Many years ago a friend referred to me as someone who “likes maintaining things.” I think the immediate context was knife sharpening, but it’s true, I do like maintaining all kinds of things. I especially like things that can be maintained.
I’m thinking about this because I recently came across (via @bradleyandroos) this quote from Pete Seeger: “You should consider that the essential art of civilization is maintenance.”
When I read this I had just picked my car up from its (quite expensive) high-mileage maintenance. A pair of fifteen year old dress shoes were at the cobbler’s getting new soles. During Thanksgiving week I spent several hours re-weaving the seat of an antique stool that belongs to a friend. Maintenance was on the mind.
Before, during, and after of a stool I restored for my dear friend George. George is in his 80s and the stool was his mother’s, I think it’s over 100 years old.
As I worked with the stool I was reminded that though it is a simple construction it is of a higher quality than the vast majority of furniture in most homes. This style of post and rung stool is four large sticks and eight smaller sticks. The large sticks have holes drilled partway through and the smaller sticks are stuck into them. The only difficult thing about making this is aligning the holes in each leg so it ends up a rectangle. Not long ago this would have been a basic project in shop class (when we had a real country). Years after the glue failed the stool was held firmly together by the seat weaving, which is itself made of recycled paper. The materials to fix the stool cost maybe five dollars and it will last for decades, by which time it will be serving its third generation (at least, I don’t actually know how old it is).
In fact, every part of the stool is reparable. As long as there is someone with the desire and skill, any post or rung of this stool could be replaced and put back together as the same useful and beautiful object. (I will leave to the philosophers whether it is the same stool after every part of it has been replaced).
This ability to be fixed is a practical and economic value that is hard to find in most modern furniture or consumer goods of any kind. They are designed to be consumed, not maintained. Although that is not exactly correct. They are designed to be used until a mission critical part (usually made of plastic) fails, rendering the entirety of its other materials useless, destined to be gathered to the halls of its PFAS fathers. They are trash with a temporary use to tempt you to buy it.
This noble stool I have now written too many words about will never be trash. When in the course of time it is broken beyond reasonable repair or its usefulness is finally at an end it can be burned, buried, or left in the woods. Even with the slowest method there will be no trace of this stool in a few years. Throw it in the fire pit and it will be gone in an hour. Even our disposable goods are not designed to be disposed of.
I’m thinking primarily here in terms of the world of things, but the application to institutions, relationships, our bodies, and many other things, should be obvious.
To maintain is cheaper than to repair or replace.