It's funny the things we think we can't do, isn't it? For years, I've been sending lamps out to the workshop/barn/basement/storage spot of the moment. Those vintage ones I fall in love with while out thrifting and bring home, not entirely certain if they work or not, plus those in the house that work for a while and then...just stop. Another one added to the pile. Each time, I'd nudge Steve with a reminder of said pile of lamps, and a reminder of the darkness of this corner of a room or that one. Knowing he had never rewired a lamp before, I'd periodically send him links to tutorials I'd come across online. I think I even checked a book out of the library about it for him once. See? See how easy it is, I'd say. You can do it. Nudge, nudge.
As I was recently rearranging this graveyard of broken lamps to make room for yet another old one that suddenly stopped working, and found myself getting a little grouchy about it, I got to thinking about this whole business of rewiring those lamps. Clearly, it wasn't a priority/need/desire for my husband....but it was for me. So why, exactly, hadn't I just done it myself? Surely, I'm not afraid of learning new things...and yet this thing, this simple little thing, that fell a little bit outside of my comfort zone and skill set, I was passing off to someone else to learn. Maybe it was some deep-seeded gender thing this feminist didn't know she had going on. Maybe it's that I don't know the difference between a phillips and a regular screwdriver and thought the learning curve was too steep for me (that's not true, I really do know the difference, I promise). Maybe it was the fear of messing up electrical wires coming from a firefighter's daughter. Who knows what the reason was before then, but in that moment, they were all thrown out the window and replaced with the obvious answer: do it yourself.
It turns out, I'm happy to report, that rewiring lamps isn't really rocket science at all. It's totally doable! Easy! Fun, even! He could do it, I could do it, you could do it. And it has me wondering, looking around to see what other possibly 'complicated, scary, outside-of-my skill set' things I could do too. Oh, the possibilities...
(Now...fabric on lampshade? That, I know.)
