save the cost of a professional coming out to do the job, gives you a sense of accomplishment. Here are a few things we as a family do, as a Do-It-Yourself project.

Oil changes for your car can be expensive if you take them into a shop to be done. Here is where my husband and including my daughters have changed the oil in the car. Yes I have changed oil in our cars too. Just go to the store and buy your own oil and filter. My husband has car ramps, he just drives the car up on the ramps and puts a pan underneath to drain the oil. I wasn’t  kidding when I said my daughter can change oil, the school she goes to has a mandatory shop class. I think this is a great idea because they are taught minor maintenance of a car including changing a tire. Besides when you go to a shop they always try to tell you need more done, like your air filter is bad. Buy this in the store and replace it yourself for less than half the cost that they will charge you. If you feel you can’t change your oil yourself, try finding a neighbor or home mechanic.  Try going to a local school that has a shop class. My daughter’s school is always looking for cars to do minor repairs and oil changes on, for free. All you have to do is buy the oil and filter. With the teacher watching, the students learned how to do minor repairs on cars as part of their homework assignment.

                Repairs inside the house can be costly if you have to call a repairman. Most service calls start over $50.00 dollars. I recently had my control panel go out on my stove. I called a repair person to see how much it would cost and he told me over $300.00 dollars. Yikes! So I did a little research on the internet, found the part I needed and watched a how to fix and replace my control panel video. With the help of the internet , I was able to buy my part cheaper and also watch the video on how to replace the  part. This whole project took 3 days for the part to come in and 1 hour to replace the part. By ordring the part online  it only cost us $75.00 to repair my stove.  All the things that break in your house can easily be fixed by yourself at the fraction of the price.

                This one my daughters don’t like to well, but mom rules on this one. Doing dishes by hand or dish washer. Yes I have a dish washer but it does not get used. We have 4 sets of hands that can do the dishes. The dish washer cost money to run and uses to much water and takes too long to dry. As you can see I wash all my dishes by hand and air- dry them. This is another reason I don’t use my dish washer, my youngest daughter decided it was for hiding all her goodies.

                Don’t get me wrong, sometimes you have to call in a professional.Some projects you can’t do yourself.. We found this out this last summer when our septic system decided to collapse. We were going to try and do some of the digging with our tractor to save some money, but this was way too much work and time we did not have. So we did our research and found a company that did a great job at a reasonable cost. Doing the big projects are sometimes better left for professionals, but the other jobs can be done by D0-It-Yourselfers like you. Do your research and save money form Suzie Homemaker.