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At Make-Do Mondays, we discuss how we’re simplifying, downsizing, repurposing, buying used, and using what we’ve got.

It’s a carnival celebrating creative problem-solving, contentment, patience and ingenuity. To participate, share your own make-do solution in the comments or write up a Make-Do Mondays post at your blog, then return here to link via Mr. Linky. Enjoy others’ ideas by clicking on Mr. Linky and then clicking on people’s names.

Here’s a mini-tutorial on Mr. Linky:

Click on the icon and a separate page will pop up. Type in your blog name and paste in the url of your new Make-Do Mondays post. Click enter and it should be live. If it doesn’t work, just include the link in the comments.

To visit people’s posts or check that yours worked, click on Mr. Linky and when the page comes up, click on a name. You should be taken right to the page provided.

 

Make-Do Mondays Participants

  1. Sewing Chick (Menu Plan, gray paint, and tolerating the ugly fan)
  2. Like Mother, Like Daughter (Shelf–to paint, or not to paint)
  3. Rancho Ruperto (Free Cosmos)
  4. Mama Long (T-Shirt Refashion)
  5. Sunnydaytodaymama (rosewater)
  6. Sunnydaytodaymama (mud)
  7. ’50s Housewife (Iced Coffee)
  8. Feels Like Home (Creamy Spinach Doodles)
  9. Life Together (Make-Do Composter)
  10. CherieZ Recipes (Ozark Pudding)

Make-Do Mondays with Ann

I’m back among the Internets after a week of camping (see me waving and shouting “Hi! Good to see you again, friends!”? See me dumping sand out of my shoes and duffel bag? See me tackling at least four mountains of laundry?).

If there were a continuum of campers, where you would find on one end snowbirds in their giant RVs decked out with oak cabinets and parquet flooring, and on the other end would be Boy Scouts building a lean-to shelter out of branches, I suppose we’re in the middle.

We own a pop-up, which gets us up off the ground, and we use a few electric appliances to make life easier. Our goal is not to make all our food in a dutch oven over an open fire; we camp to save enough money so that we can visit places of interest. Because our camping motive is primarily to secure inexpensive lodging, we don’t feel bad about bringing along things to make life at the campsite easier, like the electric griddle for pancakes and a hotpot to heat water.

Yet, even with our luxury items, I think of campsite coffee preparations as making-do.

The Belgian Wonder brought along some Starbucks coffee, so he certainly wasn’t making-do with a cheap instant brand, no sir.

Instead, to make a small thermos of morning coffee, he used a plastic drip gadget that sits atop a coffee mug or other appropriate container.

I apologize in advance for the breakfast clutter we’ve captured on film. All the cereal boxes and used bowls are unattractively on display. Clearly we weren’t the tidiest campers who ever drove a stake into the sand.

But I thought you might enjoy seeing the gadget at work. It’s very simple. He measures out what he thinks will be the right amount of grounds into the small filter (getting the right strength is the trickiest part, he says), which sits in the plastic piece, then pours very hot water over the top and lets it drip.

Several people have recommended that he take along a French press instead, but he prefers this.

How do you make do?

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