Installed a new garbage disposal. Put in a new ceiling fan/light. Disassembled, cleaned, reassembled and fixed a clothes dryer. Cleaned tile grout. Installed a GFCI. Sprayed the house with exterminator bug spray. Fixed a broken refrigerator ice maker. Corrected a poorly and mislabeled circuit breaker box. Begun work on new kitchen cabinets. Minor engine repairs and tune up on my truck (new air filter, spark plugs, fuel filter, clean battery leads, etc.). Removed overgrown trees and bamboo and minor landscaping. Unclogged dryer vent on roof and in attic crawl space.
The list goes on for the things I have done in just the last 3 weeks since moving to Florida.
And that’s just house work, aside from all the work associated with starting our own business.
But as I’ve piddled around on these different projects, there have been numerous times that I was thankful for at least two things my father has given me: a great set of tools, and a work ethic that that is heavily informed by a Do It Yourself philosophy. Growing up with my dad and grandfathers, I learned quickly that a man can fix just about anything around the house/garage, given the right tools, a patient and inquisitive mind and a long Saturday afternoon. They also hammered home (no pun intended) the fact that DIY usually saves a lot of money. And it’s rewarding.
John Derbyshire touches on this a bit in the National Review this week, where he observes the growing decline in the “hunting population,” and wonders if this not symbolic of a greater cultural trend, that of a declining working class. What caught my eye was how he notes that this could also be evidenced by our attitude toward home repairs and what we in the old days called household “chores.” We are becoming/have become a culture whose first move when it comes to “work” is toward their cell phone (or Google) rather than their toolbox.
It’s like when we were kids and would yell across the house requesting the spelling of some vocabulary word from our mother. Whereas my Mom made me get a dictionary to look it up, our culture is used to having the spelling yelled back to them.
Is that wrong? Maybe not. Of course, if you prefer to spend your hard earned money on somebody who’s willing to earn it by some hard work, that’s your prerogative. But not me - I’d rather do it myself. Maybe I can save some money, or perhaps take the money I saved from buying a new clothes dryer and instead buy that new dryer for somebody in my church or community who can’t afford a dryer at all.
To top it all off, I think it’s no coincidence that the more we are content to have someone else do our work or fix our stuff, the more stuff we will be inclined own. The accumulation of stuff – the Great American Dream. But what’s the old adage – the more stuff you own, the more your stuff owns you? Or as Rich Mullins put it, the stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the Keeper of all good things. Perhaps by being forced to spend a Saturday afternoon or a Monday night trying to fix the hot water heater, I’ll be a little less inclined to buy that new household gadget that I probably didn’t really need anyway, and in the process I’ll be rid of one less thing to distract me from my King. Plus He delights in our hard work, too.
So, do you think there will be hunting and NASCAR in heaven?
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2 comments:
Do you do fascia?
Don't forget that women really dig a guy that can fix stuff. Or, at least, my wife does.
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