As I mentioned a few weeks ago in my suburban experiment post, my wife and I are renting a place; one half of a duplex where the landlord lives next door. It’s convenient in a number of ways, but as outlined in that post, there are trade-offs.
Renting someone else’s home is always tricky. Currently we rent our condo to former coworkers and know that any problems need to be addressed as soon as possible. Being roughly 1,000 miles away makes that difficult. With a landlord next door though, it’s simplified a bit. For instance, we noticed that our bathroom tub wasn’t draining well. The landlord came over to look at a few other items and suggested drain cleaner to solve the issue. I don’t know how much drain cleaner costs, but a quick survey of the problem revealed a clump of hair 2″ from the drain opening. Not only have I no clue about the cost (including externalities) of drain cleaner, I don’t know what is in it.
As it turns out, what I do know, is thata $2.49 piece of “barbed” plastic about 2′ long is excellent at clearing clogged drains, especially when you can see the mass obstructing the drain. The Zip-It bills itself as a green alternative to drain cleaner, and it’s easy to see why. It took three attempts to clear out the tangle of hair and gunk. Admittedly it was disgusting, especially considering this was someone else’s gunk. However, for two and a half bucks, some elbow grease, and about 2 minutes of my time, I cleared a clog that my landlord’s drain cleaner barely affected.
Looking for the easy fix does not always mean the technical or chemical solution. A little bit of hard work goes a long way. Self-reliance is a trait to be emulated, not denigrated. Taking a few minutes to manually complete a task has numerous benefits, including, but not limited to minimizing chemical inputs into our wastewater system and costing less monetarily in both the short term and the long run. It’s okay to get dirty. It’s not okay to dirty our resources (soil, air, water) unnecessarily.
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