It’s a critical cascade failure

Buying a house is pretty similar to having a cascade failure in your life. You know those situations where one part of the machine fails, causing another part to fail and then another until the whole thing blows up in your face.

First thing you do is buy a house. If it’s a new house, you probably need to get a mailbox and post. Then you need to buy stuff to maintain the house. You have a lawn, so you need a hose and sprinkler or two. Then you find fire ants, so you need to buy stuff to get rid of them. Then you need to get a ladder so you can change bulbs and fire alarm batteries. Now leaves and crap start collecting on the lawn, so you need a rake to gather them up and bags to collect them in. After a few weeks the grass starts growing so then you need to get a mower.

And it goes on and on and on. Just one thing leading to another and another and another.

And then there are the home renovation/improvement projects. Hoo boy, does that ever set up a major cascade. First you figure out what tools and supplies you need to star the project. Tools are expensive, so to justify having them around, you come up with more projects to work on. But each project requires one more tool/gadget in addition to what you have already. And then in short order you’ve got a whole workshop of tools and no workbench or storage place to put them all, which means more garage clutter.

In no time half of your two car garage is filled with stuff and is starting to encroach on the other half. I guess this is why I see so many cars parked out in the driveway instead of inside the garage.