A blocked sink
The kitchen sink is draining very slowly. You rent the flat.
What do you do?
Step 1: What Would You Do?
There is often more than one good answer. Pick one and see what happens.
A dead socket
A socket has stopped working. A video shows how to replace it in ten minutes.
What do you do?
Step 2: What That Was
The name for what you just worked out.
Before touching anything: turn it off, unplug it, or shut off the water. Almost every domestic accident with a repair skipped this.
Never yourself
Anything gas. Anything wired into the mains. Anything structural. Anything on a roof. These are not caution — they are the categories that kill people.
Reasonable to try
A blocked sink, a running toilet, a blown fuse in a plug, a filter, a smoke alarm battery, a dripping tap washer. All well documented and low risk.
If you rent
Report it rather than fixing it. Repairs are usually the landlord’s responsibility, and fixing it yourself can cost you your deposit.
Step 3: Try It
These ones do have right answers.
Try It, or Call Somebody?
Sort each job.
Which of these would you attempt?
Tap something to move it.
- Empty
- Empty
Step 4: Quick Check
Two questions, then you are done.
Question 1 of 1
What do you do before starting almost any repair?
Step 5: Your Life Mission
Something to do away from the screen. Nobody is checking.
Learn one, find three
- Learn one real repair properly — a tap washer, a plug fuse, clearing a trap.
- Find the water stopcock, the fuse box and the gas shut-off wherever you live.
- Write down which repairs you would never attempt.
Why: The list of things you will not touch is worth writing once, calmly, rather than deciding at midnight.
Step 6: What You Learned
- Turn it off before you touch it.
- Never gas, mains wiring, structure or roofs.
- If you rent, report it rather than fixing it.
For the grown-up
Doing a few small repairs together builds the judgement to tell the difference. The aim is a young adult who knows which category a problem is in, not one who fixes everything.
The mains-electricity boundary is worth being absolutely firm about. Online videos routinely present work that is illegal for an unqualified person in many countries.
For renters, the reporting-in-writing habit matters — it creates a record, which is what deposit disputes turn on.