10. When taking paint chips to the hardware store, don’t just tell them you need exterior flat paint and walk away to wait. Tell them you need the CHEAP exterior flat paint. Otherwise they will give you the flat paint used on the last space shuttle, and we all know how frugal NASA is.

9. A dog who suddenly has a lapse in housebreaking skills probably has a bladder condition that will cost $200 to diagnose.

8. Never attempt an intelligent discourse with your boyfriend when you’ve both been drinking an unnaturally blue concoction from cheap plastic cups at a seedy bar.

7. A cut-pile yarn shaggy rug feels curiously like grass to a dog with a bladder infection.

6. Actually, any rug feels like grass to a dog with a bladder infection.

5. A forty-pound bag of mulch weighs forty pounds when someone at the garden center is loading it into the car.

4. The house really doesn’t look too bad without any rugs in it.

3. Bags of mulch will miraculously double in weight during the drive home from the garden center, as if they could sense that your boyfriend is at work and cannot carry them to the backyard in a manly fashion.

2. The backyard shed looks much better with a coat of paint. Bonus points if you are painting on a windy day and the paint glues down a few grass clippings, some of your own hair, and an assortment of both live and dead bugs.

1. It doesn’t matter if it puts you into overdraft, there is no better investment than a steam cleaner and a wheelbarrow.