Many systems tick along without needing much assistance. You can go so long before something breaks that you don’t recall a time when that something broke before. Twice within a week, two door handles
flew off. I had to research the name of the bit that was causing the problem, so I’d know what to order in as a fix.
My quick temporary fix was to swap downstairs doorhandles with upstairs ones that are used less often - and to leave those upstairs doors ajar. That way, the downstairs carers could still use the
toilet without screaming for help inside an accidentally locked room.
They’d have been fine. It is almost impossible to stay locked inside the toilet. The handle that pulls away, with no hope left, is on the outside. Inside, if the handle does pull away, ouch,
it carries the spindle with it. And you can insert the spindle to turn the handle on your side, no problem.
Spindle. One of the words I learned. The term I was looking for was grub screw. It is a type of bolt. These bolts go into the handle and rest flush with it so that
you don’t tear your fingers apart on a raised thread. Looking at the failed handles, I learned that the grub screws had long stalks on them.
A very old design. The stalk, whatever its official name is, provides a barrier that, when fixed in place, holds the handle to the spindle. With time, this very old design simply shears off through
metal fatigue. We’re talking about a house that still has the original handles from the day the place was ready to inhabit.
Design has moved on. Grub screws have a raised area instead of a long stalk. The fix is to remove the broken piece and fit a new one. I had to buy in. The internet offered many cheap solutions. And
a few expensive ones that covered selections. I didn’t want selections.
So I measured very precisely, and learned that I would get by on a 5 mm grub screw. I counted the doors. They’d all need fixing at some point, if these old bolts were starting to go within days
of each other. Count the doors. Double the number of bolts required. Order a packet of those. Hope that my measuring was true.
Did I need a selection box of grub screws of many different sizes and lengths? No. These specialised bolts are pretty much there for use in door handles. I have no other conceivable use for them.
Thinking hard about that. No. There’s nothing in the house that could do with a fix involving a grub screw bolt. Just the door handles.
Recognise the faulty or broken part. Arrange a replacement. Buy in. Wait. Then start changing all the old bits over. There were a few problems. In the door to my immediate left, part of the door handle
mechanism is jammed. Even with the old grub screw removed, the handle won’t come off.
I know why. It’s a spindle problem. And there’s very little I can do about that. I added the new grub screw anyway. With time, the new grub screws will work loose, and handles will fly
off again. But the screws themselves shouldn’t be worn away or cracked.
See a broken thing. Fix a broken thing. Or have someone come in and fix a broken thing. Replace a thing with a spare or buy a replacement. These old grub screws did their job decade after decade.
I never game them much thought. Suddenly I had to give them thought.
Replacing the door handles entirely was going to be a whole production. Identifying the tiny thing that needed fixing. That was a lot easier. I started with descriptions. Describe the thing in a door
handle that holds the door handle on. Okay, hit the search engine. Right. These are grub screws. They are bolts. You need a bunch of these in a packet.
They are cheap. What does the Amazon listing say? Item is often returned. Unsuitable. Reviews? This didn’t fit. Measure, measure, measure. The delivery came about an hour before the next shift of carers arrived. I resolved to remove my temporary fix of the toilet door and put in a long-lasting
one.
Building up a routine, I managed to work my way around most of the house before breaking away to deal with carers. See a problem. Fix a problem. The last big maintenance thing was the valve regulating
the hot water, and a heating engineer dealt with that.
Not long after, it was time for annual heating maintenance. That engineer told me the old valve was replaced by a new design of valve that doesn’t develop the same fault as often. Confidentially,
there was a flaw in the old design. You go ages without fixing a thing and then must fix all the things.
Maintenance never stops. True of any household. But there’s a focus on fixing things ahead of being fixed – having spares – in a house where you are caring for someone. I’m
almost always ahead of the game. In the case of a gas heating problem, I can take steps, annually, to reduce the prospect of trouble. But that’s an area you generally leave to the professionals.
Next. More professional stuff. Bathroom repairs. I managed a repair to the toilet downstairs without too much difficulty. Always on the lookout for trivial things. Stop them at the trivial stage.
Tighten those taps. Or loosen them just a bit. Whatever you can do that you have to do, do that.
But the bathroom needs a fix to an extractor fan. And the shower demands a replacement part that I don’t keep in stock. That’ll be for the bathroom repair guy to deal with.
Things in the house that need moved to one side and back again, tightened, loosened, cleaned, moved right across a room to a new position, checked, or even replaced…you can’t let any of
those items slide. I switched to my spare electric toothbrush. The regular one was done. Yes, I can go to a manual backup. But once I’ve owned an electric toothbrush for an age, it’s time to bring a new one in
– just in advance of the day of replacement.
Maintenance really is all about spares. Have them. Arrange them. Hold the fort together while a delivery arrives. Yes, there are gaps in your routine. I never thought to have replacement grub screws
on standby. That’s right. I couldn’t name them to start with. Well, now I know. And I have a few spares there, just in case. Fix the thing early if you can. Use the best type of fix. I had all sorts of tools for
fixing the old washing machine. My fixes kept it going until the new washing machine arrived. Job done.
I’ve talked about fixes before. And I’ll do so again. Sometimes maintenance is about fixing a problem and not a device. Just glancing around the main caring room, I found it difficult
to read the time on the clock. It’s about angle, position, the nature of the clock itself.
Not a clock to replace. It’s one of those picture deals. Photos around it. These provide memories. Talking points for the carers. Also, it still works. It’s fine when I’m in the
other half of the room, nearer the bed. But when I sit on a stool next to the chair, to dish out meals, the time spent can be important. I need the time at a glance.
Why don’t I wear a watch? It would catch on so many things, as a carer. I have time on my phone, in a pouch at my hip. But my hands are full. Time at a glance. Maintenance meant buying a calendar
style clock with bold numbers, easy to read across the room with a shift of the eyes.
This is why maintenance never stops. You solve problems. The room looks super-organised. Yes, it is. And that’s based on all the problems I had to fix over many years as a carer. I have a toolbox
upstairs and another downstairs, so that I don’t need to change floors to reach for tools. That has saved me from all sorts of trouble, so many times.
Obviously, as a wintry spring howls around the walls, there’s garden maintenance. But I tend to think of that as gardening. The weed war started just the other day. I won the first battle. And
I’ll win all the rest of those battles, too. I hate seeing a weed, annoying me by its mere existence. And I get that feeling when something unbreakable suddenly unaccountably breaks.
But for those moments, there are spares. Or spares on the internet. And I get by. Writing this blog post is now done using spares. I could no longer preview the post before publishing. So I had to
switch to a spare browser, where that is still possible. Carer blog. So. Carer-related maintenance of a sort.
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