home despair

The GE gave me a present yesterday. It was a very sweet and thoughtful gift but it made me a little sad--it was a spinster gift! I live alone in a house I bought last November. I know how to fix a couple of things but mostly I'm clueless and lacking in a large number of tools, so when things break I can either ignore it, rig it up or pay someone to fix it for me. My gift was Dare to Repair, a book written by women for other women who don't a lot of know-how but want to fix their own stuff. I've already looked through it and changed the direction of some ceiling fans that were circulating in the wrong direction (counter-clockwise for hot weather) and am wondering if I'm really going to tackle the leaky kitchen sink.

The book is good--not as detailed as other home-fix-it tomes--it reminded me of Our Bodies, Ourselves for houses. Our Houses, Ourselves?