That's not to suggest that I wasn't contributing more than my share to the noise, just that variety is the spice, as some say.
What better way to break up the monotony of the Monday maintenance chores than an extreme repair. A tank of a laptop met a bad end with some mixed rum, I think it was. I'm in!
I am easily swayed toward a tempting puzzle of limited profitability. It's just the way I'm wired. I'm of the beleaguered and much maligned SPSEC. For the uninitiated, that stands for "Silk Purse, Sows Ear Club." Let us just accept the notion that entropy is best resisted and that reducing and reusing are the two most potent and least embraced portions of The Environmental Three R's.
I'm a hound for repairs. A solenoid that fails to engage on the lawn tractor carburettor is like a magnet to me. The cheap little cutlery holder on the dish rack has me drawing a pattern to make one from galvanised sheet metal. It turned out to have lasted nearly twenty years. Frankly it doesn't matter. It could be a mechanical toy that has it's engineers planting a firm life expectancy of fifteen minutes into it's soul and I'm in like a dirty shirt to squeeze another half hour out of it.
People bring me prizes. Yesterday a gift of a small 12v geared head motor arrived. My head spins with possibility. It used to turn over the compost in a kitchen appliance. I feel like the crow finding a shiny spoon. I'll likely stash this little prize and do nothing with it, but it literally sings to me of the potential. Fortunately there is a community of like minded souls living on reclaimed spin off mechanical parts and devices that do a booming trade in what others might categorize as useless junk.
Granted, it's a self indulgent sport, like them all, this salvage life. It's a calling, and who can ignore that? Less is more. The element to balance the equation is that we had a full compliment of electronics before we had running water. Tough to pigeon hole us maybe? Strangely, that bit about having computers and video recording capacity long before we could crap inside, really made some visitors angry. I never really figured out why that was.
Travel lightly where you can folks. Doing my part one watch and clock at a time.
What's bred in the bone. My Dad and I are cut from very similar cloth and I think he's brilliant!
I think I'm wired the same way. I learned from a very young age to make everything last to it's absolute rebuildable limits, not because you have to, but as a preference. The newest car my dad ever bought was 8 years old.
ReplyDeleteI just got handed another snowblower that's rusted solid and has corrosion filling up the combustion chamber, and I giggled with glee. The newer motor on the truck provided me with a second spare flywheel too!
Our world might be in better shape both environmentally and financially if we quit throwing appliances and cars and even garden tools in the trash at the first sign of fault.
You can rebuild an alternator for a few bucks and an hours time if you catch it soon enough, dishwashers often share parts or are easy to make other parts fit and work...the list goes on. The landfill should be the LAST resort.
I agree.
ReplyDeleteManon mentioned in passing recently that a friend of hers had no concept of a worn out running shoe. The friend needs hers to be white and so she gets new ones on a regular basis.
We are all squanderous to someone I suppose.