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My Tool Room resembles my marriage.

Under the house is our car garage and off to the side is a little  room that measures roughly 7 feet wide and 12 feet long. We call it the Tool Room because that is where those implements of manly creativity and fixitivity reside. I know I am fortunate to even have such a room, as this kind of extra space is a luxury in many homes.

The problem with the Tool Room is the frantic pace of life we lead. Seems every home repair or honey-do is performed on the run. There’s never time to put stuff back where it belongs, so things just get piled up on and in front of the workbench.  As stuff piles up, the workbench and the tools needed for the next project get more hopelessly buried . Often I forget what tools I’ve got and repurchase supplies I already own. It doesn’t take long for the whole family to begin using the Tool Room as the default repository for Everything That I Want To Save But Don’t Know What To Do With.

Just yesterday, I found myself in the Tool Room, unable to get closer than 3 feet away from the bench and having to manually bulldoze to clear a spot for a little project I was doing. There was crap everywhere: on the floor and heaped onto the workbench. And I ended up getting frustrated as my back began to ache from having to lean over so far due to so much crap between me and the workbench.

Of course, I didn’t take a bit of time to clean up any of the mess. In fact I left things a little worse than I found them, because I just didn’t have the time or inclination to do anything about it. It will be worse next time I go down there to honeydo something. For sure.

I am guilty of letting my marriage get cluttered up, too.

Just a little, subtle criticism heaped into that corner.

A couple nights a week of overtime at work and missing dinner together.

Mid-week Bible study and coffee with friends until bedtime.

Ignoring the bad attitude of one of my kids toward my wife.

Forgetting to passionately kiss her when I get home in the evening.

Not initiating small talk.

Forgetting to compliment her on the comfortable home she maintains.

Leaving the seat up, so she can splashdown early in the morning.

Complimenting  that hottie on TV.

Not initiating sex.

Not saying “I love you” with emphasis.

Catching the TV news instead of her news. 

Leaving her to help with all the homework.

Forgetting to plan a night out together.

Avoiding going to bed at the same time.

Leaving my underwear next to the hamper.

OK, you’ve probably gotten the idea here- There are a thousand ways to clutter a relationship. Any one or two of them can be fairly ignored. But let ‘em pile up too deep and you are headed for a breakdown.  I do let stuff (issues, anger, frustrations, criticism, lonliness) pile up between us until we cannot stand close enough to connect any more.

I end up attempting Arm’s Length Loving. Just like down in the Tool Room, we don’t get much accomplished when too much junk has accumulated between us.

Usually, before we are able to get close again, we need to declutter. We must clear out all the little insignificant issues that have piled up into a monster. Often, the cleanup becomes an all day affair. And we promise ourselves that we will never let stuff pile up like that again.

Here is my question for you men- What would your wife say about Arm’s Length Loving?  Is there any of it going on between you two right now? You might not even recognize it, but I will bet your wife is aware of all the clutter between you.

Care to initiate a little Summer cleaning? Tonight?

Filed under the heading of Manly Leadership No Matter How Uncomfortable It Might Be: Commit to declutter your marriage starting tonight. Do the manly thing and get started. It will go so much smoother for you if YOU initiate this, not your wife.

The hardest part is getting started. 

Blessings

Technorati Tags: communication

I see that “Get Smart” is about to be released to theaters this month, and I recall one of the best sight gags was The Cone of Silence.

Calling all inventors: Here is your next million dollar idea.

Put me first in line for the Beta version. My only requirements are that the unit fit over a king size bed and actually works as designed. I will figger out how to ’splain this contraption to the kids and Pastor later. In the meantime-someone, PLEASE, build a working unit! I don’t even want a cut of the profits. Take the idea and run with it. I hereby announce my candidacy for beta-testing.

The Mrs. and I, due to multiple kidlets and limited discretionary dollars only get away by ourselves once, maybe twice, a year to a hotel. And I have noted that she unwraps many of her vocal inhibitions within the anonymity of a hotel room. This pleases Papa. Vocality makes Papa feel like manly man. And Papa gets a little sad when we get home and things quiet down again.

Sure, we could crank the Abba 8-track so as to drown out any non-child-friendly utterances, but competing with dancing queen  is not my idea of intimate.

Any manly men out there out there with the skills to pull this off? You’re gonna have to design this thing in such a way that her mother won’t ask questions. Maybe make it look like a skylight or something? Maybe you could incorporate stars and constellations to make it look like a planetarium on the inside?  How about some sort of newfangled HEPA filter?

And now I am thinking of all the upgrades you could build for this baby- Surround Sound, Mirrored coating, disco ball, recording devices, cupholders, carabiners, air conditioning, recordings of Ricardo Montalban reading Song of Solomon . . .

Anybody up for the challenge? You’ve got your first customer here.

Blessings

Technorati Tags: Home Improvement

       YES WE CAN!!!

How exciting is this?

We finally got around to buying and installing our whole house fan this weekend.

Pretty exciting.

What does my home improvement project have to do with marriage and kids, you ask? Welllll- stretching a little here- My wife will praise my genius when the Edison bill doesn’t go up to $900 in August?

Really. A $900 electricity bill in August last year. And lest you think I am keeping penguins as pets; during that hideous month, for two of the four weeks the thermostat never got below 85 degrees inside, even at the coolest time of night! The A/C just couldn’t keep up with the sun and lousy construction of the house. Momma was not happy about the heat and she was REALLY unhappy about paying so much for so little comfort.

It is so frustrating when the outside air temperature is noticeably cooler than the air inside, yet you can’t seem to get the cool air inside the house. Also, during the day the materials of the house itself are absorbing energy from the sun, only to give it back as residual heat late in the evening when you are trying to sleep.

We’ve got a ceiling fan over our bed, but it doesn’t really get utilized to its potential because the lovely and ever-rational Postmistress says that it dries out her eyes. While she is sleeping. With her eyes closed. Really. (There exists a train of logic in a woman’s mind that no sane man would challenge. The sleeping dry eyes is one of those. Sigh.)

Enter the Whole House Fan. Not a panacea, but a pretty smart and cheap way to cool your home. Basically it is installed in the ceiling between your living area and your attic. It sucks cool air through any open window and exhausts into the attic space. There is a double bonus here in that not only does it pull cool air into the house but it forces the heated air out of your attic space.

It costs about a nickel an hour to run.

When we tried it out Sunday night, the air temperature inside the house was 76 degrees. Within 30 minutes of running the fan on the High setting, the temperature had dropped 6 degrees to 70. A quick calculation says that I bought roughly 3 cents of electricity for that improvement in comfort. My A/C would have taken at least 45 minutes to do the same job and probably cost close to $2.00 in energy. Pretty nice.

The installation of the whole house fan is not really too hard if you have a few tools and a little confidence. The thought of cutting a big hole in a hallway ceiling and a little hole in the wall might be a little scary for some do-it-yourselfers, but once you get past that the job is fairly easy.  It took me and my 19 year old son about 2 1/2 hours for the job, including cleanup.

I won’t get into all the details of the job (unless someone comments back with questions) because it has already been written about in many other places. Here’s just one.

I will say a couple of things about the installation, though. Very basic electrical skills are required to tap into an exisiting 120 volt source in the attic. If you are not comfortable with flipping circuit breakers then this job is not for you. A buddy who is electrically confident would be of great help here. You will also need to install the switch in an adjacent wall.

DO NOT attempt this project alone: you will just frustrate yourself if you try to do this by yourself. All of the up-and-down the ladder into and out of the attic will drive you nuts. Get a friend to help with this, and unless your wife is REALLY gullible and you don’t want nookie for a while, DO NOT ASK HER TO HELP.  Besides, she could get a little panicky at the sight of busted drywall and open ceiling joists. Send her and the kids out to Chunky Cheese for a few hours. You and your helper will look less like Tim The Toolman Taylor if she can’t see and hear the destruction/installation process.

Be prepared to make an additional trip back to the hardware store once you open the box and read the instructions. You will likely need to buy:

 (2)-8 foot long pine 1×4’s,

 (1) 2×4 8′ long to header off one joist (assuming your ceiling joists are 2×4’s. Check first.),

 Some 14-3 Romex wire to hook up the new wall switch and also to tie into power up in the attic (if your fan is a single-speed, then 14-2 wire will suffice.),

A handful of wire nuts,

A single “remodel” aka “cut in” electrical box,

A few dozen 16d nails or 2 1/2″ screws

A few dozen 10d nails or 1 1/2″ screws.

 TOOLS NEEDED

Hammer

pencil

utility knife

wire strippers

screwdrivers

A Sawzall is handy, but you can get by with hand saws

Eye protection

flashlights

pliers

adjustable wrench

Drill and bits

I know that most of us are looking for ways to save money on energy bills, and I am sure that this is going to make a noticeable improvement in ours. Also, I think that it is just very GREEN for all of us to use our air conditioners as little as possible.

We spent about $250 on the fan itself, and maybe another $30 on miscellaneaous materials. Add in a case of adult beverage if you are enlisting the help of a friend. I anticipate recouping my 300 dollar investment in under 2 months. Not bad, if you ask me.

This type of home improvement project only looks difficult because of having to remove drywall. But if you are careful with how you cut, the installation will look like a pro did it. Measure twice: cut once, as they say.

And another in-the-field observation: One would think that the shutter assembly would be shaped like a square, but it is in fact rectangular. One side is longer than the other. Word.

And do yourself a favor: keep the vacuum cleaner handy so that you can clean as you go. Your heroic stature increases exponentially if you clean up after (and before) yourself.

If you give this project a try, I would love to hear how it comes out for you.  

Blessings

Technorati Tags: Home Improvement