Hot take: I think the broken hinge on my garage door was really a sign I needed to oil it more often, not replace the whole thing

Last month I wasted a Saturday morning trying to replace a rusty hinge on my side door, but after my neighbor Jim walked over and said 'did you try WD-40 first?' I felt like an idiot - turns out the thing just needed maintenance, not a full swap, so which side are you on, do you fix what breaks or do you dig deeper into the routine that caused it?

3 comments

3 Comments

david5621mo ago

Had a buddy who kept replacing the automatic light sensors on his driveway every spring until his wife pointed out cobwebs were blocking them the whole time. Sometimes the simple fix is right there staring you in the face.

morgan89829d ago

Back in 2019 my friend Jake had this weird buzzing sound coming from his washing machine every time it hit the spin cycle. He tore the thing apart three times, replaced the belt and the motor mounts, spent like 200 bucks on parts. Turns out his kid had jammed a Hot Wheels car between the drum and the outer tub. Just like what @david562 was saying with the cobwebs, sometimes you're looking too hard for a complicated problem when the answer is right there in front of you.

garcia.tyler26d ago

People always think the problem has to be some complex mechanical failure when half the time it's just spiders or kids being kids. That washing machine story kills me because I've been there, tore apart a dryer for two hours once before finding a sock blocking the vent. It's humbling when you realize you wasted a whole afternoon on something a pair of eyes could have spotted in ten seconds. Good reminder to step back and look for the dumb stuff first before you start throwing money at parts.