Have you ever watched Extreme Couponing? I watched a season of it on Netflix and found it mesmerizing. People have so much dedication to their systems, it's kind of amazing. They plan and tally and work the system and manage to end up spending only a few bucks on carts and carts worth of stuff! And I admire it, even though the things they buy don't always make sense to me. I don't, for instance, understand why one would need sixty bottles of mustard (or, like, even TWO bottles of mustard. Mustard isn't that good and it kind of lasts forever). What I'm saying is that it looks like a satisfying thing to be good at. I don't have the desire or storage space necessary to buy hundreds of bottles of laundry detergent and chicken fingers, but I sure WOULD like to be able to march into a grocery store or Target and buy the things I actually need and only have to spend four dollars. I'd like to coupon, but without having to spend the sixty hours a week looking up internet coupons and stealing newspapers.
Um. Anyway the purpose of that whole paragraph was to explain: there are some things I just want to be good at without actually having to work at and learn it. It's why learning to sew on a sewing machine is still untouched at #13 on my
Life Scavenger Hunt even though I got a sewing machine a couple years ago. I read the instruction manual and learned how to thread the thing and sewed a few crooked lines of stitches into an old pair of underpants, but now I just want to go straight to being able to whip up complicated quilts and whimsical stuffed animals. (I was also very disappointed to learn how much IRONING is involved in sewing.)
So. I would like to be good at some things (not EVERY thing) without having to work at it. DIY home improvement is something I'd like to be good at, but I hate reading instructions and also I don't have a workroom or, like, a basic understanding of tools and construction. I can daydream all I want about creating a built-in wall of shelves behind my bed but it just isn't going to happen. For the present time I tend to stick to smaller-scale projects and even they can sometimes turn out
disastrous.
I saw this idea at a friend's house the first time, and I thought it was brilliant-- an extra shower curtain rod against the wall of your shower for all the miscellaneous crap that would otherwise be cluttering up the ledges of the bathtub! Apparently it was such a good idea that it had even made Pin-interest (what my mom calls Pinterest). Examples
here and
here.
The idea looked easy enough, so I gave it a go:
 |
| Ta da! |
I bought a shower curtain rod at Bed Bath and Beyond and then picked up some cute pink and white plastic baskets at the
Japanese variety store (it's like a dollar store with bento boxes). It was a bit of a challenge getting the baskets on there and then hoisting the whole thing into the shower and sproinging it out to secure to the walls, but I did it.
And it came out perfect!
Two hours later:
 |
| *crash* |
Yeah... it fell down. And then I put it back up. And it fell down again the next day. And then I had someone stronger than me (anyone is stronger than me, but in this case it was boyfriend) put it up. And it fell down again. I gave up, pulled the baskets off the shower rod, and distributed them within the bathroom as freestanding stuff-holding receptacles. I won't tell you what I did with the shower rod (nothing. It's still in the bathroom, leaning against the wall).
My first pin-interest project? Nailed it.
