That good old home project.
We’ve all had them. Some can be small, and others can be quite large.
In my younger days, especially in the first home I ever bought, I tackled a great deal of these projects by myself. Here was my thinking: “I am an intelligent woman, and I can figure out how to do this. I am also athletic and coordinated, so I can complete this task just as so many other people do.”
As it turned out, I was right about 50% of the time. I completed the task before me. Well done. But the other half? I either did a botched job, or I had to call someone for help, and typically, that “someone” was my very handy brother who lived in the same city. Bless him.
The thing I didn’t account for was experience and resources. And by resources, I mean tools. I owned a good set of tools (thanks to that same brother), but I often needed a specific thing to complete the job perfectly. That, of course, requires money. And at that time in my life, I was pretty poor. I had to work-three-jobs-poor.
Which brings me to this. I just read about a place in Buffalo, NY.
It is the Buffalo Tool Library.
Yes, indeed. Brilliant. The Buffalo Tool Library is “a non-profit community organization that provides a lending library of tools to its members in Buffalo, New York.”
Like any library, you become a member. And then, you can borrow tools for home improvement, gardening, and repair projects. It works just like borrowing books from a traditional library.
The goal of this very nifty organization is to promote sustainability and community building. It also encourages self-sufficiency by making tools accessible to everyone.
It isn’t quite “free” like a book library is. The BTL operates as a membership-based service. So, when you sign up, you pay a small fee to join. From that point, you can borrow tools from the library’s collection.
Need an auger? Go to the library. What about a pipe wrench? Grab your library card.
It is a completely community-based project. Volunteers run the library.
I think it is so smart. I could have used a tool library a few times, I’ll tell you.
You know, these home projects are a little bit like our lives, I think.
Something comes along that needs to be fixed. And when we are first starting out in our lives, we don’t have any experience, or even the tools, to deal with the problem at hand.
So our first time around, we may not do such a good job in addressing the issue before us. But over time, we build up our skillset. We become seasoned fixers. We acquire more and more tools as we go.
They say, “the older, the wiser.” And that is true in many cases when we have spent our lives sharpening our skills, our talents, and our tools in dealing with the “happenings” of life.
And so we go forth, whistling while we work.
Oh, and this.
If I had a hammer. I’d hammer in the morning…
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“To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.”
― Abraham Maslow
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“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
― Marshall McLuhan
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“Tools evidence the limitations of our bare hands. But they also evidence the creativity of a determined mind.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough
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Oh. I nailed it. Maybe we all have, at some time.
