Do It Yourself: The phenomenon that every husband is expected to be able to repair/replace/renovate anything that breaks, wears out, or breaks in the home is essentially an expectation that has arisen in the last 50 years or so .
The difficult times that followed World War II, when both a shortage of available cash in the family finances and a shortage of tradesmen willing to work for low wages, likely contributed to the circumstances that forced Dad to attempt home repairs. . Combine that with the fact that the mom who went out to work to support the war effort was no longer as manageable as previous generations of wives and mothers, and therefore much more likely to demand that her husband DO SOMETHING to correct the problem. …
…and there you have it, the birth of Do It Yourself as a national pastime. It became so popular that even the name was shortened, and the initials DIY were conflated with weekends spent sawing, hammering, painting, and generally spending more money than it would have cost to hire a professional to do the job. first. Hour after hour working on home improvements, and hours spent in hospital waiting rooms to be bandaged when his thumb was hammered instead of his fingernail. But over the years, Dad got better at it, and Mom started trying, and eventually some families ended up with DIY instead of the annual week at the beach.
This DIY phenomenon, we have an idea of what started, but it would never have gotten off the ground, accelerated the way it did, without the retail industry. Once upon a time, in the dim past when I was young, there were little shops, Aladdin’s caves of fascinating artifacts, called Hardware Stores. They sold everything from saucepans to nails and screws to mousetraps to tape measures — weird, weird, and wonderful things hanging from hooks on the walls (and ceiling) and full tubs on the floor. Did Grandma want mothballs? Go over to Mrs. Flitton’s house and buy some, and at the same time buy a scouring pad and a bottle of Vim (and if it’s really good, Mrs. Flitton might let you see the last few kittens, and NO, you can’t bring another home!).
Those wonderful little shops were fine by the time Grandpa wanted a picture hanger, but something much more comprehensive was needed to support the DIY frenzy that swept the nation. No, that needed something bigger, much bigger, and the first DIY *superstore* appeared on the scene. Suddenly DIY became big business, and it has grown over the years with the arrival of more and bigger retailers, and more and more husbands willing to tackle bigger home projects. Even specialized building materials are readily available – if you have a DIY sewage/drainage enthusiast in the family, you can easily get everything you need to pursue your hobby without a prescription. Today we don’t even have to move from the chair to buy what we need, the big DIY stores are on the internet. Nowadays we don’t use many mouse traps, but our mouse gets used a lot.
Nowadays, DIY is just an accepted part of our lives – everyone does it.