Tag: Home Ownership

The Value of Shoveling

*Note – I didn’t have a blog post prepared for today, so here is a post I had drafted a few weeks back that didn’t get published.*

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Like many folks, we had a moderate dumping of snow last week [Editors note: as of April 19th, we did not receive snow last week where I live. We did, however, have several rounds of hail.]. Surprisingly, we’ve had a fairly mild winter so far with only one or two times where I’ve had to contend with heavy snow on the driveway. I’m normally able to clear our driveway in 20-30 minutes by pushing the snow off to the side (for reference, our wide driveway can easily fit six vehicles if needed).

When we get a heavier dumping of snow, my wife will ask if we’ve finally hit the point where it’s time to get a snow-blower. I’ve resisted getting a snow-blower for a few years now. I grant that it would make my life easier to have the machine do the work while I casually stroll behind its lumbering frame. I’ve used my father’s machine, so I’m comfortable with operating it, and I’m not opposed to owning one per se. But I have a few reasons to shy away from jumping in and joining my many neighbours who use a machine to clear their property.

We don’t really receive the kinds of snow dumps that would make it worth it, in my mind. The majority of our snowfalls are fairly light, so using a machine to clear the snow seems like overkill. Instead, spending a short amount of time to clear the snow and letting the sun take care of the rest of the work on the asphalt seems like a better use of my money.

Speaking of money, it’s a large investment to purchase and maintain a snow-blower. I have a very limited (read: none) knowledge of small engine maintenance, so I’d have to spend money each season to properly clean, prep, lubricate, tune, and run the machine. Owning a shovel and using sweat equity is such a small cost by comparison, and it’s way better for the environment.

Of course, there is the topic of my time – is it worth my time to manually clear snow. On this, there are two considerations. For light snowfalls, I don’t think the machine would take any less time for me to clear the snow when you factor in starting the machine, clearing snow, moving vehicles, and putting the machine away, whereas with a shovel I just work around the cars and push everything to the side. But there is something to the idea of cutting my time in half to clear a heavy snowfall.

To this, though, I’m in favour of manually clearing snow because I value the exercise and manual labour of the activity. While I’m able-bodied, I’m happy to sweat it out and get my heartrate up for an hour (especially during the pandemic where I’m spending far too much time sitting these days). I find it very satisfying to work on my property, and at the end of the task I can connect the exertion I feel with the snow piled up alongside my driveway.

I’m sure there will come a day in the future when I’ll concede and get a snow-blower (to my wife’s delight, as she refuses to shovel). I suppose in the interim, I can always tap the free labour my son will provide (when he gets a little older).

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

The Right Season To Learn

Something that I’ve started taking more seriously as of late is the idea that there is a seasonality to learning some things in life. In this case, I mean “seasonality” not in the calendar sense that we experience during the year (Spring, Summer, etc.), but more in a broad metaphorical sense, such as seasons of life. I think there are seasons of our lives where certain lessons are easier to learn than others. This is not to say that you can’t learn them outside of the “right” season, but that some lessons are easier to learn at certain points in your life.

For instance, I’ve heard complaints about the secondary school system’s curriculum not teaching useful skills. Where the modern high school student is wasting their time learning about Shakespeare, the argument goes, they should instead be focusing their attention on more practical matters such as learning how to budget.

I’ve long been skeptical of this criticism for two reasons. First, I don’t think it should be the job of the school to teach every skill that’s deemed important. When people complain that they didn’t learn useful things in school like how to do laundry, how to eat properly, how to do taxes, etc., I place the blame of the lack of skills on them and their parents. Those bits of know-how are readily searchable online now, and short of an accessibility issue with being able to use technology, I see no reason for being ignorant. No, instead, I see school as the domain of more specialized knowledge that would be challenging to teach in the home environment by your parents who otherwise might not be skilled in teaching subjects like the maths, sciences, and humanities.

However, the second reason why I don’t find those arguments persuasive is that there are some concepts that are not easily absorbed at that time of your life. I can only speak from my experience, but when I was a teen, I wasn’t earning an income to support myself, nor was I carrying the bills and debts that would require me to keep a budget. I didn’t have the frame of reference, experience, or need to learn those kinds of skills. Instead, I understood what it meant to set up a budget, but not how to actually keep it.

I’m finding the same for home repair during this season of my life. Prior to owning my own home (where I am directly responsible for its upkeep and my family’s comfort and security), I didn’t feel an incentive to invest time and energy into learning how to maintain the home. Growing up, I would help with the chores and some light maintenance, but otherwise my parents largely were the ones who did the important stuff with troubleshooting problems. Now, those responsibilities fall squarely on my shoulders, and I’ve had a number of instances where I’ve had to pay costly invoices to tradespeople for repairs and work that largely could have been handled by me had I possessed a better understanding of how my home worked.

This is not to say that people don’t learn these skills when they are young. Whether it is through personal interested, a keen disposition, or a patient and knowledgeable parent/mentor, plenty of people know how to do amazing things by hand that puts my simple repairs to shame. Nevertheless, I have now reached a season where I’m more receptive to these lessons, and I’m embracing them with an open mind and a willingness to try.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

New House, New Rules

We have recently moved houses (and cities), and we are still settling into our new abode.  It’s a bit of a chaotic time since we moved before our renovations were complete, so we are without a functioning kitchen until early next month, and though most of our washroom in the upstairs level is working, we still have to go downstairs in order to use a functioning sink.  It’s a minor inconvenience but one that we are fine to live with since the move has brought with it many perks – a quieter neighborhood away from university students, a shorter commute to work for my fiancee, and a nice backyard for barbecuing in.

In moving out of a condominium and into a house, it has brought new layers of responsibility.  Whereas before, our job was largely to ensure the unit was cared for (all things considered, a fairly minimal task), owning a house requires a fair amount of stewardship.  It’s a balancing act of routine upkeep, preventative maintenance, problem auditing, and financial mindfulness that is well beyond what was required of us at our last place.  For instance, in our old place, since it was a townhouse that was part of a condominium, all outdoor maintenance was taken care of by the condo’s management company.  This included repairs, lawn care, snow removal, gutter cleaning, building upgrades, etc.  Even things like water was handled though condo fees.

Now, all of those tasks fall to us, and more.  In some cases, a lot more.

Last weekend, our air conditioner froze.  Well, the A/C unit itself didn’t freeze, but the outdoor compressor and our interior coils above the furnace froze.  When we called a technician to come out and take a look at things, we found out several fun surprises – our until was installed in 1982, we were currently running on half the amount of refrigerant that the unit required to operate, that the refrigerant our unit uses is harmful to the environment and will no longer be manufactured by 2020, and that getting a crew out to find the leak and fix everything was going to be very expensive.  It was quite the house warming gift literally speaking, since the temperatures were up over 30 Celsius inside our house when the unit froze.

Did I mention that this happened the day after we moved in?  In fact, we noticed the lack of cool air the morning after I accidentally punched a hole in the wall while trying to hang some privacy curtains in the bedroom.

I am not the most handy of people.

I’m not discouraged by the turn of events, though.  Yes, it was an expensive way to kick off owning a new house, but the reality of it is that it’s a new house with new rules.  Along with the fun that comes with redesigning the house to meet your vision, it also comes with the responsibility of taking care of things to ensure it lasts.  Things will break down, unexpected costs will arise, and if you want the privilege of owning a house, you’re going to have to roll with the punches.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan