9.10.2003: The Unhealthy Lure of MenardsTM
Any homeowner knows that a trip to [Insert Name of Favorite Home Improvement Store] is like the proverbial potato chip: you can't make just one. You never can get everything you need for a project in one go. If you try, you still have to go back--to return the stuff you bought too much of. For some reason they never show any of these trips on "This Ol' Shack".
A brief recap for those of you who've not slogged through previous rants or committed them to memory yet: There are three things in my life right which now having me strolling through Menards two to three times a week.
- An old house (Which needs a little fixing up before we can sell it)
- A new (to us) house (the primary reason for wanting to sell the old house quickly. The new house is closer to Menards!)
- The soon arrival of a three-year old boy (Foster care)
In addition to fix-up necessities of the first two and the obvious child safety improvements inspired by the third item, there is one additional relevant fact we know about the boy: He knows how to work the little knob on a door that locks it from the inside.
While you're pondering the ramifications of that, consider this additional information. The new house has four exterior doors (including one to a screen porch and one to the garage,) all of which lock from both sides. When we bought the new house we got two garage door openers and three keys. Two of the keys open the front door, the third only opens the door to the imagination--it certainly doesn't fit anything else in the house.
Additionally there were four interior doors with little twisty locking knobs, including the basement and two bathrooms. In fact, there are only three doors that did not lock (all bedrooms.) All of these must be kept unlocked at all times or we may never get in those rooms again.
Conclusion: I'm in the process of replacing four exteriors locksets (bonus point: I got them all keyed to the same key!) and four interior locks to the kind that can be popped open by sticking something screwdriver-like in a slot on the outside knob. Make that five. See, not only can he lock open doors, he can also open unlocked doors. A lock on our bedroom seemed like a good idea too. Which leaves only two original doorknobs in the whole place. Oh well, might as well make them shiny too.
You'd think I have enough to do, and more than enough to buy just in knobs alone. But the thing about home improvement stores is that 'home improvement' is a really wide scope if you think about it. Kitchen stuff, bathroom stuff, floor stuff, wall stuff, lawn stuff, garage stuff, carpet stuff, repair stuff, furniture stuffing stuff, decorating stuff, cleaning stuff, and just about any other kind of stuff you would need or keep in your home.
And even if you know right where the stuff you need is stuffed, it's never the stuff at the front of the store when you walk in. No one would walk through the store for that stuff, that's why it's there at the front or at the checkout. For what you want, you gotta wind your way through aisles and stacks of what you didn't know you needed when you came in, but which now looks really useful. And if you pick up something innocent--say, a tube of caulk--chances are that when you put it to use, you'll discover there's just one more thing you need to do the project (and probably more caulk to finish it.) And so the wheel turns and the cycle begins anew...
Oh, one last thing--if you're not a homeowner: you can still experience this for yourself. Go back a re-read this starting from the first paragraph. When you get to the paragraph just before this one, go back to the top again. Repeat.
The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. -- Mad Magazine
