Teach Kids How To Repair Things

A light stops working. The door is squeaking when it closes. The toilet won’t flush correctly. The faucet is leaking. There’s some other minor annoyance inside of your home that needs to be fixed. If you own your home, then paying someone to deal with all of these little problems is going to add up fast. You need to learn to deal with the little things around the house in order to have a nice home to live in.

Many people grew up in households where they saw their parents doing things around the house. Replacing a light bulb is quite straightforward, and something everyone should be able to do, but what about replacing the outlet when it stops working? If you ever saw your parents do this, then you're probably comfortable with doing it yourself. If you didn’t see them do it though, you might be quite scared.

Fixing small things around the house doesn’t have to be that difficult. In our day and age, learning how to fix something inside of your house is about as easy as can be. A quick search online for just about any task will return several hundred videos on how to complete the task. Replacing that outlet isn’t as hard as you thought - as long as you have the electricity off it’s really not dangerous either.

Beyond saving some money, you should also be doing things around that house so that your kids can learn how to as well. As you learn to do it the right way, they learn that you can complete basic tasks around the house and they’ll be less scared to do it on their own in the future as well. Sure, they’re not going to remember every step when they’re still young, but it’s about building confidence.

You don’t have to do every task around the house. Replacing an outlet is one thing, but what about moving an outlet from one location to another (perhaps you got a bidet that you need to connect to a power outlet). Some people will feel comfortable doing this while others not so much. You really don’t want to destroy your wall trying to move an outlet so it may make sense to pay someone to do it for you.

It’s also totally fine to fail at taking on some of those bigger projects. This is a great opportunity to teach kids about trying things and then calling for help when needed. You may start out trying to finish your basement only to realize that the job is way bigger than you had originally thought, and you’re just not able to complete it on your own. Call in the professional help to complete the job that you started.

As you complete more projects around the house, you’ll continue to build more confidence for future projects. While you may replace an outlet today, perhaps tomorrow you’ll rewire your light switches to support three way dimmer switches. Or you may take on the bathroom project you’ve been dreaming about. Whatever the case may be, the more you do, the more comfortable with new projects.

Do projects around the house, and have your kids help when possible. Learning to complete small projects at home will help give them confidence to do those things on their own in the future.