Maybe it's because you don't want people in your home. Maybe it's because you can't get to your normal salon or stylist. Maybe it's because you no longer go past that Greek bakery on your way to work. Or maybe it's simply because you're just bored. Whatever the reason, there are probably innumerable things you used to have others do for you, and now have decided that it's just easier to do it yourself.
Actually it's not that it's necessarily easier, but given the current circumstances you've been forced to make the switch. After all, how hard can it be to change the washer in the bathroom faucet, or trim the bushes in the front of the garage, or to cut your spouse's hair? Bill the plumber, Andre the landscaper and Sally the stylist do it effortlessly. Well, now there's water all over the floor, the bushes may never grow back, and your husband has taken to wearing a baseball cap to cover the bald spot over his left ear. Hopefully your kid didn't need anything more than a splinter removed from his hand since March, or now you'd be calling him Lefty.
To paraphrase the mantra of Second Amendment fans, idle hands don't screw up plumbing repairs, know-it-all homeowners with no training screw up plumbing repairs. And so perhaps best to leave the skilled work to the professionals. Still, idle hands need to be kept busy. For sure they can work on a jigsaw puzzle or play a video game or bake some bread. But they can also be constructive, and as long as life, limb and major property damage are not at stake, a little DIY project is not a bad idea.
These days lots of folks have rediscovered a craft or hobby they started and put aside years ago. Open that bottom drawer or look in the back of your closet, and you're liable to find the beginnings of a scarf or the start of a scale model of the Eiffel Tower or a photo album with 3 pages filled that you started before something came up. Well, now nothing is coming up, so time to drag it back into the light of day and knit one, purl two.
And if you never had the time, well, now you do. All those hours that used to go into driving to work or school or PTA meetings is now free and fair game. And with an expanding number of offices and activities not opening till next year at the earliest, per Malcom Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, you'll be well on your way to mastering the accordion by the time it's safe to put together a polka band.
The big question is what to do. Maybe you've sampled a bunch of time killers, and not found any really captivating. Part of that might be because you don't have the right materials: stuck at home, you have to work with what you've got. In that vein, The New York Times published a guide to making jewelry. But no need of polished stones, glazed ceramics or precious metals here. A little string, some glue, and the pages of the paper itself will suffice, though their guide to making a paper-bead bracelet felt more like a third grade summer camp project than a hobby.
But you likely have plenty of other materials to work with. All those Amazon boxes are like a giant set of blocks. You can make a coffee table for the kid's room or a chair for the basement. You likely have been loading up on and eating staples like peanut butter. Fill one empty jar with dirt, another with rocks, and you're well on your way to a set of free-weights. And your twice a week order of Chinese takeout has yielded oh-so-many containers to used for an indoor herb garden that will yield basil long before a vaccine is ready.
There's an old saying that you don't play the hand you wish you had, you play the one you are dealt. Sure, it would be nice to learn how to make custom curtains with handpicked material. But since shopping in person is a questionable activity, go with what you have. It may not be room darkening, but that bubble wrap does diffuse the light quite nicely.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford made new organizers for his desk. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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