Metro Pulse/Snarls/Home Entropy

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Like physics, home ownership is all about natural laws

by Scott McNutt

If you are the typical homeowner, then no doubt you look upon your domicile with syrupy "home sweet home"-style sentiment. Unfortunately, home ownership is ruled by principles that have all the sentimentality of gravity, and even less sense of humor. I learned this lesson the same way Newton discovered gravity. Only with an anvil in place of the apple.

I once did my best for my home. When I bought my first house, I diligently fixed toilets, hung pictures, sealed decks, trimmed hedges, tilled gardens, killed weeds, dealt with periodic flooding—in other words, I experienced all the pride and joy of home ownership one is supposed to enjoy.

Only, I didn't enjoy it. Better to say I endured it. And as time went on, less and less meaning that endurance had. I'd pluck a weed. Six more would replace it. I'd stop a leak. An eye on the stove would blow up (literally). I'd repair a gutter. A tree would fall on it (literally). I'd install a new thermostat on the water heater. The water heater would leak its contents under the kitchen's vinyl, necessitating the floor's replacement.

Oh, and I'd mow the grass. And the grass would grow back. I'd mow again. Again it would grow. I'd mow twice in a week. It would come back twice as high. And so on.

Now, I'm as Sisyphean as the next existentialist, but it got to me, rolling that rock of a lawnmower up that mountain of a lawn, all the while knowing that the only point of it was to ensure that I'd have to do it again. Ultimately, as I glared into the futility of home maintenance, home maintenance's futility glared back into me. I knew I would never win. Or even break even.

After some bitter soul-searching in Home Depot, I arrived at the Theory of Home Entropy, which states: "1) If something can go wrong in a home, it will.

"2) Repairs will ultimately require more time, effort, and money than whatever it was initially took to install.

"3) When that's fixed, something else will go wrong.

"4) Then all your friends will say, 'I told you so.'" (Line [4] sometimes is referred to as the "Should Have Gotten Aluminum Siding Addendum.")

Recognizing the Theory of Home Entropy led me to its corollaries, the Futile Constant ("The grass always needs mowing") and the Axiom of Fiduciary Insufficiency ("Debt increases in inverse proportion to one's ability to pay it").

Once I came to understand these three principles, I began to grasp the General Theory of Neighborhood Relativity ("E=MC2, or, Esteem equals lawn Mowing times home Condition, squared"). When this concept fully crystallized in my consciousness, it produced the same profound yet terrifying feeling of freedom as when one first realizes the inevitability of death and taxes. I won't pretend it loosed me from all doubt and care, but it was wonderfully clarifying.

You see, understanding Neighborhood Relativity allowed me to see that I was not raking the leaves, mopping the floors, washing the windows, and such for me; no, I was an ant scurrying to my appointed tasks according to the will of the colony. That is, I wasn't maintaining my house because I cared about it; I was doing it because my community cares.

And that was freeing indeed. Because I don't give a damn what the neighbors think.

I would have been content to dwell there, happily tapping away on my computer, indifferent to shingles weathering and grass growing. But one day I met a woman, and she wanted a different house, which quickly led to a striking demonstration of the Intergender Relationship Deficit Postulate: "A fool's money and a woman soon depart." She left me, but not without mementos: my current house and a substantially increased debt load.

Not that I begrudge my ex; she was right. It's a better house, with better neighbors, in a better neighborhood. And I'd like to do well by them. Sadly, as my neighbors industriously plant pansies, sweep sidewalks, and generally act with neighborhood pride, I can't shake the ennui that stems from knowing the inevitability of Home Entropy, so my house just rots.

Well, I believe it's Home Entropy that keeps my home maintenance-free. There are times I fear it's really an application of the Home Law of Conservation of Energy (also known as "laziness"). Nah, couldn't be.