Ugly But Functional

Lately I am pondering why we (meaning my DH & I) feel the need to embellish the functional to make it more aesthetically appealing. In so doing, we often complicate our lives greatly, saddle ourselves with expensive and time-consuming projects, and then get bogged down while doing them and get very frustrated by the stagnation.

Looking around our house & garden, I see numerous examples of this. We had a functional but weedy yard. We decided to embellish it by creating a huge flower bed, to make it prettier and get rid of the almost 100% weeds that were established there. Fine. But that huge flower bed now needs to be filled. We've spent nearly 2 years trying to fill it, and in the meantime it is more often than not filled with different kinds of weeds that just grow taller than the ones they replaced, and are more time consuming to get rid of (at least with a weedy lawn you can mow it, whereas a weedy flower bed has to be, well, weeded). Trying to solve a problem and make it beautiful gave us a lot more work.

Similarly, we decided to redo our ugly but functional kitchen. We spent numerous hours sanding, priming, & painting the cabinets & countertops, then sealing the countertops. It does look a lot prettier, to be sure--but now we have cream colored cabinets that show all the spills and dirt that get spilled on them on a regular basis. So where previously we had dark but ugly mid-tone oak veneer, now we have warm but dirty cream cabinets that require a pretty vigilant hand with the Magic Eraser (which, frankly, I don't have, so they're just dirty). More beautiful, but more work.

Now we have to decide what we're going to do about the fencing for the dog. We talked about it and DH would like to do a pretty lattice fence for the front part of the yard, with flower beds and pretty stuff growing up the trellises to make it look really pretty. I agreed with the lattice part, I would like that. But the more I think about it, the more I think we are better off to go for ugly functionality over the beautiful. Frankly, we don't have time to keep up with the "prettified" bits we already have around the house & garden. We're adding a new baby to the mix mid-summer, and we're already training a puppy. We have a list a mile long of projects that also need to be done (not want, need). Wood shed for firewood (keeps heating bills down in the wintertime, wood has to be kept dry). Cut up firewood for wintertime early in the summer so it can cure a bit before this winter (see above). Repair pump shed (houses our well pump & needs to be well insulated & actually INTACT to prevent 3rd year straight of freezing pipes & defrosting with hair dryer...one of these times we're going to have a broken water pipe and this is really a NEED). Tear down kids' old swingset (metal, exposed concrete safety hazard, already missed contact with small heads by a mere inch) and replace with freebie wooden playset (it's on my driveway in pieces, it's been there a year, it's time to put it up, m'kay?).

Add to this the fact that we are a little constrained in the old budget and it makes for a nervous nellie. We need to buy more gravel for the driveways ($200-$300). We need to buy materials for the sheds (repair/construction) and the rotten bits of the freebie playset ($200?). Our electric furnace is an antique and we really need a replacement fund for that ($3500, and wouldn't it be nice to replace it this calendar year with that nice tax break plus the energy company's rebate?). Both of our cars need the transmission fluid to be changed, and our minivan needs at least a recharge on the a/c coolant, and hopefully not anything more expensive like a broken compressor that needs to be fixed ($300-$400, without the compressor). And I still don't know if I'm going to be employed this fall, which means our tight summer budget could get really ugly this fall if I'm not working.

Yeah, I'm really not thinking that pretty fences are my cup of tea right now. I'm thinking functional, cheap, and quick to install is what would float my boat. I would love to have a pretty fence with lattice and pretty things growing on it. I think it would look GREAT. However, I also know that we have a lot of demands on our time and our money, and I also know how low our batting average is for completing projects in a timely manner. Really, I am fast becoming a fan of ugly but functional. Give me functional, folks!!! LOVIN' THAT FUNCTIONALITY! I CAN deprogram myself from our society's fascination with all things bright & beautiful (and expensive, and time consuming). Frankly I just don't have the energy for it any more.