Managing Home Maintenance Costs

A Pressure Washer can be a very useful tool around the home when used properly. It can also be an extremely dangerous tool if not used properly. We believe in safety first and urge readers to also read their instruction manuals. Pay particular attention to the safety aspect of the instruction booklet. We are not encouraging readers to purchase any particular type of Pressure Washer. However, we do encourage consumers to use them carefully. I was originally against buying one of these tools. I thought it was kind of frivolous and just a gimmick until I borrowed a neighbors. Then I realized just how useful a tool it actually was. Since we purchased it, we have used it for many different projects, that have been made much easier than it would have been otherwise. If you are considering purchasing one, just do it. They are really quite good.

Pressure Washer – Safety

The basic rule is never to point the wand at anything that you do not want to be damaged. This includes other people, yourself, and anything that could be damaged by a high-pressure stream of water. We have seen a jet of water cut right through the wood, cut plants in half, pierce the skin, and remove paint from a car.  Used incorrectly they can be both dangerous and cause a lot of expensive damage. Read all of the instructions and experiment first on something that you do not mind damaging to get used to using a pressure washer.

Pressure Washer – Adjust the Water Jet

The wand is designed to allow operators to adjust the concentration of water exiting from the wand. It can deliver a really tight stream of water. This is useful to cut things with, get at hard to remove paint on a cement wall, and remove stain from wood in hard to get to places. Adjusting the wand so that the stream is wider is also convenient. This adjustment will reduce the pressure of the stream which can be used to remove paint from walls or stain from wood. We found that it was excellent for removing loose paint and stain from wood.

When we wash the car, the wand is set to deliver as wide a stream of water as possible. Make sure you stand well back to make sure that there is little chance of removing any paint from your car. If your car is rusty or has loose paint, it is going to come off. This may some damage to your car that you may not be expecting. Standing back about six feet so that the wand is at least three feet from the car is usually enough. This distance should ensure that the paint will not be damaged by the pressure washer. If there is loose paint or rust on the car, even at this distance it is probably going to come off.

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ARE YOU “GOING GREEN?” This is a great story that we included here because it is so true!

Being Green Again

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this ‘green thing’ back in my earlier days.”

The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

Was She Right?

She was right — our generation didn’t have the ‘green thing’ in our day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles, and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed, sterilized, and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over.
So they really were recycled.
But we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable, besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribbling. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown bag but we didn’t do the “green thing” back then.

We walked up stairs because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn’t have the “green thing” in our day.

Energy Eating Appliances

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line — not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day.
Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana .

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. Writing pens were refilled with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.

Back then people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family’s $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the “green thing.” We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the “green thing” back then?
Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person…
We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off . . . especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced smartass who can’t make change without the cash register telling them how much.