Why build it when you can buy it?

Dear Joa,

The past few weeks I've taken on the challenge of building a chest of drawers for your baby room. I've always enjoyed woodworking and over the last 10 years I have built various things in our home. For example our dining table, TV cabinet, planter boxes, bedside tables etc.

Early on - the main reason for doing it was to save money, because we did not have much of it. But now I realise that it was never about saving money, it's about way more than that.

There is something extremely satisfying about having an idea in your head, planning it out, sourcing the materials, solving 100's of problems to get it "to work" and in the end standing back and knowing "I built that".

Like always, I'm not writing this post as a guide on how to build a chest of drawers. I'm writing it, because while I was building it, I was thinking of you and what kind of person you might be, how much potential you have and everything I would like to teach you. So here are a few lessons I think you should learn.

Most people won't get it

Throughout the process I shared pictures of the progress with friends and family. Their first reactions are to say how cool it is, and it's beautiful etc, but the second question usually is:

• Won't it be cheaper to buy it?

The honest truth - it probably will be cheaper to buy it. It will definitely be a lot less effort. But that's not the point, is it?

We're so used to the instant economy where we can just drive to the store and buy something or open our phone and get a dopamine hit, that we rarely experience the satisfaction of slowing down, taking our time to do something, putting in some effort.

Choosing to build your chest of drawers, resulted in the following:

• I got to spend hours reminiscing about you, what I want to teach you one day and what type of parent I plan on being
• I now look at furniture around me through a different lens
  • First I think - I could build that - having self-confidence in your abilities is a superpower
  • Secondly I appreciate the craftsmanship, because I know what it takes to build it
  • When I do pay for furniture, I understand when it should be expensive and vice versa
• The chest of drawers is not 100% perfect, but the imperfections serve as a reminder, that I did it myself, and that the only thing that matters is that we try our best, not that we do everything perfect.

The other day I watched a short video where a mom allows her small child to help with tasks around the house. It's obvious that doing this, slows her down considerably - and it would have been much faster to do it herself. The caption of the video read:

Including your kids, will slow you down - but maybe that's the point?

While I was busy doing woodwork, I imagined us doing something similar in a few years, and you're helping me to drive in screws and assemble a frame. I know you are going to slow me down, but the honour of being able to teach you these things, spending that time with you - far outweighs doing it fast or perfect.

It won't be cheaper - at first

I can guarantee you that it won't be cheaper. Why is this? Well usually you need to purchase a few tools. And we love buying tools😉

But next time, when we build something else - then we have the tools. So we need to stop looking at the price of tools on a per-project basis, and re-frame to look at it on a lifetime basis. If we do 20 projects, the price of the tools become negligible.

A small caveat to this is - buy the best tools you can afford. If you need to replace your tools often, this does not work.

So just to summarise - buying something or paying someone to do something for you is not wrong. There is a time and place for it. But I want you to understand that the value of doing something yourself is often hidden but worth much more than money.