Make Something Better

I seem to have been lacking a sense of blogging purpose, since I haven't been doing much of it. But I have a daily goal, which is to Make Something Better in the house, and it seems like a particularly good project for photo-documentation. The rules are, it has to be something beyond just keeping up with the daily business -- something that makes a lasting improvement. It doesn't have to be a big thing or take a long time. Two days ago, for example, I hung up the family calendar.


You'd be surprised how hard it can be to get such a simple thing done. I kept wanting to do it when the kids weren't around, but once they were in bed, I didn't want bang a nail in.

Today we cleaned out the carport. The Slattons (the former owners) used it for chopping wood and storing stuff. We use it to park one of the cars. So we cleared out the wood chips, scraps of boards and plywood, random recyclables that had piled up, that sort of stuff, and swept.


Yesterday, we finished installing the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs. This was a two-evening project. You wouldn't know to look at it (I hope), but these things are really complicated, at least for rubes like us. Find the studs, realize you have to saw off the end of the handrail to give the gate room to swing, almost saw through a screw in the process, try not to ding the wall while sawing at most two inches away from it, pray that the handrail doesn't split halfway through. (It didn't.) Arrange for all the parts to be level and square while compensating for the moulding. Wonder whether Jordan will be able to open it, and whether that is desirable. (He can.) Wonder whether Aaron will swng from it. (He does.)


We are hoping that the gate will give us a little more freedom from monitoring Aaron all the time. There's still plenty for him to get into, but this removes at least one major way for him to break his neck.