AIBU to think basic DIY and car skills are being lost?

[Thechaseison71]

Are skills being lost through the generations?

Following on from the battery thread, when I was younger usually a friend of family member would show a youngster how to go basic car maintenance and then they then know. Yet it seems the ability is being lost the amount of people insisting it's a paid for job . Not just batteries but bulbs )( I know some are a pig to fit) wiper blades etc

And stuff in the house Mum taught me how to plumb in washing machine, hang wallpaper etc. Dad taught me wiring plugs and fitting ceiling lights. These are all examples. I then taught my kids to do all this stuff

Yet it seems many people have never been taught or bothered to learn, therefore they can't pass skills down

Eventually will it get to the stage that unless you train in a trade no one will be able to do basic stuff? Surely people would want their kids to learn stuff rather than having to pay others constantly

My daughter's bulb blew on her car last week. It's a 21 plate so hardly ancient.

Lol at " not keeping up with the times"

I'd rather not if it means being wasteful both on money and the environment.

So you are telling me if you had an appliance with a sealed plug and one of the pins bent or broke you would buy a new appliance rather than cut off the sealed plug and fit a new one? Seems crazy to me

Car repair skills I think are dwindling because cars are now so technical, they often require expensive diagnostic tools and diagnostic software. Then there is the fact that certain makes and models of cars make certain things in accessable. I recently changed the headlight bulb on my car, it required the skills of a professional contortionist to get to the headlight. Then I had to faff about in the car menu to tell the stupid system that I had changed the headlight.

There is also a time issue here, so many people are very time poor and have been for a couple of decades now, so people have paid people to wallpaper/ paint and the skill has been lost. Also, in order to do a job well you need to take your time. When you are time poor spending 2 or 3 full weekends filling, sanding and painting a wall, plus cleaning, washing and getting ready for a full week at work ahead, plus live with the mess for a month, does not feel like a good use of your time. Rather pay someone a couple of hundred pounds and they do it in the week, have all the tools for the job and it's done. We've come from a time where people have had the disposal income to justify that spend.

We decorated and renovated our entire house 10 years ago (except electrics) with the help of YouTube and lived with the mess for a whole year. Would I do it now with 2 young children in tow - absolutely not.

DH has just changed one of the side lamp bulbs on my car. He had to take the whole front of the car off to it. Not for the faint hearted.

Another problem he solved with his laptop.

Tbh the reason I don’t decorate my own house is that I think unless people are very good at it- which most non pros aren’t- that it looks pretty bad. I can always tell when I visit a house and they’ve painted it themselves.

even more so for plastering- my FIl did a wall for us once to “help” and although it was really hard and he was better than 90% of people (he’s a handyman) the difference when a professional plasterer came in was obvious.

My parents couldn’t really do a lot of these things for themselves so obviously never taught me. DH’s Dad is super practical and great at DIY and car stuff etc but has never actually taught DH how to do it - he just wants to do this stuff for us… which we appreciate but I do find it weird he hasn’t taught him!

I love being able to do DIY and basic maintenance and there are some brilliant things on YT. I’ve fitted kitchens and bathrooms and built my own home office. I can do basic plumbing carpentry and electrics and went on a course for edpm roofing. I’m trying fibreglassing next. I don’t know why more people don’t 🤷‍♀️

Schools do teach about mortgages. They were doing it 30 years ago too. But lots of kids don't listen.
School taught me to wire a plug. I've never, ever had to do it.

School shouldn't be about basic life skills. That's the whole point- school gives you the basics of subjects to develop later, if you wish. I'd have been bored shitless learning life skills in school.

Anyway. I digress.

I had a useless/ lazy dad and a practical mum. I can wallpaper, do basic sewing repairs, cook, hammer things together, do some gardening etc.

But I learned them out of boredom and mooching around the house after my mum as she did them. My kids aren't as bored as I was, so haven't really done much diy. I did make them build their own desks though (ikea).

No I wouldn’t. How on earth do you bend the pins on a plug? I learnt to wire a plug at school in the 90s and in the last 10 (if not 20) years I’ve needed to wire exactly one plug. Same with fuses - cant remember the last I needed to change one. The point is so many of the skills you are referencing aren’t needed anywhere as often as they used to be in say the 70s and 80s due to technology moving on and/or being more reliable. To the point where it’s arguably not worth teaching many of them. As a child of the 80s I remember changing/charging batteries fuses/wiring plugs/replacing car bulbs used to be a regular occurrence. Not anymore.
But that said, I also agree there is a general decline in general practical skills/ability.

I changed a car tyre once, when i had a blow out. Not sure I'd have the strength to do it now.

Exactly.

You sound like you enjoy being handy OP and that's fair enough. But a lot of us don't. I would rather pay someone to do these DIY and car jobs, support local trades people and spend my time using the skills I do have to do things I enjoy. I can't mow a lawn or change my car headlights but I am really good at fundraising, yoga and cryptic crosswords. None of these skills are taught in schools either and that's OK.

I've wondered this for a while.

I also wonder whether, as education moved to equality and more academic studies, typically "gendered" subjects like sewing, woodwork, mechanics, even home economics/cooking in many schools, all got dropped.

Equality would be great if it meant everyone can equally do everything. What it has seemed to mean is that now, most people can't do most of these types of tasks - neither the ones historically associated with their sex, nor those historically associated with the other sex.

People seem more scared of it as well. YouTube and the internet mean you could learn almost anything, pretty easily. But many people choose not to.

And instant gratification culture also seems to mean that people are less willing to invest the time it'll take to learn new skills and get good at something you haven't tried before.

Just think how much earlier you could retire or how many holidays you could go on if you didn't have to pay people to do all that stuff though.

My parents had fuck-all practical skills to pass on.
I can check tyre pressures, top up windscreen wash and check oil. Anything else and it's too inaccessible, built in or attached to the car's software. The car has no spare tyre anyway even if the bolts weren't way too tight to do manually at the roadside.
If I need to check details like the correct pressure, there's google.

I was taught how to change a plug in physics... but haven't needed to in the last 30 years, so I'd have to spend a minute looking that up.

Today the washer died. By the wonder of google lens, I diagnosed the issue after checks like cleaning the filters. But the way they're constructed, and the cost of labour, it is quicker and cheaper to buy a new one than to get an old machine fixed.

DIY, we tend to do ourselves, and often with more attention to detail than some professionals. Many a hotel stay has been ruined by looking at crappy tiling

My teenage DCs have been involved in assembling the furniture for their bedrooms.

My neighbours look at me with curiosity when I am on the drive changing tyres, adding air to them, replacing the battery or even topping up water/ oil/ screenwash. Most of them outsource all basic car maintenance. My mum made sure I knew this stuff when I was learning to drive, and I have insisted DS2 who has just passed his test knows how to change a wheel. In my last job I was the go to person at work if someone needed their car jumpstarting, nobody else seemed to know how! My old boss (male) would joke that I was more of a bloke than he was!

I don’t think if she sewed her own buttons on it would make a whole lot of difference to her retirement dates…

You’re sort of assuming I’m poor enough for those expenses to make any impact on my holiday and retirement plans though aren’t you?

Lol I can answer the question easily about bending pins on plus. Hairdryer left on floor for unfortunate person to stand on the plug bending the pins and causing much swearing

My grandfather was an academic in languages but he was also a very practical man. He brought his daughters up to be practical and my mum instilled that in us too. I can change a tyre, I can check oil levels and tyre pressures, I can change a plug, I replace wiper blades, etc. FIL had company cars for 40 years so DH hasn't a clue because any time there was a problem with FIL's cars he went to the garage rather than dealing with it himself. MIL will turn her hand to flooring (she was a maths teacher) and will have 3 million seams rather than waste a square foot of carpet, but any problems with her car revert to me.

Lol might do if she wasn't buying new clothes because a buttons come off

Every little helps though. Even if it's only a year or two over a long career.

I never had a choice for most of my life. I'd have had to work hours to pay someone to do a 10 mins job. .

So now I could afford to pay someone I still don't think it's good value

The poster's examples were "sew on buttons, plumb in a washing machine, lay a pavement, fit a bathroom." A new bathroom would be a bloody good holiday.0

I do agree, even though I think painting well is just a matter of taking your time over it, and frankly I can't afford to pay somebody to paint my whole house.

I agree OP but am also guilty 😂 I gladly rely on my DH for most car and DIY related things. I can paint though and have done a lot of redecorating in our house and previous house. I can fix small areas of dodgy plaster or cracks with fibreglass and filler. But basically anything else is DHs. He can do everything from fit a new bathroom, including replacing rotten joists under the previous shower, to large repair jobs on our cars, like replacing the air suspension. He does all car maintenance for both cars except the actual MOT. He knows a lot about cars too and finds us out good second hand cars (pre dating all the electrical stuff that is harder to fix! 2007 and 2010 models currently). He teaches our two sons a lot too and they love doing DIY alongside him.