SpookyMrsGreen

It is hard to believe that we have been in our new house for almost two months now. The time has flown, and it feels like we have been here forever. Having said that, we still have boxes to unpack and furniture to build.

It took a bit longer to have the rewiring done and the new central heating system installed. And of course, I had to clean up the mess created from ripping up floorboards and making holes in walls. But we got there. Our home should be very fuel efficient when the weather eventually cools down.

Follow the Instructions

Now we have the challenge of the flat pack furniture and learning how to operate our new gadgets. We have invested in a Nest thermostat to control our central heating, which I am very pleased with. It didn’t really come with instructions, however. I had to download an app and connect it via Wi-Fi, and I will have to take some time to learn exactly what I can do with this bit of kit. There is no rush until we need to use our radiators.

Then we took delivery of our new wardrobe. Oh dear. This unit was flat packed, and we had to study the assembly instructions very carefully. Visual manuals are coming in very useful as we settle in to our new house and get used to our new equipment. It was the first thing my husband reached for when he unpacked the wardrobe, and my plumber has insisted that I keep all the paperwork for our new boiler, which includes the user manual required for servicing and maintenance.

Dependent on instruction manuals

I realise now just how dependent we are on manuals and instruction books for our daily lives, especially with the developments of technology and equipment in the home. Our new boiler cost a lot of money and we want it to last for many years, so we will follow the instructions on the user manual to ensure we treat it properly. The same for our new furniture. We want to build it to last. I suppose I could extend my use of manuals to the types of books I have been reading lately. Parenting and lifestyle advice books are often instructional and could form a manual for a specific query or challenge.

Looking at it this way, we could extend the use of multilingual manuals for families of mixed backgrounds. I have amassed quite a collection of visual manuals at home, including instructions for the original boiler and gas fire that we removed from our new house. These were installed in 1979 and 1989, so you can see why we had to upgrade. They were older than my husband and me! I am keeping the original documents, however, for posterity. They are a relic of another time, and part of the history of our home. I want to preserve that while I move forward in the twenty-first century.  While we have a wealth of information stored on digital platforms, I still prefer a good old-fashioned printed manual to help me organise my daily activities.

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