A Poor Girl's Logic

There is a saying that if something isn't broken, there is no need to fix it. Quite a lot of logic in that. When you're poor though, there is kind of amendment to this. "Even if it is broken, you should probably determine HOW broken it is before you fix it. If it still kinda works, you should be okay."

There needs to be some statement about duct tape in there too. "If it is broken, see if you can duct tape it back together." You'd be shocked what I have in my life that's being held together by duct tape. Most of the living room furniture, for example. Any time something rips on it, we just tape it back together and toss a sheet over it. It'll hold. Mattress springs have to eat through a couple of layers of duct tape before we'll buy a new mattress. Even my vehicles have some taped up places on them. I can't afford the repairs, so tape holds everything in place.

Tape can't fix everything though. There is a chance the oven on our stove is going out. It could be as simple as replacing the part that handles the pilot light but I somehow doubt that because it's kind of a general rule that no repairs are simple. More than likely, the oven is gone. This is how the conversation went past that.

Me: How much would the cheapest new stove cost?

Roommate: At least four hundred and we'd have to have someone install it.

Me: ..........yeah, okay, the range on the stove is working fine and we have a toaster oven.

Roommate: Agreed.

Adjustments will have to be made. We won't be able to cook huge things anymore. We'll have to size everything to the pans we can fit into the toaster oven, but that is certainly doable and it's also certainly cheaper than buying a new stove that we can in no way afford.

Hmm, actually, even if the range on the stove had gone out, I don't think we would have altered the plan much. We just would have remembered we have a crock pot and an electric skillet and proceeded from there. Random Christmas gifts save the day, which is nice because I can't see any way a new stove could be purchased. I really can't even see a way a used stove could be purchased considering we'd still have to pay to have someone install it. There is no way that could happen.

Honestly, I'm okay with this. There will be inconveniences and limitations, but we will, as usual, work around them. We make due. We're actually fairly good at that.