Does this scenario sound familiar? You walk into the kitchen to make a peanut better sandwich. You get the bread and the peanut butter (in my house its creamy as I am alone in my preference for chunky). Then you reach for the silverware drawer and you notice that the once smooth slide of the drawer seems a little stiffer. You ignore it grab a knife and get to work on your snack. Over time, the drawer seems stiffer and eventually it gets to a point where you start to think, "I've got to something about that." The drawer is now officially on your mental list of things to do around the house.

For me these things usually stay on that list, unattended to until they become a serious problem. Like the filter in the air conditioner. I learned this weekend that when the filter gets so bad that it is not only no longer filtering but an actual obstruction to incoming air, the condenser just cools the humid air around it. This tends to cause the condenser to ice up. Then the little pump that is supposed to pump the condensation over to the drain can't do its thing. Then the air handler fills up with water. The air conditioner at this point stops working effectively and the basement begins to get very wet.

Which in the end does nothing more than illustrate the ineffectiveness of the floating mental to do list. So I made a specific mental note to change the filter again at the start of the cooling season next year.

The silverware drawer has gotten increasingly difficult to operate and it has been on my mental list to give it a shot of WD40®. So on random trips to the basement I have been looking in places where I would be likely to find the WD40®, with no success. I couldn't believe that I had none in the house. The stuff is magic in a spray can. With a can of WD40® and a roll or two of duct tape one could be a serious contender for the X-Prize. The mental memo paid of when I was at Home Depot for something unrelated to drawer function I went to the aisle where the stick WD40®, which I knew because I know where everything is in my Home Depot. I did have to wonder, again, at what it ads to the cost to have the little red straw attached to the can with a rubber band.

I got home and gave the slides a quick spray and the drawer glides effortlessly. l knew the perfect spot in the basement to store my can of magic as well. A little cabinet next to the breaker panel where I keep a few homeowner essentials. The problem is, there wasn't any room on the one shelf tall enough for the can. All of that space was taken up by three other cans of WD40®. There are five rolls of duct tape on the shelf above. I think I scratch the X-Prize off my list.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 04:42 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment