Save Money While Building Community

We want to share some ideas today that are a double-win, which can save you money while building community. Both are good strategies that produce tangible results for your family. We shared with you a couple of months ago how to build resiliency and community safety, and now we will share some ideas that further both of these goals.

Saving money is good because it allows you to save for the things you want as a family or create a rainy-day fund. We are sharing more ideas from our local community today that have helped us build a stronger community beyond the preparedness ideas I’ve shared in the past.

Community Pot Luck Dinners

Twice a year or more, our community gets together to share food. We have had our get-togethers for years, usually at the beginning of the summer and during the holiday season. Neighbors also get together for meals regularly to help build community and get to know each other better. We have some great cooks in our community, and these regular times of meeting as neighbors have helped cement the friendships between families and have been the glue when disasters have hit our community.

Know Your Neighbors’ Skill Sets

Knowing your neighbor’s skill sets in your community can save you money while building relationships between community members. We have listed on our community website what our community members’ skill sets are. It was a great list to put together with some noteworthy surprises, such as learning that a lawyer is also an amazing sourdough baker. We have learned that even though people’s occupations are far-ranging in our community, their skill sets are just as diverse.

We have learned that we have grant writers, pasta makers, ex-chefs, people with veterinary skills, electrical and plumbing knowledge, organic gardeners, arborists, Amazon specialists, knitters, spinners, weavers, skilled seamstresses, people with engineering and vast construction knowledge, and so much more!

Trading Services within Community

Trading services within your community can save you money but can also help you when you need services promptly that local experts can’t provide in a timely manner. Take a look at our list above, and you can see the possibilities we have in our community. The range of skill sets in our community is not unusual for a small community.

Many times, community members pay each other the going rate for their skills, but many members also trade services. Our community members who currently have laying hens that are producing eggs have a valuable product to trade for services these days!

People have traded tree work for healing work on an animal, trading an overrun of vegetables for a home-cooked meal. With the options for trading everything from lemons to snap peas and plumbing traded for construction help, your imagination will be your only barrier to making great use of each other’s skill sets within your community while building relationships and resiliency within your community.

When an emergency hits, it’s wonderful knowing that you have community members who can help out and are only a text or phone call away. It can make all the difference in the world to have your neighbors pitch in when you need it most!

It’s so funny. I just posted it now through our community Google group: We did some bucking/splitting of the logs we had from our big tree project a while back and have way more firewood than we’ll need in the foreseeable future.  We’ve already taken what we needed and have left the rest on the lower part of our property, and it’s all free to take. So please help yourself to whatever you want!  

Resource & Equipment Sharing

We have cut down on our individual overhead in our community by sharing resources and equipment between community members. Our rule is that you check out the equipment and bring it back in good shape and on time. People have shared chain saws, pole saws, riding mowers, and allowed people access with supervision to the portable mill, weed whackers, and so much more. This saves money and time by not needing to travel to pick up rental equipment and return it. Usually, people also offer their skills with the equipment that is being lent out.

Neighbors also share when they will be gone for some time so that neighbors can check in on their home and make sure everything is ok. We also have community members who will pet sit or take care of a neighbor’s livestock while they are on vacation. Each of these helpers builds community for all of us.

Produce Sharing from Gardens

Many of us in our community have vegetable gardens year-round that produce an overrun of vegetables. Most of us either post in our Google group or send out a text to people who might be interested and share the bounty from our gardens. Many of our community members also have fruit trees, and we can count on them for fresh lemons, oranges, apples, cherries, kiwis, and more. I know I have created apple butter and jams that have come from neighbors’ trees and then have shared those within our community.

This year, we are being proactive, and we are sharing a list of what we are planting in our spring/summer garden so people know ahead of time what we have to share. Our community is on a mountain that goes from sea level to over 2500 feet, so many different microclimates that grow different vegetables and fruit. We’ve learned that there is plenty to share with everyone. Those we share with sometimes volunteer to help in our gardens too, a bonus to community sharing!

Plant Trades

Plant trades have been a new occurrence in our community. With landscape plants and herbals costing much more currently, it helps overhead to do plant trades. A next store neighbor decided they didn’t want their banana palm any longer but would like some Shasta daisy plants or roses if anyone would like to trade.

Many plants divide or self-seed, so sharing plants of this sort is very simple. Another community member let our community know she was looking for comfrey for her medicinal garden and would trade lavender or rosemary in exchange. What’s interesting is our community sharing of skills, food, and more happens between people whose professions are lawyers, judges, carpenters, coders, restaurant owners, and more.

Have fun getting to know your neighbors and building community. It’s a process that doesn’t happen overnight, but over time, the benefits are amazing. Shed Windows and More believes in building community as a family-owned business; it’s the hallmark of our customer service and why we help DIY builders in all the facets of buying and installing the products they buy. Be sure to check out the Shed Windows and More 2025 Catalog and all of our new products!