when you own your own home, lots of things start to matter that never mattered to you before. for example, i never cared about grout color. dark grout? light grout? never made a difference to me. so when i went to lay tile in my kitchen and was posed the question, “what color grout should i use?” i was dumbfounded. i had no idea. should it be red? black? brown? gray? white? off white? i don’t know!

or take the small hedge that i have outside in the front yard. it is very difficult for me to justify purchasing a motorized hedger to maintain a 3 foot by 3 foot by 5 foot hedge. i mean, it’s TINY. how can i justify spending over a hundred dollars to trim it every so often? so instead, i bought a little $8 pair of shears and trimming that hedge nearly killed me. i haven’t used shears in many years because my parents have motorized garden tools. i never knew how much of a difference it makes. let me tell you, though, after i cut the hedge, i had never felt more proud of any garden work i have ever done before. crazy, isn’t it?

and just last night, christi and i spent more time that you would think is reasonable installing a keyless entry system in our house. the biggest problem we had was that the hole in the frame for the locking mechanism was too small and we needed to make it a little bigger. of course, i don’t have a chisel or hammer which would have made this process easier. the big question i have every time i need to fix something around the house is, “should i go buy the tool to fix it?” the big question is how often will i really use a chisel? probably never. so, instead, i went to my trusty leatherman, got out a pocket saw, and proceeded to make the hole bigger with that instead. ghetto, i know! but it worked and saved me from having to go to the hardware store…again.