Random adventures through my life... in all their glory and splendor.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Bob Strikes Back! (Hoser...)

I've talked about Bob, the World's cheapest man and the previous owner of our house, before. Well, for the past year, I've been watching various hose carriers and reels decay and fall off our house. All I could think was, "We can put a man on the moon, why is it so difficult to keep a hose tidy?" I believe the answer lies in how much one invests in equipment. For NASA that means, "As much as is necessary," while for Bob it means, "As close to zero as possible." Big difference.

(Note how the spigot is actually holding more hose than the caddy at this point...)

So I'm at K-Mart the other day and I remembered that the south side hose caddy is literally on it's last leg. I trudge off to the lawn and garden section, just to kind of get an idea for how much a replacement part is going to cost me and I see that there are about 15 different devices for storing your hose. Finally I find the one that's $3.89 that looks similar to the one that's clinging to my house by it's fingernails. It seems to meet all of Bob's criteria: It's an off brand, has absolutely no frills, and it's the cheapest one... at K-Mart! I get back home and find that my current hose "organizer" is exactly the same brand, no surprise there.

I go back to K-Mart and buy two of them. Why? Because to Bob's credit this particular hose carrier has five mount points, four of which line up perfectly around a brick. So since I got the exact same model, I don't have to drill more holes into my house. And I won't have to the next time it falls off either. Home improvement using the Bob method. Ta-Dah!