My husband owns 81 screwdrivers. That is not a typo. Eighty-one. Actually, the count stood at 81 in 1998 when we moved. More have accumulated in the intervening twelve years, I'd wager. Best guess? Right around a hundred--every size and shape you can imagine. No, he doesn't have a particular passion for screwdrivers . . . he just hates to hunt for things. Forgive the not-PC-gender-stereotyping, but is this a guy thing?
Bob breaks into a cold sweat at the prospect of seeking for necessaries in the Black Hole we call a garage or in the laundry room or kitchen cupboards. He has honed a brilliant, if expensive, strategy for dealing with his rummage-phobia.
If you can't find your drill bits or the high pressure nozzle for the hose or your navy blue socks forget the scavenger hunt at home. Why would you spend seven minutes looking calmly through your house when you could put your shoes on, hop in the car, drive to Home Depot or Kohl's, park, shop around, fill a cart with "bargain" items you don't need, stand in line, check out, shove a buck in the metal lock box of the homeless vet sitting outside the store, load your purchases in the trunk, return the cart to the little cart-corral, drive home, unload your purchases, and search through the heap of not-eco-friendly shopping bags for the item you so urgently needed two hours ago? Trouble is, by now you've completely forgotten what you went to the store for in the first place. But at least you've got a half dozen new nozzles on hand, and four bonus packs of navy blue socks.
Score!
(So, would you rather hunt for the one you have, or just buy a couple more? Does this break down along gender lines? I know you're reading, I see the stats. Comment already!)
Ha, ha. Work those stats, baby. I go for the hunt. And I think my husband - who is about as much of a Man's Man (capital Ms, see) as it is possible to be - would be even less prone to buying something he knew he already had, unless it was a totally dire emergency. So I guess I don't think it goes along gender lines. Frugality lines, maybe?
ReplyDeleteThird scenario: buy the extra items in advance, so if the tool is not once place, it's another. (Though you'd think 81 screwdrivers would serve that purpose, eh?) Precisely why I have a zillion pair of scissors...I like all colors and shapes of scissors, AND I like always being able to grab a pair quickly. Scissors in every room, I say! The same goes for writing instruments, which exceed countability at our house. Have never been able to comprehend a home without everywhere-accessible pens and pencils. I couldn't hold the thought long enough to run to the store and buy a pen, so acquire now!
ReplyDeleteI'm not seeing gender here, but varied problem-solving styles!
A.-You're on to something. It's more the canny Scot in me than the eternal feminine that would rather up-end the tool chest than lay out cash for a duplicate.
ReplyDeleteKalliope-You nailed it on the head. Why didn't I see it before? I do the same thing as Bob in reverse order. Hording. School/office supplies are my weak spot also--pens, pencils, glue sticks, 3x5 cards. I think I feel another post coming on . . .
yep, office supplies are my weakness, too... and I don't believe my husband has the same problem. Could be in part because he's hardly had time to set foot in a store in three years!
ReplyDeleteI know a few men who maintain a perfectly organized tool zone with their readily available screwdrivers lined up on a pegboard in order of length, type then girth. I am not married to one of these creatures, however I know they the exist (and would love for one to come clean out my garage).
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather was one of those "perfectly organized tool zone" types. Deep down I know the gene was passed on to me because it's what I crave--a peg board with all the tools in perfect order, little outlines around each one for easy re-shelving. But I live in a perpetual home restoration project with a husband much like your own. *sigh*
ReplyDeleteI call it sanity spending...it's much easier to search a store for a needed item than to look around the house in all the usual spots and still not know where in the world you put the oh so desirable "it".
ReplyDeleteYou all make me smile. Looks like it's not a guy thing after all. :)
ReplyDeleteI think we are just the opposite at our house. Neither one of us is willing to run to the store. I think these boys of ours have us run too ragged to imagine having to run ANOTHER errand. If we can't find something that we are sure we have, we start looking. And if that doesn't turn up anything, we'll go months - even YEARS - without it until we find it or chance to remember that we need it while we are already at the store. Case in point - the roll of fat masking tape. We know we have it. Where it went, I don't know. But it's here somewhere. We've been periodically finding it and losing it for - well, the entire time we've lived here, going on three years now. We always find it when we don't need it. But then by the time we are desperate for it, it's nowhere we remember putting it. So do we buy a second or third one? Nope. We've used lots of packing tape, duct tape, skinny masking tape, electrical tape, even scotch tape, in it's place. And I never manage to put it on the shopping list or remember when we're in the store. So we go on living without it. Maybe someday when our energy and brain cells return in small measure we'll get it together enough to just replace the darn thing and be done with it.
ReplyDeleteI think Bob just has a propensity for buying things in high quanities. I remember the day he came home from In-N-Out with something like forty hamburgers because the cousins were over (like three small boys). He's bought probably ten clamps and a couple of different tool kits while visiting us. He's unique, and wonderful.
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