On the one hand I have an unreasonable pride of ownership in the fact that I own a house. I love my house, love my neighborhood, love that I have a double lot with a big yard and the ability to daydream about putting up a little studio apartment workshop place, or move the garage and driveway to the other side of the house and have this big expanse of yard for barbeques and picnics, etc. And I feel proud of myself -- this house, I am responsible for it, I am paying down the mortgage and in nineteen years or so I won't need to pay anyone to live anywhere. And I like to tinker around with it in little ways -- paint a room, rip up carpets and paint the floors, prune the rosebushes, plant bulbs.
On the other hand I feel completely bullied and tormented about my house, and my big yard and the tyranny of hedges and bushes and shrubs out there, reaching their ambitious tendrils further and further beyond where they are supposed to be every year. I have replaced a refrigerator and a stove this year, and am bracing my bank account for a new efficient hot water heater, but there's a roof to be replaced and a bunch of painting to be done and the bathroom tiles are loosening up and need to be taken care of and each one of these things fill me with fear and dread. I'm not a handy person and my savings account is very small and slow to regenerate itself and although arguably I have the time I have hardly the desire to become a do-it-yourselfer. So I end up sort of paralyzed and frustrated and scared that my house and my yard are way way way too much for me to handle, that I'm not equipped to make decisions and then implement them, that I'm a lousy steward and a flaky homeowner. Things don't look the way I want them to look and the thought of all the steps toward getting them there -- tools and money and time and decisions about things that are still mysterious to me -- overwhelms me.
Today Housemate and I walked ten miles, and I just mowed the lawn. Housemate and her boyfriend are tilling the yard and putting in a garden and the boyfriend keeps asking me questions about what I'm thinking about doing with this hedge and do I have a chainsaw and when does the transfer station close and I'm on the one hand grateful for his interest and ambition and knowledge and on the other feel like a lazy moron dope. Each project we discuss connects to a million other projects and I'm tired and wanted to do some other things today besides walk and mow and prune hedges and clean the garage and take down the fence and on and on and on. And I feel like I shouldn't want to be inside blogging or even going rock climbing (which I'm planning to do later today) when the house and the garage and all these projects need to be done.
The lawnmower needs an air filter. That's the kind of thing that makes the little girl inside me feel defeated and want to cry. I mean, okay, it's not a big deal, right? Just go and get an air filter. But where? Sears, I'm guessing. And how much will it cost? And how many questions will the person selling me the air filter ask me about the mower that I don't know the answer to? There are a million things like the air filter that are involved with owning a home -- things that require errands and purchases and fiddling around with machinery, things that will involve people looking at me and matter-of-factly asking questions like, "Well, do you want gas or electric?" as though I know what they are talking about and have an opinion, and making me feel flaky and stupid and incompetent because I don't. And at the end all I have is the status quo -- a mowed lawn, a hedge that's not outrageously out of control, a stove that works, water that's hot when I want it to be hot and cold when I want it to be cold. I have so little interest in learning new vocabularies and physical skills where the result is, well, that the house stays under control. And yet I hate that I don't love doing it. It's like I wish I liked doing the dishes, and feel ashamed that I don't, because life would be better and I would be more admirable if I were less disinterested in all this. I wish I liked home improvement projects, and feel like I'm a bad person because I don't. I rarely wish for lots and lots of money but this is an arena that I would love to splurge on -- not the luxury of having a really fancy house or even a particularly different house, but the luxury of paying someone to take care of all the stuff about living here -- the water systems, the roof, the project of moving the garage, the yard -- all the stuff I want to have work but don't particularly want to learn about or know about or mess around with.
The difference between men and women with regard to do-it-yourself stuff is that men start out assuming (incorrectly) that they know what they're doing, while women assume (correctly) that they don't. So, men blunder around a lot, and women agonize. I'm not sure which is the steeper learning curve. Both are steep, but the men may wind with better retention as a result of the pain of blundering up against their ignorance, when their assumption of knowledge is proven wildly at odds with reality.
Posted by: win | May 02, 2004 at 06:59 PM
I have (correctly) never assumed that I know how to do such repair stuff; and, I've known a lot of women who are far better at it than their husbands or boyfriends (my sister-in-law is in charge of anything requiring more than a screwdriver at my brother's house).
I've always admired people who were really good at a profession and had those fixer-upper, handy-person skills (which I think very often can be far more useful and satisfying than, for example, lawyering skills). So, I have always chided myself for not being willing to take the time to learn one or two practical skills for around the house, or the car.
For most of us, I think Voluntary Ignorance might be an appropriate term for the failure to learn such genuine skills -- with two varities, Sloth-Based and Snob-Based. And Feigned Helplessness might be used for situations where we just want someone else to do simple chores: such as old-fashioned husbands who have never mastered the very difficult science of using a washing machine, or otherwise intelligent wives who similarly appear to be flammoxed by re-setting the clock on the vcr.
Posted by: David Giacalone | May 03, 2004 at 08:50 AM
About that air filter and the lawn mower containing it, use your computer skills to check out all the info you'll ever need about the mower or the air filter.
While you're surfing, check out some of the home improvement sites and gardening site. They give you tons of information on how to do stuff.
Almost all manufacturers have website now and they are full of information that can help you decide whether you want an electric whatever or a gas one. Don't forget to check out the .gov sites for energy star recommendations and other consumer tips. Stores like Home Depot, Lowes, etc have lots of information. Window shop on line and get educated about the stuff you need to buy.
About the sheer number and size of home-related projects, don't let them paralyze you! Make a list of ONLY the things that drive you nuts or that MUST be accomplished, either because your house will be damaged if you don't attend to it or because something's broken and must be replaced. After you make your list, assign a priority to each item. Do one a week (where the project lends itself to that kind of scheduling) or plan a time for doing or getting done the big headache projects. Maybe hire a neighborhood kid to do the lawn mowing so you can free up a bit more time for the project.
Forget the rest of the project and only add them to your list if and when they fit the drive you nuts, must be fixed, or leads to damage criteria outlined above. Sometimes it helps to think of these non-priority projects as stuff you'll do when _______ (you fill in the blank, recognizing that "hell freezes over" is an acceptable answer).
You are blessed with a terrific brain. Use it to master your projects and don't let your projects master you! There is nothing wrong with bartering with someone to get jobs done or to have someone teach you how to do a job. Swapping jobs with friends is another option.
Above all, don't get discouraged about it! Use some of the same techniques you describe using to stay on task at work to keep your projects under control.
Good luck from a lawyer with a 44-year-old home that has needed two roofs (10 years apart; don't get me started on how much I hate buying roofs!), that had a porch that got eaten by carpenter ants (courtesy of a blue spruce tree that provided the ants with transit onto the porch), that got new windows and new exterior doors, and that sits on a one acre plot that used to have two gargantuan willow trees that dropped limbs and branches whenever the wind blew . . . need I say more?
Posted by: Ann Byrne | May 03, 2004 at 09:56 PM