Get them off to a good start
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By STEVE BATIE
Lee Newspapers
Monday, May 5, 2008 11:26 AM CDT
LINCOLN, Neb. — I keep a file of old magazine clippings in my desk for times when I’m desperate for a column idea.
This, I’ve decided, is one of those times, so I reached in and pulled out a little space filler headlined: “Top 10 Housewarming Gifts.” It appeared in Home magazine about four years ago.
(We here at HouseWorks Central throw away no stone from which we might squeeze even the slightest drop of blood.)
Among Home’s “Top 10” are such suggestions as:
“Create a homemade map of the new environs.”
“Bundle three logs, and tie them together with raffia.”
“Make a guest book, and have friends write their expectations before and after visiting the house.”
Uh … yeah.
They need a map to navigate their new neighborhood? If your friends are that dense, maybe you better spend more time on MySpace.
And I don’t know what raffia is, but I do know three logs do not a merry blaze create.
Finally, the last thing most people want is a written outline of just what they need to do to make their new digs acceptable to their old friends.
How rude!
Anyway we here at HouseWorks Central -- remember us? -- have taken it upon ourselves to create our own list of:
10 USEFUL Housewarming Gifts
1. Give the eternal gift of color. Buckets of paint in fetching shades of off-white probably can be found moldering in your very own basement or garage.
2. Fill a gift bucket for the new would-be gardener. Good loam and a starter set of earthworms are just a shovel away. Add a festive spray of foxtail and spurge.
3. Outfit a box of emergency medical supplies -- especially if your friends proudly proclaim that they have rescued an inner-city fixer-upper from the wrecking ball. Consider such helpful medicine chest fillers as bandages, iodine, liniment, slings, sutures, crutches, acetaminophen, hydrocodone, plasma and beer.
4. Or just emergency supplies in general: Spare fuses, matches and candles, mop and bucket, fire extinguisher, chocolate, salami … and beer.
5. Fill a magazine rack with an array of your favorite home decorating and gardening magazines. I keep tattered issues Elle Decor and Garden Design handy on the guest room closet shelf for just such occasions.
6. Dust off a drywall compound bucket and fill it with tools the new homeowners surely will need: Screwdrivers with chipped tips, worn hacksaw blades, the hammer with the broken claw, the utility knife that only uses blades from that hardware store that went out of business two years ago … whatever you notice that’s due for replacing.
7. Roll up the throw rug that just doesn’t really fit your own new decor. Hey, maybe they like lime green! Add a festive clump of dust bunnies.
8. Offer a list of your favorite service people. Hook them up with your uncle, the unlicensed plumber; your nephew, the newly graduated personal-injury lawyer; your brother, the wannabe electrician; and your dad, the backyard mechanic.
9. Gift cards and coupons also are always popular. Consider the free clinic, the salvage warehouse, the junk yard, the city dump and the kids selling over-priced popcorn over at the grade school.
10. Copies of HouseWorks, bound in genuine newsprint, are available in the lobby. Add a festive red rubber band!
Send your home repair and remodeling questions to: HouseWorks, P.O. Box 81609, Lincoln, NE 68501, or e-mail: houseworks@journalstar.com.
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