The Art of DIY
Posted by michelle on Mar 21, 2012 in Saving Money | 22 comments
The skies above me are clear and blue, the baby is sound asleep for her morning nap, and what do you think I’m doing? I’m weeding my stupid garden. Apparently, having a gardener is very expensive. I wouldn’t know, because I’ve never had one. Besides, my dad was a horticulturist (or is it a botanist? Maybe it’s both?) and I didn’t marry rich, so here I kneel with bugs crawling across my flip flops and top soil under my fingernails. Don’t feel too sorry for me, though, as I’m not sure I’d pay a gardener to do this for me anyway, no matter how much money I had. It’s not like I don’t know how to pull weeds, right? Pulling weeds, planting flowers, painting fences, staining decks…these aren’t chores that are necessarily difficult to do. They’re sometimes back-breaking, often time-consuming, and not exactly glamorous jobs, but let’s be real–it’s not like you need a degree to do these things. So, as long as I’ve got a strong back and plenty of time on my hands, I will continue to do these simple, albeit annoying and tedious, chores myself. In fact, I’m a big proponent of DIYing! First of all, you’ll save a bunch of money and second of all, you’ll feel so proud to be able to tell your friends that you cultivated your own garden or laid your own flooring or whatever it is you did yourself.
Last night, the boys spent the night with their grandma so Jeff and I went to Home Depot to spend some of the money we just made. Before I lose my readers who think I’ve jumped ship and have gone back to my shopaholic ways, let me tell you what, buddy–the yard needs it! Our neighbors are all nice people, but if they weren’t, I’m sure we’d be getting calls from the neighborhood association for having a total eye sore of a back yard. The fence needs repairs, toys end up all over the place instead of staying in the designated sandbox, the deck is naked *gasp*, and the trampoline’s cover and net are in need of some TLC. We can’t afford to fix it all, but we decided to spend some of our coffee survey money on an outdoor toy bin and some lattice for our naked deck. (I may be overestimating the maturity of my readers by typing the words “naked” and “deck” so close together like that. Oh well.) Anyway, we get out to our mid-size sport utility vehicle with two 4×8′ cuts of lattice and Jeff starts to put down the seats in the back except for the one we need for Baby SeeDebtRun, who is pulling at my shirt and whining by this time. After the seats are down, I start to laugh.
I do what any good wife would do in this situation and keep my mouth shut while my husband does his best to shove the pretty, delicate wood into the back of our car. After a few minutes and several cars having passed us during the embarrassing situation, he admits “Okay, you were right.”
Back in we walk with a baby who could use a snack and a diaper change by now and our pretty-but-uber-annoying lattice work. We find a nice guy in an orange vest who looks like he’s cut some wood a few times in his life and follow him back to the gigantic saw. The whole walk back, he’s talking to our baby and telling us cute stories about his granddaughter. Really nice guy. After a few cuts, he helps us out to our car where we load it up with more ease. The only problem? The passenger seat is blocked almost completely. Even with the cuts, I will have to ride home hunched over. Oh, and one more teeny, tiny caveat; Jeff can’t reach the gear shifter over the lumber and can’t see anything at all on his right side. Let’s just say it was a very fun ride home.
If you were DIYing, you could be having this much fun, too. What kinds of things do you DY? Are there any chores you won’t DY? Any jobs you prefer to DY? Are you kind of tired of me typing “DY?”
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- Friday's Circle of Friends - March 23 - The Late Edition | Tackling Our Debt - [...] Michelle at See Debt Run wrote a post about The Art of DIY [...]
- Motivating Mum UK » Blog Archive » Totally Money Blog Carnival #60 - [...] The Art of DIY by Michelle at See Debt Run. I love this image of a family trip to a DIY ...
- TotallyMoney Blog Carnival #60 - TotallyMoney - [...] See Debt Run reveals the art of DIY. [...]
- Debt Update - A New Goal for Debt Payoff | See Debt Run - [...] to get out of debt. Our house has many needs, but we will “patch” things using cheap DIY until ...
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LOL. My dad has a building supplies company and we used to see a lot of that sort of thing. You’re not the only one!
Phew! I’m glad we’re not alone in forgetting we don’t own a pick-up.
I love doing some things but it all comes down to time for me.
I don’t mind mowing my yard and upkeeping it, but when time is limited it’s really a burden an annoyance. I have to mow that thing like twice a week when it rains a lot! Ugh.
We do all of our yard work and house cleaning ourselves, but when it comes to repairs on cars/houses then I’m useless. Those are things I could do myself (DIM) but I just don’t like to take the time.
I admit I don’t DIM on those things either. I have no idea how to change the oil in my car. Well, I have an idea, but I would just rather pay someone to do that for me.
I usually try to DIY then if I am not able to succeed, that is when I hire it out. I just sanded and stained the floors in our rental unit. They look professional With the vast reaches of the internet now and you tube you can learn how to do just about anything.
Ahh…Christopher! You made the point I forgot I wanted to touch on–that there’s so much info out there, you really can’t use the excuse “but I don’t know HOW!”
I just changed the brakes on my wifes car a few weeks back…thank youtube for the video…
I love DIY. I’ll try almost anyone once (or even twice if I’m foolish enough to believe that I can do it). One thing I won’t try again is grooming my pets. When we first adopted our dog he was a bit of a mess. I decided that I could buy some expensive clippers on ebay and proof…I was a groomer. But I was so so wrong! I was me with expensive clippers
I clipped him too short and uneven and when I was done I felt so bad for him I bought him a sweater and cried. Eric made me promise I’d never try to groom any of our pets again. Yeah it’s expensive to have them groomed, but I’m not a groomer.
Kari, that is such a cute/sweet/funny story!! I bet your little furbaby looked adorable in his sweater. Now hand over the clippers
Since I rent an apartment there isn’t really a whole lot for me to DIY. I think I would enjoy doing some of this kind of stuff though. It would be good to get a bit of exercise and it would feel rewarding to say I did it myself. Still I’m in agreement with Jason from WorkSaveLive, it would come down to time. When you work a side business at home, time really is money. So if that project is taking too much time, you may be sacrificing too much on your business.
Very true, Jeremy. You sound like my husband…who STILL hasn’t finished the baseboards!! *dirty look*
My DIY project is my weekly haircut work. I’ve been doing it now for the past 15 years, and needless to say it has worked out well for me. Over that period of time, I’ve gotten good at giving myself different style haircuts, and have saved quite a bit of money to boot.
Nice, Anthony. I cut Jeff’s and the boys’ hair and trim my ends, but I’m never ever ever ever ever going to give myself bangs again. Never ever. Ever. And my little girl is only 8 months old, so she doesn’t even have enough hair to put in a barrette yet. I should probably promise to never cut her hair either while I’m at it.
Wow you sound just like my family when we go on a trip to do… anything! 6 month old baby who gets hungry at the most inopportune times, lemme tell ya! As for DY, I’m not handy at all. Though I’d like to be. Our flowerbeds are in need of some serious attention but I kill any plant life I lay my hands on.
Every plant life you touch, huh? Come over and touch all my weeds, will ya?
I’m marginally handy, but nothing too huge. I can change light switches and fixtures (with only a small mark where the giant electricity arc went), but I really don’t enjoy gardening in the least. I try and pay friends or family to do that if they are interested (younger brother in law works well here) and I still end up doing muchy more than I care to. I can mow the grass and rake leaves, but pulling weeds kinda gets to me.
Karl, I pay my kids sometimes. They don’t know the value of the dollar thankfully, so I can take advantage of the little darlings.
I’ve heard this line before:
“Sure, it is. I just need to move some things around.” LOL
I love doing things inside and outside of the house. We had a lot of weeds last summer and we will again come June. Several years ago I bought an amazing weed puller on sale. No need to ever bend over to pull weeds and the fork on this week puller grabs them by the roots so you get everything out.
I need one of those. I would be out there waving at my neighbors and smiling instead of crawling around mumbling under my breath.
my DIY is fixing my computer and house cleaning. but I am only able to do them when I have time and I am not tired. Sometimes when I am feeling lazy I just don’t care much but take it up a few days later
I always do the weeding,planting and very small paint jobs. My husband does pretty much everything else. If I want something done then I just start the project and he soon takes over in fear that I will screw it up. Works for me
I have included this post at my website weekly roundup #2