Saving Money and Learning

A. I. Generated

In my younger years, I would always try just about anything that came across my path. I changed the oil in my own vehicle, I did just about any home repair task that you could name, etc. It was a good way to save money and to learn new things, both something I enjoy doing. But as I have gotten older, I have slowly stopped doing some tasks and hired others to do them. I now take my vehicles in to get their oil changed and though I still do most of my own home repair, I have hired out a few jobs that weren't very appealing to me, such as hiring an electrician to install a couple can lights in my living room so I didn't have to crawl around on my stomach in the attic in a very tight area. 

When I moved to this property of 3 acres, I didn't have a lawnmower capable of mowing it and so I hired the lawnmowing outfit that was then currently mowing it to continue under my ownership. They did a fine job but didn't always mow on the same schedule I would have. For example, if people were coming over to enjoy an evening sitting at a bonfire in the backyard or playing a game of croquet, I would have mowed the lawn the day before regardless of grass height. But when I have it hired out, we might be having our bonfire or game of croquet on grass in need of mowing. I have always enjoyed mowing lawn, reducing the rough tall grass into a nice evenly mowed green carpet. So when I got my greenhouse built with a storage shed on one end, I bought an appropriately sized mower and told my mowing service I didn't need them anymore. I controlled my own schedule.

The first year went great and I put that lawnmower to bed in the storage building come late fall. When spring came, I looked at the maintenance part of the manual and wasn't anywhere near prepared. I didn't have the right tools or materials to service my own lawnmower to get it ready for mowing. I told myself that it looked like fiddling work and ended up having the place where I bought it come and pick it up and service it back at their shop. Of course I had to pay for that privilege. I told myself at the time that the price wasn't too bad but I felt guilty about not doing the work myself. 

Flash forward to this spring and lawn mowing will be upon us soon again. I'm still not prepared. However, finally I am taking steps to get repaired. I watched a video on YouTube this morning detailing the service steps for my lawnmower. I still don't have the tools but at least it didn't look terribly difficult to do. I also learned that they sell a "home maintenance kit" that has all the supplies you need to service it, sans tools, which makes figuring out all the part numbers easy. So in a matter of minutes, from my comfortable office chair, I ordered a home maintenance kit and a couple hand tools like a spark plug socket and gap tool and a sized oil filter cap style removal tool to allow me to service my own lawnmower. By the end of the week, I should have everything I need. Even with the additional tools, it will cost about 1/3 of what I paid last spring to have someone else do the same thing. Hopefully all goes well and I'm not having to call the shop to come pick up my mower. 

Best of all, I will have the satisfaction of learning a new task and saving some money.

[Post update: I did get everything done and it went smoothly. However, when I went to pull it out of the storage shed to bring it up to the garage for maintenance, I noticed the digital fuel gauge wasn't working. Right now I suspect it is the fuel sender unit which when I priced out, is stupidly expensive to replace. I usually fill up the tank about once, every three mowings so I will have to try to remember to do that so I don't run out of gas as I don't plan on replacing it anytime soon.]