Maintenance and repair are essential to a more sustainable, and frankly pleasant world. Well-maintained bikes feel, sound, and ride better. Well-maintained roads are easier and safer for everyone to navigate. Well-maintained gardens look and smell better and are more productive. Maintenance is boring and tedious though compared to starting fresh. Repairing a broken thing is harder than repairing something regularly maintained.
What I particularly find difficult is perceiving that something that has gradually worn over time is at an optimal time to repair. A squeaky bike chain is past time for cleaning and lubing. A thirsty throat is already partially dehydrated. Those are easy fixes though usually, and if you already have the supplies, nearly instant repairs to make. What's harder is seeing pants wear out, masonry decay, or street markings disappear. Some of these need specialized skills, licenses, or interaction with government. These take more time and care and sometimes convincing the maintainer it is the time to make that repair.
Especially in the case of city, county, or state infrastructure, convincing the city, county, or state that the time has come to make a repair can be a herculean task. Often the "We can't afford to do it now" excuse leads to putting off the repair, only adding to the cost. We see this in health insurance plans as well, where the insurance companies refuse to pay for preventative healthcare, leading to suffering, and often more expensive and more painful medical interventions. Typically, if you can't afford to make the repair, you definitely can't afford to skip the repair either.
I am currently thinking about this because of reading the great work by iFixit, Cory Doctorow, and others in the ongoing fight for the right to repair our own things. But also because my house does need a masonry fix, and we have some bikes in our house past the need for some regular maintenance that I have the skills, but haven't made the time for yet. The longer I wait on any of these, the harder it will be to get those things back into good repair (and the more expensive it will be).
For example, I was letting a bike chain stay squeaky for a little too long. Part of this was not noticing until I was leaving for work and not wanting to take the time to take care of it so I could get to work faster. But then I would just store the bike when I got home and not pay attention til the next day riding out again. I managed a bike shop for years and certainly know better, but it is incredibly easy to just let those little things slide. We tell ourselves "It won't hurt that much really." But that does build up over time and effectively shortens the lifespan of the chain, meaning I may have to prematurely buy a new one. Grand scheme of things, it won't cost that much, but over the lifetime of the bike (I plan to ride that thing forever), I will likely spend more on chains than I would have to if I was keeping it regularly lubed and clean. (I recommend every two weeks, 100 miles, or rainy ride, whichever comes first) And once I did lube the chain, it was easier to ride!
In Pennsylvania, due to some large federal money coming in, we are finally making some long-past-needed repairs on bridges that have been failing evaluations for years. These repairs are far more expensive than if we were doing regular maintenance on them. But like I said above, maintenance is boring. New bridges are exciting. Or novel ways to repair a collapsed highway bridge in less than two weeks when it also took two years to fix riverpath bridges with smaller repairs or more years than that to update the same highway.
In a recent piece of art I made, I expressed that it will be better for everyone to own their own home, but with prospective homeowners in Philadelphia needing an annual income of $75,000 to be able to buy and keep a home (including maintenance costs), that means that the 50% of Philadelphians who make less than $57,537 each year just do not have that as an option. Housing costs must come down. Homelessness is a policy choice. Repairing that worn-out spot of our society will certainly cost us so much more than if we had always ensured people would be housed and fed, but it is still a necessary repair.
Maintenance is boring and tedious but essential to a more sustainable and more pleasant world. We constantly feel as if we can't afford to make the repairs, but we definitely can't afford to skip the repairs either.
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