As many of us have become willingly accustomed to paying more for modern conveniences, we have lost touch with the benefits of doing things ourselves. Some of us have even become so dependent on others to do things like cleaning, cooking, or sewing that we don’t even know how to do those things on our own anymore.
There is no doubt that doing things ourselves, as opposed to hiring someone to do them for us, requires time that could be spent on other, more enjoyable activities. That is clearly why people hire landscapers, cleaning crews, go to restaurants, etc. And consequently, those service providers happily charge a premium for performing those time-saving services.
But in tougher economic times, there may now be a new resurgence of people being forced to go back to basics and start doing more things themselves to save money.
For those of you reluctant to give up your already limited free time, let’s look at some benefits of doing things yourself:
- You learn new skills that you can repeat again, more quickly, the more you apply them.
- The cost of materials needed to do things yourself will likely be considerably less than the hourly service fees you pay to have someone else do it.
- You will know much more about the details and quality of the materials that went into your project.
- You are more likely to achieve a higher quality result because you care more about what you are doing than a contract worker.
- You can more easily customize things to your specific needs (eg colors, sizes, materials, enhancements, options, etc.)
- You will appreciate the end result more as you are more aware of the effort that went into making it than if someone else did it for you.
- You can enjoy the satisfaction and accomplishment of knowing you did it yourself.
- You feel more self-sufficient knowing that you don’t need to depend on others as much as you thought.
When considering which projects to undertake, keep in mind that there are some projects that are really best left to the experts, such as electrical, plumbing, etc.
But for those projects that require less experience and are generally avoided simply because of the time involved in doing them, you might be surprised at how much money you can save (and spend on other fun things later) by adopting more than one Do -Attitude of yourself.