Landlord and Home Repairs

I own a house that I can barely afford to maintain. Sometimes I think back to the days when I rented and wish I was renting again so that I could just call the landlord to fix things that break. And then I try to think of an example of when the landlord came to my rescue and I can't come up with anything. What I remember is the house in the woods in Vermont where the spring dried up and the landlord still thought I should pay my rent although there was no water and I couldn't stay there.

And the cute little cottage in the cute little Northern California wine country town where the gas wall heater never worked and I heated with the gas oven. The same place where the toilet never flushed right and I finally replaced the whole thing myself. The same place where not one interior door ever latched closed. The same place where the electrical outlets were so worn that cords would not stay plugged in and I replaced them all. The same place where the water heater fell through the molded out floor in the laundry room one day and I had to hire a contractor to fix it all and I withheld two months' rent over the vehement protest of my landlord.

Or the apartment in Orange County California where not one window would open or close. Or the historic garden-court cottage in Orange County where the water never ran in the tub so I had to hook a hose to the sink and run it up into a shower head whenever I showered. Or the house in Arizona with the leaking roof, and the four or five layers of roofing material that would come down in chunks whenever the wind blew. Or the place in Wyoming where broken window panes had been placed with bathroom caulk and roughly cut pieces of Plexiglas.

The pleasures of renting go on and on. I've forgotten a lot of the things that didn't work and that the landlord wouldn't fix. And it's possible that I've forgotten some things that didn't work and that the landlord did fix. But I honestly can't think of any.

So on my way home tonight I'll stop by the hardware store and get a light fixture for the basement. I'll figure out how to replace it and be done with it. And I'll keep in mind that as incompetent as I may be at fixing things, and as little money as I have, I'm doing a better job of maintaining my house than any landlord I've had the pleasure to know.