My first controlled topic has to do with DIY projects and how they can suck the life out of you. DIY, of course, stands for Do It Yourself. Now, for many years, this term didn't exist, because most people, unless they were super rich, more or less HAD to do everything themselves. DIY was just life. However, as times changed and people got more money, better access to products, and things got more complex, we lost touch with doing most things on our own.
I think DIY became a bigger thing because of Home Depot and cable television. No, no . . . I am serious about this. Think about it. Yeah, some people worked on their own projects before HGTV and Trading Spaces, but not in such vast numbers. For many years, the worst you had was some people trying to repaint their house. By the early 2000s, you had have the nation hitting poor innocent pieces of furniture with chains (to "antique" them) and people sponging six crass colors of paint on their walls and calling it a "treatment."
It's one of those things I bet people shudder over when they think about. Yes, the fugly pink and berries wallpaper you had in the living room sucked, but was it really worse than the layers of puce, gold, mauve, ivory, and birch you replaced it with? Don't get me wrong. Some paint treatments probably looked amazing. Most of them, however, should be put in a box with acid washed jeans, jeggings, and jelly shoes and shot into the sun.
Anyway, even though Paige Davis is no longer our leader, the DIY bug still infects many Americans, and because of it, millions will suffer. Of course, not all DIY projects are bad. Some people finish them and their lives are blissful because of it. However, for many of us, that just isn't the case. Let's look at some of the problems.
- Spending a Mountain to get a Mole Hill.
Sometimes we see something we want. Say, a nice book shelf or a vintage bathtub. We skitter over to it and look at the price, make little squeaking sounds, and decide we can never afford it. Some people give into the despair of this. Others, because Home Depot and HGTV, decide they will make their own.
Now.....on the Flow Chart of Life.....if you are asking SHOULD I MAKE THIS?......the first question should be DO I HAVE THE SKILLSETS TO DO THIS? If the answer is yes, then proceed. If the answer is no, then stop.
Of course, most of us don't stop. We go buy all the supplies we need. Probably more. If we lack the tools, we'll buy those. We buy other stuff because Home Depot sucks you in like that. We set up a place to do it. We buy gloves and paint . . .
And suddenly, you realize you may be spending more on building the object of desire than you would have spent on just buying it in the first place. This isn't always the case, but it certainly happens quite often.
- The Land of Unfinished Projects.
Once we have our supplies for our DIY thing, we either work on it or we put the supplies some place. Most often, we put the supplies next to all the other supplies for all the other projects we plan to do. The more organizes among us probably label what supplies go to what project. Then again, these people probably complete the projects anyway.
For the rest of us, the piles of wood and paint and fabric and canvas and lamp pieces and whatever else find a nice life as dust collectors. They get boxed up and shifted around. They move with us. They find new homes in our new homes . . . often at the cost of even having relevance in the new home. They get outdated. They rot. We forget why we bought them in the first place.
Of course, we don't toss them out. We spent good money on them. They're practical things to have around because one day we'll DIY them and they'll become . . . something.
Except, for many of us, they won't. While some people make good on finishing all those projects, the vast majority of them just become stationary reminders of our good intentions but eventual failures.
- All Our Ugly Children
The flipside of never finishing your projects is, of course, that you do. This seems well and good and it can be . . . so long as you don't suck. If you don't suck, then hey, great project!
If you do suck, then you find yourself stuck with some ugly, bent, screwed up piece of DIY hellery. And yes, you keep it, because you a. spent all that money on the supplies b. spent all that time making it. It's your blood, sweat, and tears . . . and so like any other ugly child, you feel obligated to keep it.
I know this one to be a fact because a lot of the stuff I knit turns out malformed or ugly. I love knitting, but I'm not that great or skilled or talented. I'm also kind of lazy and hate to count and tend to buy the wrong kind of yarn for whatever it is. So my projects end up being misshapen and comical. I have quite a few hats that look like nipples at the top. Do I still wear them? Hell yes! It's my baby, after all.
Look, I'm all for the independent person. I think it would be great if we could all make our own clothes and build our own chairs. In an ideal world, we'd all have the skills, time, gumption, and money to do this.
It's not an ideal world though. It's a world full of half-assed Ikea shelves and decorative pillows only a mother could love. If you want to do a project yourself, more power to you. Assess your skills first. Assess your knowledge base. Figure out how much effort you're willing to put into it. And . . . see if maybe you can find an already made one on Craigslist.
It's not an ideal world though. It's a world full of half-assed Ikea shelves and decorative pillows only a mother could love. If you want to do a project yourself, more power to you. Assess your skills first. Assess your knowledge base. Figure out how much effort you're willing to put into it. And . . . see if maybe you can find an already made one on Craigslist.
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