From lifelines to clotheslines things can go wrong – strive to be prepared with the right fix. We here at Serendipity Farmhouse continue to learn that any day can be a bad day if you haven’t used forethought and built preparedness into your plans. – This week we had another example of why this is so true.
Hi! Ol’ Fuzz Face here – Let’s talk preparedness.
In my post No Need for A Farmhouse Nightmare I waxed eloquently about ‘lifeline functions’. I made some good points, but I didn’t really get into practical solutions.
Likewise, in my post How to Prepare – Graceful Degradation I probably left you scratching your head with my use of terms like ‘upgradation’ and ‘graceful degradation‘.
The Right Fix – A Practical Example
Last Wednesday, our dryer died. My dearest Blondie could wash clothes as usual, but she needed a way to dry them. – No problem! – We had the right fix! We went into our graceful degradation mode. Just like the first residents of our nearly 100-year-old farmhouse, we merely had to hang the clothes out to dry on our clotheslines.
The loss of our dryer is temporary, it should be repaired this coming week. But the ability to use our clothesline is permanent. Should the dryer fail again or if there is a major lifeline power outage, we just gracefully degrade to our backup mode.
Cost Factors – The Right Fix
You may have had better experiences than we have. Our recent experiences have caused us to reconsider our strategy for home repair preparedness. Here’s what we’ve observed.
- Major appliance repair costs have risen greatly.
- Home warranty and appliance warranty service companies have become far less responsive, especially since COVID.
Our home warranty service used to pay for itself almost every year. But service degraded so badly that we had to drop it. Other warranty plans are expensive. For example, Sears Appliance plan starts at $49.99 per month ($599.88 per year).
Now, we act as our own home warranty plan. We put away $50.00 each month and don’t touch it until a need arises. – This works well, and for us it is the right fix.
Clotheslines – Right Fix vs. Wrong Fix
Even when you have a good preparedness backup plan, there may be some bumps in the road. For example, on the second day of using the clothesline, it broke.
The Wrong Fix: A number of repair options were open to us. It was our job to determine which was the best. One option was to use a clothespin to hold the broken clothesline together. – This was obviously a wrong fix.
The Right Fix: A square knot is not the best for joining two lines together. But, if you don’t have the needed length of line for a better knot, the square knot will do in a pinch. – In this case I used a square knot so my dear Blondie could dry the clothes. – It worked and it was the right fix.
My point is this. Use forethought and build preparedness into your plans. Be prepared to change your plans when conditions and circumstances dictate. Always be prepared to improvise and select the right fix.
