'Deferred maintenance'
It happens to houses and cars ... and people (oh my!)
<Welcome to Sandwich Season, adventures in middle age, sandwiched between aging parents and growing children ... and other duties as assigned.>
Hello friends—
Before I share this week’s post, I want to say thank you to each of you for being here with me! The Sandwich Season community topped 350 readers this week, including my first paid subscriber (thank you again, R.M.!). I so appreciate all of you.❤️
If you’d like a refresher on what Sandwich Season is all about, please take a peek at my recently updated About page. It includes a selfie with my favorite stained glass window … due to its six-word saying that I just might request for my epitaph.
Now without further ado, here is this week’s post.
Sending all best wishes to you and yours,
Sarah
Deferred maintenance: It happens to houses and cars and people … (oh my!)
I recently found the words to describe a feeling I’ve been having.
My dad had just invited Jon and me to join him for dinner later in the week, and I told him that I wasn’t sure. I didn’t even look at my calendar, but I couldn’t commit. I felt anxious.
What was going on here?
I love getting together with my dad. We share memories and ideas, talk about writing and language, and commiserate about current events. And we laugh. Why wouldn’t I say “yes” to that, plus food?
Later thinking about that interaction, I recalled something I read some months back in Oliver Burkeman’s book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. He writes about the importance of making choices, of saying (as I’ve written about before) that short, powerful, challenging word “no.”
Burkeman shares, “… (A)s the writer Elizabeth Gilbert points out, it’s all too easy to assume that this merely entails finding the courage to decline various tedious things you never wanted to do in the first place. In fact, she explains, `it’s much harder than that. You need to learn how to start saying no to things you do want to do, with the recognition that you have only one life’” (italics and boldface mine).
Did you catch that? We need to say “no” to the things we actually want to say “yes” to. Because … time.
So, counterintuitive as it might sound, for my own good and for the good of my relationships, sometimes I need to say “no,” even to a desirable invitation from someone I love.
Living life on hold
I have had a growing realization that over the past couple of years, much of my own life has been put on hold.
If you’ve been here long, you know that between 2023 and 2024 everything happened. The short version is my parents moved, I cleared out their house, my mom died, my dad had a stroke and a TIA, we moved, my son, Max, moved and graduated from high school, and still my dad and I continue to work on consolidating, closing out and updating accounts.
For a couple of years now I’ve been ping-ponging among multiple places and people and needs—those of the young, the middle-aged and the elderly. Today I continue to keep pages of lists labeled “Dad,” “Max” and “Sarah/Jon.” While writing the past few paragraphs, I’ve stopped at least five times to jot more items on those lists—tasks and communications that need to happen today.
And I expect that at least once or twice today I’ll receive texts or calls from Max’s group home or case manager or someone else wanting to set up an appointment or needing me to sign paperwork or to confirm where or how or what should happen for this, that or the other thing. Max might be out of the house, but his needs are still very much in my day-to-day consciousness and efforts. When people smile at me with expectant eyes and ask me how it feels to have an empty nest, I don’t know what to say.
(What I will say is our new situation has turned our relationship around in such an amazingly positive way … but that will have to be its own post!)
However, as I was talking with Dad about the possibility of getting together later in the week, I suddenly found the words to articulate how my responsibilities and efforts on behalf of three generations were affecting me. I heard myself telling him—and really myself:
“Dad, I’m suffering from deferred maintenance.”
A definition
You might be familiar with this term, which is usually used when talking about properties, vehicles and public works facilities. Here’s how Century21, the realty firm, defines it on their website:
“Deferred maintenance refers to necessary maintenance, repairs and upgrades or replacements that are put on hold until some time in the future.”
I’ve encountered plenty of this type of deferred maintenance over the past year—most notably in my parents’ house, where we found and dealt with mold in the basement. Had someone noticed it sooner, we would not have had to do such major mitigation and renovations.
However, the mold had been quietly wreaking havoc on that house for years. By the time we figured it out, it had done so much damage that we ended up filling a twenty-yard Dumpster with furniture, textiles, art, books, papers and memorabilia. That’s before the mitigation experts arrived to rip out carpeting, shelving, sheetrock and anything else we’d left behind. Ugh.
But the deferred maintenance I told my dad (and myself) about the other day was more personal. It had to do with the stacks of papers related to my son Max’s education and support programs that I’ve been trying to wrestle into submission. The file cabinet overstuffed with all of our paperwork that makes my stomach clench with anxiety every time I open a drawer—will I be able to find the information I need? The eyebrows I never find time to pluck. The pictures leaning against walls waiting to be hung. The boxes still stacked in the basement since our move last December. The months and months of credit card statements I haven’t even looked at. The personal correspondence I am months and years behind on. The writing projects I’ve set aside and lost track of. The time to just sit and stare at a wall and figure out what I think about any number of things.
And how about the sense of well-being I lack because I feel as if I’ve been constantly working on everybody else’s stuff and neglecting my own?
“Ironically,” says Century21, “the result of deferred maintenance is usually more costly than if the projects are not postponed. ...”
A classic example is roofing. If you notice that a shingle or two has been knocked loose and replace them promptly, your roof will continue to protect your house. But let the situation go … ignore the fact that wind and rains and snow are knocking loose more shingles … well, at some point you’re going to discover a leak, but probably not before it seeps underneath those shingles, drips through the attic insulation and creates soggy patches on your ceiling.
When I think of the cost of deferred maintenance on my self, I think less about cost and cash flow than energy flow. Many of the things I’ve been putting off will require a rocket booster’s worth of energy to reboot later. The file cabinet that is my nemesis. The piles of papers that fill me with dread. The writing project that had been flowing nicely before everything hit the fan sits somewhere on my hard drive, and I have to decide whether to relaunch it from a standstill or kiss it goodbye and move on to something new.
Whether it’s related to a house or a life, I am learning that deferred maintenance leads to loss.
What to do
“The best way to avoid these problems,” says Century21, “is to ensure that the cost of preventative maintenance and capital improvements are worked into the budget.”
In the case of living a life, this means making sure that however much is happening, we still build in rest breaks and time for our own interests.
Easy to say, not as easy to do.
Recently, while doing other things (of course), I listened to the audiobook of social psychologist Cassie Holmes’ Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most. She shares that a nationwide poll shows that nearly half of Americans feel they don’t have enough time. Another poll found that two thirds of Americans say “they always or sometimes feel rushed”—and she has seen similar data from people around the world.
Holmes describes this condition as “time poverty”—having “too little time available to do all that you need and want to do.”
I’m guessing that probably resonates with almost everyone, especially those in the sandwich generation.
The good news is that, according to Holmes, when we approach our use of time more intentionally, we can shift that sense into a feeling of being happier and more “time rich.” So I’m trying out some of her exercises to see if I can address my deferred maintenance, bit by bit.
One thing I find encouraging is, based on her research, Holmes reports that people are generally happiest when they have a minimum of two hours a day of discretionary time. It can just take two hours! And that doesn’t even mean two hours in a row. It can be 20 minutes here, 45 minutes there, to do what we want—whether that’s “nothing,” playing sports, going to movies, spending time with friends and family, or whatever.
As it happens, on Tuesday I took Holmes’ advice and did something totally discretionary. It had nothing to do with Being Responsible or Getting Things Done. I’ll share about that and what I learned from it next week. But let me tell you, I think she’s on to something!
Perhaps because I took that discretionary time, by Thursday I felt different. More whole. So instead of finishing this post and working on a current writing assignment, I went to visit my dad.
We spent a couple of hours drinking tea and hanging out—talking, reminiscing and laughing. It felt perfect.❤️
Share your thoughts
Are you experiencing deferred maintenance? What do you do to get your zest back?
On another topic: crying
I’m among a group of Substack writers focusing on the topic of crying during the month of September. My piece, “My stoic mom’s parting gift,” published Sept. 5.)
You can find the full collection at The Caring About Crying Anthology, led by at Carer Mentor
Lovely Sarah.
Deferred Maintenance - what a great metaphor, I love it! Who knew that quotes from Century 21 could apply so directly to our lives!? I asked a busy sandwicher the other day what she would do with a free hour to herself and she couldn't come up with any non-care related tasks because it had been so long and she was so overwhelmed. Looking forward to reading more about what you did and how it impacted you!