9 secrets of every DIY expert

Life likes to throw challenges at us. Sometimes, these challenges appear in the form of a drawstring coming out of your pyjamas or a loose tooth. As long as you master these nine secrets of becoming a DIY expert, you have nothing to fear.

You’ve seen the bumper sticker; stuff happens. Minor frustrations are the norm, not the exception. Trying to pin the blame on someone is usually a waste of time, and avoiding the victim trap is an essential component of the fixer philosophy. If you drop and break a china, you can either think it’s unfair, or marvel at how long you and that china defied gravity, a force powerful enough to sling planets through the solar system. Then you can zero in on a solution.

You must get over that initial emotional response to a problem. Only then will you start to think of solutions. If you assume there is a way to deal with a problem, you’ll probably find one. Think self-fulfilling prophecy.

All DIYers need to know these timeless tips and tricks.

Looking on the bright side is an indispensable fix-it trait. Sometimes, you just need to get downright silly, especially when things are so bad that the alternative is tears (think a backed-up toilet flooding the hall or a downpour drenching your suit before an important meeting). If negativity clouds the mind, acute stress shackles bright ideas. Break those chains with a little laughter before moving on to the fix.

Speaking of toilets, here are 14 problems with your toilet you’ll regret ignoring.

Sounds like an impossible Zen paradox, right? There’s an important distinction between thinking fast and acting fast without thinking. The latter is called panicking, and panic has no use for a fix-it expert.

Say your son loses a tooth in a football match. He’s screaming, his friends are screaming, and blood is everywhere. Your instinctual response might be to rush him to the hospital but thinking fast, you search for the tooth and find it lying in the grass. Sure enough, that dislodged tooth might be re-implanted. You rinse the tooth with water (touching only the crown) and slip it back into the socket (or a cup of cold milk) to prevent it from drying out.

Now you can drive your son – carefully – to the emergency room. A well-thought-out fix is more effective than a botched attempt at a speedy fix.

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You might think being prepared means stocking the world’s most complete set of tools: a different gadget for every loose nut, leaky pipe, or scratched antique credenza. That is not true; a garage-load of tools is expensive and mentally burdensome. Not being able to put your hands on a tool can turn a five-minute job into a two-month job.

Here are some ideas on preparing yourself for the problems that punctuate our daily lives.

Exercise your hands. You may take them for granted, but your hands are your best tools, whether used alone or in conjunction with a screwdriver, pot scrubber, or garden rake. Practice fine motor skills with detailed work such as needlepoint or piano playing. Build strength by squeezing a tennis ball while watching television. Hone hand-eye coordination through art projects, such as sculpting, whittling, or calligraphy.

Exercise your mind. It’s like a database of experience. Make a mental note every time a problem arises and you attempt a solution, whether you’re successful or not. The database will build upon itself, improving your effectiveness.

Have tools at the ready. You can only get so far using your hands and mind. Keep two tool totes handy – one filled with what you need for light repairs (claw hammer, small ruler, cordless screwdriver with a two-way bit, locking-style pliers, brads, finish nails, flashlight, pencil, stud finder) and the other empty. When a special project arises, load the empty one with the right tools, and you’re ready.

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Some fixes are straightforward, while others demand creativity. Say your window screen has a small hole. The straightforward approach would be to replace the screen. But that’s both time-consuming and expensive. You could patch it with a piece of screen, but the patch would be an ugly blemish on the otherwise uniform screen. After a little creative thinking, you dab clear nail polish over the hole, which invisibly seals it. Voila!

Another example: what do you do if the drawstring comes out of your pyjamas? Do you toss them and buy another pair? Of course not. Yet you’ll find no special pyjama-stringing tool at your local hardware or fabric store. Thinking creatively, you tie the end of the drawstring to a pencil and poke that through the pyjama waist, bunching and smoothing the fabric until the tip pokes through the other hole.

No pencil or tool to tie the string to? Wet one end of the drawstring and place the string in the freezer. Once it has hardened, use the stiff end to work through the waistband. The true five-minute fixer knows that anything is a potential tool.

Trying to tackle a problem that you don’t fully understand can make matters worse. Let’s say you’ve got ants in your house. Your first response might be to grab a bug spray and start blasting. But if those ants happen to be Pharaoh ants, the queen will splinter the colony, creating new queens to lay more eggs for survival. Instead of conquering the ants, you may have unwittingly doubled or tripled the colony’s size.

Instead, do your homework. Study and analyse the problem before choosing a solution. In this case, sealing up the entry point will likely halt the migration of ants into the house.

Or try these 13 simple solutions to help you get rid of ants for good.

A necessary ingredient for creativity is flexibility: the ability to adapt to new situations. Being flexible means keeping an open mind, whether that involves the tools you use or the results you seek. The key to flexibility when it comes to tools is to step back from the name of an object, which limits how it can be used.

Take a bread pan, for example. If you view it as a deep-sided rectangular metal tray rather than merely a pan for bread, a world of uses may open up.

If the simplest solution doesn’t work, move on to more advanced ones. If your car won’t start, you would first check the battery and maybe try jumpstarting it. If that doesn’t work, check the spark plugs. If it’s not the spark plugs, try the carburettor. There’s no reason to expend time, effort, and resources if the simplest possible solution solves the problem. Besides, a step-by-step approach – from simplest to most advanced – gives you a problem-solving structure to follow.

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Also known as visualisation, guided imagery is the practice of mentally mapping out a sequence of desired results, such as a golfer visualising her swing, the arc of the ball, and where it will land on a fairway. Practising guided imagery can help the savvy fixer anticipate goof-ups and achieve greater problem-solving success.

Once you’ve settled on a solution, walk through the sequence of events in your mind before diving in and glueing that ladder-back chair back together. See each step. Feel it. Try to experience it before you start moving your hands. Layer on any details, such as the fit of the chair rungs and the dripping of the glue, to fill out the picture. Finally, linger on the most important image: the result. Your goal is to start with success imprinted in your mind.

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Source: Reader’s Digest UK