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IN JANUARY, I surrendered to passionate irrationality, buying a park unit in Arizona that has become my second home.
Now I understand why, at least in the movie cliché, a man might buy house slippers for his long-suffering wife’s birthday, while giving flashy, expensive baubles to his girlfriend for no reason at all.
My single-wide “girlfriend” is tiny and fragile, the bloom off her youth. Things that improve her are easily obtained. A phone call to a friendly fellow at a store, the provision of a credit card number, and—voila—my private world is transformed for the better. Rational me knows the value I derive from each expenditure might be marginal, perhaps an imaginary gain or even an actual loss.
Meanwhile, our longtime family home in California could also benefit from a new refrigerator, as well as much, much more. Over three decades of living in that house, I’ve remodeled, bought new appliances, replaced a furnace, changed out windows, and completed countless other projects. I have clear memories of improvements that helped and ones that disappointed.
As of today, my 2007 kitchen remodel refrigerator has yet to die, so I’m thinking it can wait another year. After all, even when I’m living in the old family house, I’m not staring at the refrigerator nonstop. I might be in the living room, or dining room, or upstairs or out in the yard, with no thoughts of refrigeration clouding my mind.
Here in my immobile home, the living room is also the dining room and the kitchen. Its tiniest flaws, any neglected maintenance, sit in plain view. On top of that—though not always the case—improving my single wide can require minuscule amounts of time, effort and cost. Less than a single quart repainted the “kitchen” and, with under 20 square feet of visible wall, no ladder was required. The whole of the “living room” took one evening to paint.
In a minor triumph of inspiration and imagination, I removed two cupboard doors to create a built-in bookshelf. Then I repurposed the doors as a faux cupboard, masking a badly executed prior owner’s remodeling project. Total expenditure: zero dollars and an hour with a screwdriver, tape measure and level.
Refurbishing the main family house, by contrast, usually involves dollar amounts that start close to $1,000 and easily end on the high side of $50,000. Not to mention weeks or months of arranging details and schedules with scarce home-improvement contractors.
Even here in Arizona, in the land of easy upgrades, a new refrigerator is not a low-cost item. Neither was the washing machine, nor installing a water conditioner. And I have my eye on an electric induction range next.
The easy immediacy of improvements in a small home is a delight. I see changes in an afternoon, making the place ever more useful and attractive as I put my individual stamp on its functionality.
I like to show off my trophy wife—or is it girlfriend?—of a holiday home. Family and friends smile at my fresh paint, a patched and scrubbed counter, a single fixed railing. By contrast, it’s been a decade since anyone walked into my California house and said, “Wow, this place looks so much better.”
I’m learning new things, having fun, and spending my hard-saved investment dollars on myself and others while I’m still around to enjoy the effects. This is my new self and a different life. I’ve uncovered an inner home engineer, and she turns out to be a spender.
I’m not that man in the cliché, however. Next time that I’m back in California, at the big old reliable house with her good bones, I promise to measure for a new refrigerator.
Catherine Horiuchi is retired from the University of San Francisco’s School of Management, where she was an associate professor teaching graduate courses in public policy, public finance and government technology. Check out Catherine’s earlier articles.
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That’s a very entertaining article, Catherine.
I suspect many of us have had jobs where we typically could not directly visualize what we had done. Thus a DIY project provides amazing gratification as we can see the before and after of what we have accomplished.
Developing new skills, often with the assistance of YTU (You Tube University) allows us to continue to grow.
Another common trait of readers here is frugality. As the charges of trade people seem to escalate more rapidly than general inflation, DIY jobs become more attractive. My observation has been that the newer and larger the truck of the contractor is, the higher the quoted price.
Your tale was such an enjoyable read. Thank you.
It also reminded me of a lesson I got in an economics class when I was getting my MBA many years ago. The teacher there explained why it was economically appropriate when you bought a new car to purchase a lot of upgrades and additional equipment. The lesson had something to do with the time you spent in the car and the greatly increased benefit you’d get from the extras, even if the time spent in the car was less than the time you’d spent in your primary residence. You get better value for your money from investing in your car than in your primary residence. It may be the same for your Arizona mistress.
Great article Catherine. I’m glad the impulse buy is working out for you. Sounds like fun!