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As I enter my mid 30s and am now a year into taking care of my late father's house, I have come to realize that maintenance can really take up so much of your free time that it often feels like its never ending. Its as if when one thing is fixed or "refurbished" the next thing breaks or changes its behavior immediately right after. It can be overwhelming to overcome all this entropy.

Seems as if the only way to really reduce a maintenance burden is to simplify your life more and more including the things in your life. But then you are still having to take care of your body and if you have a family others as well. I can understand a society that has FOMO will put maintenance on the backburner. There just isn't enough time to have your cake and eat it too in our modern world it seems.

Maintenance should be outsourced a lot more. As in get pros to come and fix things.

Maintenance doesn't seem much in demand in the US in a residential/consumer context, probably because it is expensive and other reasons like the grandparent comment: > We simply do not appreciate Maintenance people...

Maintenance and service is much more common in India. There are young and old folks in a thriving industry for repairs and maintenance. You will see they are super knowledgable in their vocation and they get stuff fixed well and quick.

Though I do think these industries are shrinking in India - i.e "catching up" to the West. In the US, middle-class probably only services cars and heavy equipment at home. And more things are manufactured to not be maintained but replaced - a weird example is mattresses and pillows.

Of course there must be a lot more servicing happening in non-residential contexts, both in the West and in India.

> simplify your life more and more including the things in your life

This is such an underrated hack. Can't find it now - but think there is a Naval tweet about how getting rid of things is a huge help for creating peace in life.

I've found that the problem is, the pros typically won't do a better job than I would do myself. In fact, I got my uncle to fix my fridge after numerous places simply said "we don't repair fridges" (despite being an "appliance repair" company), another place thought it was a certain failed component, another thought it was a different part -- until they replaced that part and found that another part had a problem.. then they found the ACTUAL cause of the problem, a clogged tube. Which they don't/can't fix. Meanwhile, I find a video of a guy literally working on side of the road in India who clears this tube nearly effortlessly in like 5 minutes. "Professionals" are often just "a company that happens to officially do the thing you want", but the degree of craftsmanship is frequently absolutely pathetic. Oh yeah, one of those fridge repair places scratched the hell out of my floor by dragging the fridge without placing a protective plexiglass/plastic down first. It's like no one cares to do a good, thorough job anymore.

Ouch rough experience. And probably those appliance repair charged you so much more for the quality of service or even to just show up and take a look.

Preventative maintainability of modern things seems so low - either tech is over complicated or has short lifespan or take too much effort/time/money. Maintenance also requires a network of appliance service companies tied up to the OEMs - and frankly they should be selling subscriptions and coming by to service appliances proactively - kinda like our dentists. The incentive structures are probably not right for this.

Yeah so far every place is like "it's not worth it to fix"... it's like... really? It's not worth getting a $4k+ fridge working again with a few $hundred of parts and a couple hours of labour? Let's just throw it in the trash and drop another $4k+ to replace it with a "similar" fridge (which then doesn't match the other appliances in the kitchen)! This mentality of "just buy a new one" is so prevalent everywhere :(

And the fact that human time is always the more expensive portion of any maintenance work.

Sure, some things it makes sense to trust in those more skilled than you, with the proper toolsets and experience to finish a job correctly and back the result with a warranty, like larger vehicle maintenance tasks, plumbing, and major structural home remodeling.

But... so many things are not worth the premium that it boggles the mind.

Changing a light switch? 10 minutes and a screwdriver is all you need to save a $75 house call.

Replacing a door handle? 10 minutes and a screwdriver is all you need to save a $75 house call.

If you are willing, able bodied, and strong enough to handle the appropriate tools, then you owe it to yourself and your wallet to handle the things that you can handle and take the money you save and use that to help cover the things you cannot.

It is never-ending if you're doing it well, and want to keep your "thing". Maintenance isn't an improvement, or a project, it's just what you do to keep your thing serviceable. I would say most of society is geared toward project work, with rapid turnover in all areas of life. Cars, phones, devices, even leadership and communities come and go quickly, which coupled with FOMO like you've pointed out, makes it hard to care about maintenance.

In the software world, we see this acutely, we know from experience that our projects are lucky to see 3 years of use before they're ditched, from failure or from a rebuild. In the agency world, my work can be gone in less than 12 months, when a clients new Creative Director or Head of Digital wants to leave their mark with a new site or app.

There is beauty in use and maintenance though, there is type of wear you see on well-used infrastructure that sees regular maintenance. It's worn, but clean, and in working order. Use and wash a handrail enough times and it'll end up polished. A well used bike-path looks worn down but it's free of debris. A well-maintained bicycle might have worn paint but doesn't creak or squeak, that kind of thing. I saw it a lot in Japan, some of their infrastructure looks worn and outdated, but it's all clean and serviceable. It's worn because it lasted so long, thanks to being well maintained.

I remember visiting my sister when she graduated with her MBA and the stone steps in many buildings showed clearly decades of use. They were clean and the handrails were in the good repair. Nice university.

When I started as a CS graduate, I was thrilled to be on a complex project as a lowly maintainer. I dove into that code and learned how stuff worked. People avoided those areas because it was too dirty, scary or hard sounding. That's the story of my career. Pick a popular project and be a fish in big pond or pick something others stayed away from and own it.

Our future is going to be a shitstorm of breakage. Covid should have taught us a lesson but we're going to go on while infrastructure (physical and virtual) starts to break and no Top 10 grad is going to want to touch it. You're not going to have a choice about plumbing or roof leaks - nobody is coming for a week and you are on your own.

On your knees - I look at my classmates now and consider HS sports to be child abuse. My coworkers talk about their kids surgeries. Those 4 or 5 people boarding your plane in wheelchairs now? It's going to be 3X that in a decade. But that'll be fine, because you'll have to wait a couple hours for the rare pilot to show up.

> I look at my classmates now and consider HS sports to be child abuse.

It's a serious risk, but the risk-reward is still positive when it comes to the value of youth sports. Do you disagree strongly with this?

I disagree with the risk reward of contact sports, especially if your kid is smaller than average. Anything where the brain collides with the skull is an obvious no (American football, soccer headers, etc).

>Our future is going to be a shitstorm of breakage. Covid should have taught us a lesson but we're going to go on while infrastructure (physical and virtual) starts to break and no Top 10 grad is going to want to touch it. You're not going to have a choice about plumbing or roof leaks - nobody is coming for a week and you are on your own.

Its already happening. It feels like a slow collapse. I am trying to maintain my 16 year old car because it is low milage and I just don't want to pay the absurd prices for a new car until maybe next year (especially a Mazda which I like but not at that price). My trusty mechanic has had so many labor issues that while he provides me good service even he is slipping. I've been teaching myself car repair so I can do more and more myself because I know it will be done right and with extreme care.

I see the same happening to local hospitals and doctors offices. I've had to bring parents there or go there myself a few times this year and I can clearly see the degradation in service. I can't do anything about this compared to the car other than take really good care of myself and hope for the best.

Same applies to all of retail. The quality of all mass market stuff just seems worse and worse as time goes on. I was observing this while having a bagel and coffee from Dunkin. Everyone is just flat out "over it".

> I've been teaching myself car repair so I can do more and more myself because I know it will be done right and with extreme care.

Is there a book you’d recommend? I want to learn car repair as well.

YouTube is actually pretty good.

Whoever made your car published a huge book for mechanics to use on that specific model. That can also be a great resource depending on the manufacturer

I HIGHLY recommend the Chrisfix Youtube channel. This guy just goes above and beyond in providing an entertaining format to do many of the easy fixes and maintenance item on your car. He deserves every subscription he gets. The videos are so entertaining, I just watch them even if I don't have anything broken on my car.

Here is a video on how to change every fluid in a typical car, he makes it look so easy and it turns out, its not that hard. This alone can extend the reliable life of most modern cars yet many people skip out on many of these fluids because it seems too hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7JCh7PHoDc

Another great video is the five fundamental things a car needs to work. He eloquently explains how he managed to repair a free car he got just by following a diagnosis procedure that ensures these five items are operational: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNhuDCVIydw

Some models of cars are much more user friendly than others and every car seems to have a unique set of design quirks that make some parts tricky to work on. Thats where more experienced mechanics must unfortunately do the work. In my case I have learned many common jobs and just leave the more complex stuff to the mechanic(still if you maintain a car well these become less common). If I had a full garage, you bet I'd buy a cheap car and just take the whole thing apart and put it back together to learn how to fix everything. Chrisfix actually has videos on doing more complex stuff like replacing a transmission or repairing rust on your car but its the lack of tools that prevents me from attempting the more complex stuff.

One piece of advice my mechanic gave me was that you want to get a car that is popular with younger people as that results in multiple people uploading Youtube videos on fixing everything on that car.

My main car is a first Gen Mazda 3 and it seems like every nook and cranny of this car is documented on Youtube.

My late father drove a 2005 Chevy Equinox and I have had a lot harder time fixing things on this car because it is just not as well documented.

After watching a lot of the ChrisFix videos and getting the confidence to work on a car ( If I mess up the car I still have other one right?) I bought the Haynes manual for each car. This manual has a lot of essential info and repair procedures for each model. If you can, I'd recommend getting the specific manual for your car.

Finally there was also a campaign years back to create a comprehensive course detailing everything about how a car works. I had pre-ordered the course and it was delivered in 2020. IU haven't started it yet because I just haven't had the urge to(too busy fixing my car with Chrisfix videos and then dealing with other maintenance items around the house). If you are interested in more detailed structured content, check it out: https://www.howacarworks.com/

The older cars like the 2005 Chevy Equinox are great for repairs. You can just buy a Chilton or Haynes manual for most of these which gives a complete vehicle tear down and details step by step almost all repairs.

Hard disagree. This car is a nightmare. Off the top of my head:

1. Transmission dipstick requires removing the engine mount to get access and is also held down with a bolt.

2. Various electrical issues with wiring cause premature failure and "gremlin" like issues. You could end up on the side of the road and not be able to diagnose the issue.

3. The transmission on some trims are solid while others are this terrible Aisin unit that used Toyota trans fluid and has a high failure rate.

4. A smaller issue but annoying nonetheless: No easy way to add AUX in to the stock stereo. It is bare bones and they didn't even add any header. :/

The Mazda I referenced predated AUX input but they exposed an input for SatelliteRadio/Cassette/Minidisc and that gives you the option of removing something to replace with AUX. The GM Unit? Nothing.

While I recommend the repair manual in my comment above, in this case the real lesson it will teach you is how much headache you will begin to encounter should you choose to repair this car.

But to clarify, in terms of documentation, there is a lack of Youtube videos going into deep detail about every little issue on this car like the Mazda has. The Mazda has tons of channels covering it. The Chevy? Not so much. The Manual tells you how to fix subsystems but would never cover little things like the window switch not working and the fix being to stuff a bit of a q-tip stick in the rubber pressure button to permanently resolve the issue. The manual would just tell you to replace the part altogether. Thats what I mean by the car being documented inside and out. It has been studied so much that there are actual practical fixes to specific parts.

You completely missed the point. Manufacturer manuals can be hard to come by, but with older vehicles there are often after market manuals that were reasonably priced and quite exhaustive in details down to the proper torque of a bolt.

YouTube generally covers just enough to have destroyed the market for real repair manuals and over half of the top YouTube results are someone that figured out how to do something, but doesn't really know what they are doing so they are like, "Just shove a q-tip in there it fixed it for me." SMH

>You completely missed the point. Manufacturer manuals can be hard to come by, but with older vehicles there are often after market manuals that were reasonably priced and quite exhaustive in details down to the proper torque of a bolt.

No I did not miss the point. Yes the manuals are great for having torque specs and proper steps for diagnosing and replacing components. YOU missed my point: That the steps themselves are terrible for DIY people DUE TO THE DESIGN OF THE CAR. It sounds like you didn't even read my comment in full. I HAVE the manual for this car. It is still a massive PITA to work on this car vs the Mazda (of which I also have the Haynes manual).

>YouTube generally covers just enough to have destroyed the market for real repair manuals and over half of the top YouTube results are someone that figured out how to do something, but doesn't really know what they are doing so they are like, "Just shove a q-tip in there it fixed it for me." SMH

You are really dismissing a lot of additional knowledge that is gained by crowd sourcing with your snarky comment. This particular module controls the buttons for the windows. It is a 300$ part. The fan community figured out it stops working because a 1mm piece of plastic breaks off and stops contacting a rubber membrane. A tiny piece of a q-tip fits the membrane cavity perfectly. The Haynes manual states to replace the whole 300$ part (on a car that is worth only around ~3k since it is 15+ years old). If you want to waste that kind of money go right ahead but for everyone else all of this focus on the car has uncovered interesting fixes like this.

Get yourself a service manual for the car you own. Make sure it's the one produced for their own dealer mechanics. It'll be pricey, but it'll pay for itself the first job you do yourself.

I had the urge to get into car repairs (despite not owning one) and so far Youtube and Google has served me well to do some simple repairs/maintenance.

While manuals are good, there is nothing better than a video precisely showing how it's done. Even better if it's a good quality video where the author explains all the details you might not know that are not mentioned in the manuals because a mechanic reading those manuals is supposed to know that.

I also love ChrisFix videos to acquire some general knowledge about repairs/maintenance, but if you can find videos for your particular model and job, it's much better.

I would think that this kind of general decline is caused by financialization, value extraction, and new owners that simply do not care. I mean, look at [insert industry name here].

> Those 4 or 5 people boarding your plane in wheelchairs now? It's going to be 3X that in a decade.

Well... have you seen what happens to the 4 or 5 wheelchairs on the other end of the flight? They often remain empty. Looks to me like people are gaming the system to get preferential treatment on plains.

* planes

I would say it's a very americentric world view. There are a lot of cultures who are the opposite. Or who were the opposite and increasingly turned into a more consumeristic society. I'm not a person that is particularly good at maintenance, but compared to friends I've had from London or bigger US and Canadian cities I've seen a lot of people very surprised when I decided to fix things instead of just buying a new one. Even if its just a 20 buck wallet with a broken seam.

I can already imagine a bunch of people here saying to themselves my hourly rate is worth much more than this 20 bucks wallet and yes, so is mine, but there is something pleasing about not throwing everything away at the first sign of wear.

When you say "Humans simple do NOT" what you really mean is "MY demographic does not". Even in the US or Canada that is very much dependent on the area and the demographic you grew up. I am not at all surprised that people who's only goal in life is to make as much money as people in the valley and who buy a new iphone every 1 or 2 years find the act of maintaining things insane.

Unfortunately this problem has seeped through society in which I would call the proliferation of business school graduates who are now at the top of most business chains and who have traded any long term benefit for short term gains.

Things that are maintained usually have more character. That wooly jumper with the elbow patches or that old motorcycle that's had the engine rebuilt. Of course nowadays people will just opt to buy the new version of something that is made to look like it was old and remade. But the old things were usually of better quality materials and the idiosyncratic details of a maintainer simply can't be recreated in something new and mass produced.

Completely agree, but at the same time a lot of people (myself included) criticize Germans for being terrible customers, because they expect things they buy to last a very long time, be repairable and also cheap. I.e. they don't buy often. Contrast that to how Americans are considered to be "good consumers".

> Things that are maintained usually have more character.

This is how I think and feel as well. Custom repairs signal to me some kind of toughness. The item has been battle tested and survived.

Have you ever worked in Maintenance?

I worked on industrial maintenance for 7 years. While some of what you say is true, there's a lot wrong.

> They are usually lowly paid and have low moral because what they work is chore.

Not the case for me or anyone I worked with. The pay was very good. We had skills that were very hard to replace (PLC programming, high-tech press fitting, experience on very large machines that were basically one of a kind, so you can't just take people from other companies that have the same thing or even close). Morale was high because even though engineers and managers don't respect us, we didn't respect them either so we could almost do anything we wanted! Which was ok because we were more needed than they were... one day off for us cost millions to the company if a machine stopped working (an engineer could take a week off and no one noticed).

> They also do not get to enjoy creating new things.

In some shitty companies maybe... I was able to design from scratch large machines that we then proceeded to build and use in production. Really cool stuff that I really loved.

My last job in maintenance let me spend most of my time writing software for the maintenance inventory, which was hard to keep up-to-date and off-the-shelf software for that was very expensive... despite us having fairly simple needs (which is why was able to write it myself using a mix of VBA and MS Access... this was a long time ago). After that, I noticed I could do software and started going to uni for a Compute Science degree. Which I attended WHILE working in maintenance as the job was mostly waiting for shit to happen so I had lots of "free" time. Took me around 10 years in software to start earning substantially more than I used to in maintenance.

I did it mostly to avoid the shit parts of the job: cleaning shit, changing oil, greasing gears and what not... that part was not fun.

The same is true for managers. The manager whose project is late and over budget, but whips their staff into working long hours is seen as a decisive hard charger. On time and on budget projects must be easy and the managers of such projects are seen as weak and unambitious.

> I think in general the human mind treats Maintenance as less important or not important at all.

I think you're probably right.

As another simple example, I like to actually keep a pretty clean house. I know that this frustrates roommates or other people I live with but it actually takes very little work to keep the house clean (I'm honestly a pretty lazy person). My motto is "It is far easier to _keep_ things clean than it is to _make_ things clean later." It is amazing how far just wiping up a mess when it is made goes to keeping things clean. Takes 5 seconds if you do it after the mess is made but 15 minutes if you wait. Or just simple maintenance things like once a week spray your shower with bleach water 15 minutes before you get in (and rinse the walls). (Obviously there's exceptions to the "clean now" "rules" because schedules get tight and that's not always possible. So I just want to make it clear I'm not harassing people. I just don't want a stove top covered in oil or garbage littered in the house)

I think this style of maintenance extends well beyond cleanliness or health. We also probably undervalue it because we're also pretty well known to be bad at future planning. It is basically the Marshmallow Experiment. For cleaning (or most maintenance tasks) the cost is little now but requires effort now while the cost is higher in the future but you're able to put off the effort. Problem being that we view future costs/rewards as smaller than immediate costs/rewards. I always wonder how much faster humans could progress if we were able to more accurately internalize future costs/rewards into our mental models (even just a small improvement).

What's the easiest way to clean? Not make a mess in the first place.

> the Marshmallow Experiment

“The original marshmallow test, it turned out, had a flaw. Exclude some children from better-off families (which seems to make them both more willing to delay gratification and more likely to succeed in later life) and much of its predictive power suddenly disappears.” — quote from an economist piece.

Stated another way: kids who have learned they can trust adults around them are more likely to succeed than ones who can't

While this is true, I thought it was the easiest example to give to others. I think we're all aware that people are pretty terrible at estimating future rewards/costs and there's plenty of studies that do show this.

I agree with your analysis of time tradeoffs. On this basis, I rinse & stack dirty dishes. Drives the wife nuts. She doesn't get it.

Get a dishwasher, seriously. No dirty dishes in sight.

This is not something new. It is simply a matter of discipline, and choosing long term rewards over short term rewards.

And people have been choosing short term rewards for many generations and probably all of humanity, even when they know otherwise.

Everyone knows to eat and drink less/better and exercise more, but few do it, because it is not fun.

It's a bit more complicated for the other projects I guess. We never know for sure if the budget is correct or too inflated to satisfy certain interest groups. We don't even know if it is necessary to do X at this moment. Of course we can probably blindly trust the engineers who certified on the reports (because civil engineers are true engineers while software engineers are not?).

This comic seems relevant:

https://workchronicles.substack.com/p/comic-prevention-vs-cu...

On Reddit, I think I saw the meme version of what you write here. It summarizes it quite good.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/xma9ad/im_...

Just out of curiosity, what maintenance would a computer need? Dusting?

Everwhere I've worked, when I open up a PC, I unplug cables, carry it out to the nearest airhose and (carefully) blow out the mess.

It's the great squeaky wheel gets the oil management problem.

A service that hums along quietly gets its budget cut. A dumpster fire that produces tickets and visible fixes/hero moments gets a big budget re-up.

The basic issue is of course inability to predict the future, inability of management to properly judge things, etc. Management is:

Charitable version: full of people that necessarily cannot have full context/detail and must make quick high-level decisions

Not Charitable version: full of sociopaths whose primary job is to maintain or improve standing, and secondary concern is making good long term decisions for a company, so cutting maintenance or spinning slapdash solutions and failures as epic wins is more effective.