Building Strong Community

Building Community Can Be Fun & Help Save Money

 

 

Building a community locally can be fun and save you money at the same time. I have seen firsthand that growing a community over the last few years has been an incredible experience. We have all learned so much and appreciate all the talents brought to the table. The ideas we share with you today are double wins. These are good strategies that produce tangible results for you and your family.

Saving money is a smart way to plan for your family’s goals or to set aside money for a rainy-day fund. Today, we’re sharing valuable tips from our local community- strategies that have helped us save but also strengthen our connections and build a more supportive neighborhood over the years.

 

Building Community Through Pot Luck Meals

Our local community gets together twice a year or more to share food. We have had these get-togethers for years, usually in the summer and during the holiday season.  Beyond these larger gatherings, neighbors come together for meals regularly to help build community and get to know each other. We have some great cooks in our community, including a restaurant owner. These regular times of meeting as neighbors have helped cement the friendships between all of us and have served as a source of support during challenging times.

 

What Are Your Neighbor’s Skill Sets?

Knowing your neighbor’s skills can save you money while building relationships between community members. We have listed on our community website compiled a list of members’ talents, and the process was both eye-opening and fun—who knew a lawyer could also be an incredible sourdough baker?

Our community is filled with a diverse range of expertise, far beyond just occupations. 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 Helps Build Community

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

In our community, members pay each other fair rates for their skills, but many also trade services.  From exchanging tree work for healing work on an animal to trading vegetables for cutting firewood, the possibilities are endless 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 the skills within your community. Have fun while building relationships and resilience 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!

 

Resource & Equipment Sharing

Our family has significantly reduced expenses by sharing resources and equipment with our community members. Our rule is when you use other people’s equipment, you always bring it back in good shape and on time. People have shared chain saws, pole saws, and riding mowers and allowed people access with supervision to a 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 knowledge 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 homes and make sure everything is fine. We have community members who will pet sit or take care of a neighbor’s livestock while they are on vacation. Each of these small acts of kindness strengthens our connections, proving that having what you need close by isn’t just convenient—it’s the foundation of a strong, supportive community.

 

Produce Sharing Between Neighbors

Many of us have vegetable gardens in our community 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’ve even made apple butter and jams from neighbors’ fruit and shared them in return.

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 we have many different microclimates that grow different vegetables and fruit. We’ve learned that there is plenty to go around. Those we share with sometimes volunteer to help in our gardens too, a wonderful bonus to community sharing!

 

Plant Trades Within Community

Plant trades have been a new occurrence in our community. With landscape plants and herbals costing much more money, it helps to do plant trades to lower costs.   For example, a next-door neighbor decided they didn’t want their banana palm any longer and offered to trade it for some Shasta daisy plants or roses.

Many plants divide or self-seed, which makes sharing plants of this sort very simple. Another community member was looking for comfrey for her medicinal garden and would trade lavender or rosemary in exchange. We have learned so much about each other through our trades of plants, skills, community dinners, and more. Our next project looks like it might be forming a food co-op, we’ll keep you posted about how that goes!

If you want to free up your time to do more of what you love, give us a call at 707-827-3316 or fill out the FREE Estimate form and one of our cleaning professionals will get back to you promptly to answer your questions and give you a free estimate.