Scotch Nature: Downtime

With so many of us at best having to take furlough days I'd like to not only refer people back to previous writing I've done on living below your means, but to have some new thoughts for saving money while you are laid off. Most of them boil down to trading time for money in a different way than you are used to:

• While you're working at a good paying job that demands your time and energy it can be worthwhile to hire basic maintenance and repair tasks done. However if you're being forced to take unpaid time off now is the time to put in some real thought on if you can figure out how to do a few things for yourself instead. We live in the golden age of "How to" tutorials so dust off the tools your father gave you, watch a few guides, and tackle that basic home repair. The hundred dollars or more you don't pay an electrician to change out a ceiling fan or a plumber to swap out a toilet float could go to getting your family through till you're back to work. (Disclaimer if you're a dumb-ass that does this wrong therefore damaging something or yourself don't come looking to me. You're the dumb-ass).
• As for cooking, you're already having to cook for your own family. Try slimming things down to less prepared ingredients. Remember you now have time to trade for money instead of trading money for time. Stop with paper plates, you now have time to do the dishes for all the meals.
• As for cleaning get a large bottle of sanitizing concentrate cleaner instead of the more expensive and now hard to find Clorox wipes. Heck you can look up cleaner recipes on line. Similarly economize the use of paper towels. If you're like me you have more undershirts than you actually need and some of them are getting threadbare. Cull the undershirts and you have multi purpose washable cleaning rags. There are multiple recipes out there for making your own laundry and dish-washing powder (If you want it to clean better go to the paint isle and pick up some trisodium phosphate to add a small of). 
• Time any Baking for the cooler parts of the day, and any clothes drying for the part of the day that is closest to your preferred home temperature (which you should probably rethink) since your dryer acts like an exhaust fan drawing in the ambient outside air to the whole house.