You will not believe what happened to my friend Karen: she has Home Improvement Run Amok Syndrome.
For those of you lucky enough to not know what this is, it's a mysterious condition that strikes mostly property owners, compelling them to suddenly give gobs of money to contractors, redecorators or professional landscapers for no apparent reason.
Let me explain. It all started when Karen set out to replace a light bulb in her refrigerator. It was the fifth bulb to go out in a month, and she began to think that, perhaps, something was wrong with the refrigerator. So she decided it was time for a new one.
Now, this was all fine and good and all that. And it would've been the end of the story, except that when the new refrigerator arrived, it refused to fit into its allotted space in the kitchen.
So instead of returning it, Karen did the next best thing: she replaced all of her cabinets with taller ones. And that's not all. After they were installed, the linoleum floor looked dingy so she replaced it with tile.
And, then, of course, the counter tops needed to be upgraded to match the floor. Before she knew it, she had put more than $15,000 into a kitchen she had never even known needed work.
This, my friends, is an example of Home Improvements Run Amok Syndrome. So, what Karen wanted to know from me, is at what point was she supposed to have stopped.
"Tell me what happened," she said. "I mean, where was the signal?"
Frankly, I don't know why she's asking me. As a person who has never made any kind of home improvement except, perhaps, changing the furnace filter, I must admit her story gave me the chills. In fact, it still haunted me three weeks later when I told my friend Linda about it.
"Oh, relax," she said. "This kind of thing happens all the time." And she went on to tell me about how, just a few weeks previously, she had bought a new bedspread that didn't exactly match the curtains. So she took them down and put up mini blinds instead. This, of course, looked nice except then the walls needed paint to brighten up the rest of the room. When she had finished she somehow noticed that among all this bright fresh paint, her clothes didn't look all that great anymore, so she's now in the process of replacing her entire wardrobe one piece at a time.
It's astonishing really. But the fact of the matter is, Home Improvements Run Amok Syndrome can happen when you're not even looking.
Like, for example, last week when I innocently decided to paint the front door. Sure enough, before I knew it, I had moved on to the side of the house and was heading toward the garage. And don't bother asking me why. All I know is that I was just contemplating whether or not to hire someone to touch up the eaves, or get a ladder and do it myself, when my husband wrestled the brush out of my hands and made me go inside.
And to think that he didn't even listen to me when I explained to him that there's absolutely nothing wrong with a little fresh paint. After all, it's human nature to want change, right? RIGHT?
Yes, it's a funny thing how the mind works. If you ask most homeowners, they will tell you that the only way to prevent Home Improvements Run Amok Syndrome is to set down firm limits and stick to them.
Which, let's be honest here, makes a lot of sense. So that's what I'm going to do from now on.
That and, oh yeah, keep extra light bulbs on hand for the fridge.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
