As new homeowners twenty years ago, my husband and I relied on the opinions of “experts.” We listened to the realtor, the home inspector (who was oddly more concerned with ancient damage by powderpost beetles than existing basement puddles), and the plumber/electrician.

Let me tell you about the plumber/electrician. He came with a recommendation and a good price. I think his night job was tending bar at a private club. The details are fuzzy now. But I have a couple of stories, and this is one.

Our house, built in 1920, has a three-way switch that controls the upstairs hall light, which illuminates the stairs. This means that you can turn the switch on or off from either upstairs or downstairs.

Sometime in the late 1990s, the switch stopped functioning. We called our plumber/electrician. Let’s call him “Joe.”

“Joe” took a look.

“Joe” said that he could fix that three-way switch, but it would require opening up our plaster walls upstairs and down. Which we’d then have to replace with drywall.

Sounded like a big job. Expensive. Messy. And, darn it, we love our plaster walls.

So, we went without.

Between then and now, we lived with a hall light that had to be turned on wherever it was turned off, and vice versa. This meant, to save trips up and down, we’d often go up or down in the dark.

And so we did. Up and down. Up and down. With babies in tow. Toddlers by the hand. And accompanying preschoolers afraid of the dark. (Keep in mind, our only bathroom is on the second floor. Think potty training.) A minor inconvenience, yes, but an inconvenience all the same.

Flash forward. We’d since realized “Joe” was interested in doing the least amount of work possible. “Joe” hasn’t been our plumber/electrician in a LONG time.

This summer, when we needed an electrician for another project, I asked the men who did the repair to take a look at that three-way switch. You know, now that all of “Joe’s” advice had been shadowed by doubt.

Wouldn’t you know, those men fixed our three-way switch in less than a half hour! No destruction of plaster required.

My point here is not that my husband and I are idiots. (Though I wouldn’t blame you for thinking such.) The point is that we wasted about twenty years listening to bad advice.

What bad advice have you taken to heart and listened to, well beyond its expiration date? Click To Tweet

Care for another example that surely doesn’t point to the fact that we are, in fact, idiots?

For the past year, the water pressure from our kitchen faucet has been diminishing. Especially when using the hot water. Not to mention, the water was spraying from the spigot in all directions.

I just chalked it up to another inconvenience that would have to wait until the long-overdue kitchen remodel came to pass. My husband griped about the faucet regularly, and I let it go in one ear out the other. What to do?

Lo and behold, my husband recently discovered that he’d placed three O-rings on that faucet, adding one each time he switched the nozzle while attaching a hose for home brewing cleanup. In other words, he’d caused the problem.

We’d lived with it a year without ever discovering the cause.

The new year is a good time to stop being lazy.

It’s a good time to stop listening to bad advice.

It’s a good time to just do it.

Because we never really know what time is left.

You’d think I’d have worked this advice out on paper. After all, in Stay With Me, hadn’t Rebecca listened to the toxic opinions of her dad for way too long? In Ornamental Graces, wasn’t Dan paralyzed by a past he couldn’t shake?

Nope. That message did not compute.

What bad advice have you taken to heart and listened to, well beyond its expiration date?

Is there a “Joe” whose bad advice you’ve been listening to for way too long?

Are you that “Joe?”

As we flip the calendar, I’m going to look carefully at the way things have always been done around here. At the advice that has gone stale. At the thinking that has festered in its stagnancy.

“Joe,” you’ve been forewarned. Your time is up.

Let the new light shine.

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