How To Get That Horrible Job Done If You Hate DIY

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DIY woman work helmet construction

The Do-It-Yourself approach is a cheap, often fun way to fix what’s broken, repair what’s not working, and spruce up what’s old, ugly, or tired looking. It’s not the right approach for every fix-it job in the home, naturally-advanced issues involving electrical work or serious plumbing, for example, are best left to the professionals. On the whole, however, most small to medium home repairs are easy to handle yourself, especially if you don’t have an astronomical amount of money to spend on labor, since the pros usually charge an arm and a leg for their expertise rather than the parts they fix or replace. But what’s that, you say? You hate the DIY way? You’re not alone, but even if you’re all thumbs and detest manual labor, you can still get the job done.

Use Your Project as an Excuse to Fall Down a YouTube Hole

YouTube is an invaluable resource for just about any DIY project you can imagine. You’ll find a step-by-step guide or how-to video for numerous home improvement tasks, ranging from painting and tiling the bathroom to carpet installation and refinishing furniture. In addition to tutorials that guide you through nearly any project, you can also use videos for decorating and design inspiration. Once you see how much potential there is in your own two hands, maybe you’ll want to explore the boundaries of your hidden DIY talents.

Or Capitalize on Your DIY Antics Yourself

Seriously, if you have numerous home improvements on your to-do list and you’re either a wordsmith or a telegenic character, turn your DIY doings into a blogging or vlogging opportunity. On a blog, you can illustrate the progress of each project with sharp, high-res photographs and a detailed, storytelling approach to the description of every step. With a vlog, you can set up a camera and document your project step-by-step, perhaps even giving it a comedic twist. Endless possibilities there, at any rate.

Spend Your Weekends at the Hardware Store

Home Depot, Lowe’s, smaller franchises, and even local hardware stores offer classes, demonstrations, and in-store how-to sessions for a variety of tasks. You can learn quite a bit about painting, flooring installation, applying tile, and changing sinks, among other home improvements. There are often seasonal classes, as well, so you may learn about designing a patio or putting up a fence in the summertime and winterizing your home in late fall or winter.

Recruit Your Friends or Your Dad to Help You

Since two heads are better than one, invite your whole crew. Let them know what you’re doing—they can bring along any handy buddies if they know what’s on the docket. Besides, even the worst jobs are much more fun when you’re in a group. Between the bunch of you, it’s likely that you can figure out how to do just about anything, plus working together makes the job go faster. Obviously, if any of your pals invite their skilled friends, that’s a huge knowledge boost.  Your dad is also a value use when it comes to DIY projects, remember, he’s been doing this longer!

Create a DIY Playlist

This isn’t incredibly helpful in terms of helping you accomplish the task, but frankly, every job is more enjoyable when it has a soundtrack. If you’re really raging about the do-it-yourself part of DIY, craft a list of angry songs, then scream along with the lyrics while you work. Motivate yourself with a selection of upbeat, encouraging jams. Protip: the tunes of the ’80s and early ’90s are ideal for turning your DIY nightmare into a radical musical montage.

Give Free Reign to Your Creative Side

Some tasks just aren’t pleasurable no matter how optimistic you try to make yourself. It’s hard to motivate yourself to take the first step of a task you genuinely dread doing. Pretend you’re a politician and put a spin on your thoughts. Whatever DIY project you’re trying to accomplish, just think of it this way: you can do whatever you want to do. You’re in charge. Let’s say you have to change the sink in the bathroom. Use that as an excuse to redecorate the whole room. Painting your bedroom gives you the ability to introduce stunning colors and eye-catching patterns. Changing the goal allows you to mix in a few improvements that are more fun.

A lot of people genuinely enjoy the DIY approach, but not everyone wants to break out the tools and tackle a home improvement task. You may never love it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t excel at it. If all else fails, think of all the money you’ll save—money that you can now spend doing something you like.

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