I’m Pretty Much D-O-N-E
There’s just no time to do everything!
Just because I know how to do stuff doesn’t mean I’m the one who’s going to do it. Everything takes time and energy, and both are at a premium now that I’m getting older.
After spending a good deal of my life painting, wallpapering, sewing, tree-pruning, repairing, spackling, assembling, disassembling and watching an infinite number of how-to’s on You Tube, this girl has reached the point of diminishing returns.
It’s not that I’m not proud of all I know and have accomplished. I can look at the countless lamps and light fixtures I’ve wired/rewired and feel satisfaction knowing I haven’t electrocuted myself or burned the place down. I love that my toilet will never misbehave because I know my way around a flapper, flush valve and other toiletology trappings. I enjoy looking at every one of the rods, drapes and valances I’ve installed at my windows. I’ve planned gardens and moved growing things around like furniture. I’ve even engineered some landscape features, such as a dry well and a dry stream bed to channel water away from my property. My whole extended family does this, too. It’s in my DNA.
Along the way, I’ve also assembled quite a collection of tools. I have a garage work bench. My heavy tool bucket gets strapped into its own seat in the car. High ladders don’t scare me. I get a kick out of repair-people who — having forgotten their ball-peen hammers or channel locks — look at my peg-board of gadgets and ask if my husband would mind if they borrowed one.
However, in my sixties DIY started to change to OMG. For example, a few years ago, I found my 65-year-old self on an extension ladder, wrangling a hose at 20-below zero, melting ice dams on my Minnesota roof. “I could die here, and the neighbors wouldn’t find me until the Spring thaw,” I grumbled. This was just before my warm-up suit pants, wet from the hose, froze to the aluminum ladder. I thought about climbing out of them and leaving them stuck and dangling from the rungs. In the end, I turned the water on myself to melt the ice, sloshed into the garage, and removed all lower garb.
And then there was the month I spent designing and installing five of those California-type closets. They came out great. But it was a whole fricking month of measuring, leveling and screw-drivering. I could’ve been reading, swimming or chatting with a friend. Those DIY tasks have a way of eating up time. And time is a commodity I’ve become very selfish with lately.
I won’t completely give up house projects. But these days, I prefer the quick and easy ones: lubricating hinges, dividing plants, decluttering a shelf.
I have a friend who says, “I don’t know how to do home repairs. But I do know how to write checks.” Which is good to think about, now that I’m older. If I hire folks for a lot of those tasks, I’ll have time for something I like better. Like writing home repair articles.
Kris Heim is a baby-boomer with a past: teacher, gardener, crafter, writer, traveler. She recently downsized by half and is trying to organize the squalor. 
