Doing maintenance around the house is usually DIY. It can be anything from fixing a leaky faucet to cutting the grass.
There are always new challenges that I am willing to take on, like fixing a broken wand on our vertical blinds. My grandson, Nagol, was a little too aggressive trying to close the blinds in the family room and broke off the wand that you use to pull the blinds shut. Using an eyehook, I was able to screw it into the broken slide on the rail. I reattached the wand and it was fixed.
I am sure I am not alone with this belief that I do DIY things because I can do it cheaper. It might not be better than a professional, but you hope it is close. There are things I will do because I am cheap, while others I will do for the challenge. No, strike that, I am just cheap. In most cases I do not enjoy doing DIY tasks, I just think I do not want to pay someone to do them. I recognize at times that I am over my head when I pursue a particular endeavor, so I leave it to a professional.
I do not like home maintenance tasks. I particularly hate landscaping maintenance, like cutting the grass. Cutting the grass is a necessary evil for us suburbanites who want nice, plush, green lawns. We put fertilizer and weed killer on it so it looks good. We compare and admire great looking lawns. At times we are envious of that neighbor that always has a picturesque sea of green.
I strive to have the perfect lawn, but it always falls short. Maybe it is because I hate taking care of it. I have gotten better as I aged. Maybe I have more time or maybe I learned some new tricks. I dread spring and early summer, as I work on my lawn and sometimes have to cut it twice per week. By mid-summer it has reached its peak of impressiveness. As we get less rain in the second half of summer, the lawn loses its color as it goes dormant, and I struggle not to pull out the hose to water it. (Not really.) I am now free to cut my grass maybe once every two weeks. The lawn looks terrible, but somehow, I feel good.
I owned my share of lawn mowers. The first one I owned was a Sears-Craftman® gas-powered push mower with the Briggs & Stratton® engine. For fifteen years I never changed the spark plug, filter or oil and it started every summer. I would only drain out the gas to winterize it. Every once and awhile, I would go out and purchase a new blade. I was too lazy to sharpen it myself. I eventually gave it away and bought mowers that you had to take care of. That meant every spring I needed to replace the spark plug and air filter. If I did not, I would get a great workout pulling that starter rope multiple times.
Efiwym, my wife, would often say that she would like to cut the grass, but she could not get the mower started. I fixed that problem by making sure I replaced the spark plug and filter every spring. One or two pulls and that mower would start. I loved coming home after work on Friday and see that my lovely wife had cut my grass. Of course, that meant I had more time on Saturday to work on the “Honey-do” list.
What sparked this blog post was what happened this weekend. We had to go to a graduation party early Saturday afternoon. After morning activities like grocery shopping, I would not have time to cut the grass. I thought about doing it on Friday after work, but we had made plans for that evening. I could do it on Sunday, but it was supposed to rain all day. I could not believe I was planning my weekend around cutting the grass! That task is constantly on my mind as I head into a weekend. And I do not even like doing it.
I did find time before we left for the party, but that required a change of clothes and another shower. As usual I did the trimming even though when I started, I said to myself that it was not necessary. I even sprayed for some weeds that popped up between mowings. The lot is about a quarter of an acre, but really about seven thousand square feet of grass. I finished with my weekend required task in about 45 minutes. It was about 85 degrees, and I was drenched in sweat. The mower is a self-propelled model, but I still need to push it as the wheels will just spin in some areas where the grass is thick. My knees and ankles ached from walking into uneven spots in the lawn. Nonetheless, the lawn always looks great after it is mowed.
As I sat on the bench on the front porch sipping on a Diet Coke®, I pondered the day that I would be willing to pay someone to cut the grass. That thought was fleeting. I figured it would be cheaper in the long run to just purchase a riding mower and still do it myself…