Aries Magazine December 2013 / January 2014 Issue | Page 34

Man Skills
Admittedly, in our current
world, the thickheaded male
perspective of “this is a
man’s job and that is a
woman’s job” is thankfully dwindling by the day, but
there are still a great deal of
guys out there who remain
unfamiliar with this list of
useful skills for one reason or
another. Don’t be one of those
guys.

Gift Wrapping

Yes, you can always just go with a
gift bag stuffed with tissue paper
but there’s undoubtedly going to be
a gift-giving moment in your life
where an item is too large to fit in a
bag and/or you just want to wrap it,
for whatever reason. Truthfully, the
skill is not all that difficult to master
but it is something that many guys
will disregard as, especially around
the holidays, there’s no shortage
of places offering to wrap a present for a small fee. This is foolish
and wasteful. Gift bags and paying
someone for five minutes of department store labor each cost more than
a roll of wrapping paper. You’ve got
ten good fingers and a brain; let’s put
them to work.

od. To not know is just lazy (unless
you’re rich and can afford to have
your important clothes dry cleaned
and pressed, weekly… then the ignorance is acceptable, I suppose).

Sewing

Though it is the most attractive and
accessible selling point of this skill,
“mending clothes” is far from the
most valuable aspect of knowing
how to sew. Sewing is a tool of
creation more than repair. Whether
it’s adding patches to a backpack or
jacket, reupholstering a pillow or
cushion, helping piece together a
cool Halloween costume for you or
a friend, or actually turning a pile
of assorted supplies into something,
sewing is an artistic and engineering
trade well worth learning. The Internet is overflowing with interesting
Ironing
homemade projects that involve sewIroning is, by far, the easiest skill to
ing in a big way; turning t-shirts into
learn on this list. I don’t know how
tote or messenger bags and making
much elaboration is needed on this
custom soft cases for your cell phone
one. You’ve all seen this done, in
or digital camera are just a few of the
practice: you take the wrinkles out
eminently useful results your needleof your clothing with heat, steam,
work can yield.
and pressure. As a result, you look

However, the most valuable
like a much more capable adult with
underrated feature of this skill, for
your sharp slacks and whatnot. Even
most men, is alterations (note: differthough this is still regarded as a duty
ent from repairs). Hemming pants or
traditionally carried out exclusively
shorts is something to which anyone
by women, every guy over the age of
with a non-action figure body can
14 should know how to iron. PeriD E C 2 0 1 3 & J A N 2 0 1 4 / ARIES 3 3

relate, on a regular basis. In last-minute situations, knowing how to take
in or let out slacks will save a lot of
discomfort and stress (for future reference, though, it’s better to just try
on your tuxedo a week or so before
the party/wedding/whatever).

Gardening/Landscaping

Before we get going on this one,
here’s a weird observation: gardening (in terms of flowers, vegetables,
herbs, etc.) is generally always
associated with women while landscaping is always associated with
men. Hmph. Disregard both of these
established stereotypes – everyone
should learn this trade. Despite being
maybe the most specialized (meaning it certainly isn’t applicable to
everyone) and physically demanding
entry on the list, knowing how to
deal with grass and plants is invaluable in several unique ways. First, if
you need a job and know your way
around landscaping, you will always
– repeat: ALWAYS – be able to find
someone willing to pay you money
for honest work (keep the immigration jokes to a minimum). Whether
it’s pulling weeds, spreading mulch,
trimming hedges, spraying for deer,
watering plants while a neighbor is
out of town, or just cutting grass,
you will never have to travel far to

find somebody in your area who is
actively looking to pay for lawn care.
Take it from a guy who has lived
his entire life in the suburbs of the
suburbs where multiple-acre lots and
older couples are everywhere: there
is no off-season for landscaping and
no shortage of demand for this trade.

Secondly, if you care enough
to grow your own vegetables or
fruits (keep it holy, now), you can
save yourself a ton of money and
maybe even make some, on the side.
Organic, naturally grown food is all
the rage, now, and if you manage to
pull it off well, you can sell some of
your handiwork and/or give it away
as a gift. Finally: knowing how to
garden and landscape will make you
feel better, overall. The benefits of
exercise while working outdoors
with your hands are obvious. The
feeling of acc omplishment when you
are eating a tomato that you planted
and grew cannot be measured. The
sense of self-reliance from growing
your own food will be a rather new
and fantastic sensation if you’re one
of the many people who have lived
off of grocery stores for your whole
life (a group I’ve been in for quite
some time).

Cleaning/Organizing

Let me just say: I love cleaning and
organizing. I don’t know why but I
have always gotten a great deal of
satisfaction out of it. Whether it’s
dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing a
sink, alphabetizing DVDs, or separating greeting cards by occasion, I
never fail to enjoy it. The notion of a
cluttered desk or office leading to a
cluttered mind absolutely plays a part
in this activity and when you yourself are the one who can cut through
that sea of artifacts congesting your
everyday life… that’s just like rebooting your brain (in addition to the
obvious bonus of having your room/
house not look like an exploded thrift
store) and the cleansing nature of

getting rid of all those cobwebs can
be a pretty powerful psychological
achievement that lingers positively
for days. That being said, the biggest
reason why knowing how to really
clean and straighten a place up is
because of the skill’s many functions
outside your own living quarters.
You can obviously make money as a
housekeeper, either on a routine basis
or in a one-time “I’ll pay you to help
me clean out my garage and organize
my closet” gig. Wealthy people will
be the first to tell you that they have
way too much stuff and, because
they have disposable income, they
are always looking to pay someone
to solve this problem for them; if you
get good at cleaning and make a connection or two, you can make some
sweet part-time money. At work, if
the copy room or some file cabinet
is always a horrendous mess of crap
– you can instantly identify yourself as someone with initiative and
reasonable know-how in the realm of
organization and order by cleaning it
up (you’ll also get a lot of gratitude
on the side, from co-workers who
were also fed up with the unkempt
workspace).

Finally, I have personally
learned about an interesting application for this particular expertise:
when staying at someone’s house
or apartment during a trip, the most
effective way to thank them for their
hospitality is to clean up their place
for free (usually when they’re out
of the house and you have nothing
better to do). As long as you don’t
intimate that the clean-up was a huge
hint regarding their lifestyle, they
will appreciate it and you will not
feel so bad about sleeping on their
couch for a week or ten days.
Cooking
This one is absolutely the most
useful, most valuable, and biggest
money-saving skill you can cultivate.
Not knowing how to cook is like not
34

knowing how to exercise – you will
be ruined, at some point, without it.
Rather than me listing the endless
amount of reasons why you should
know how to cook, let’s view the
three most common male arguments
against it and point out just how
dumb they are.
“Cooking takes too long. I just want
to eat now.“

There are thousands of great
meals you can make in less than 15
minutes. The Food Network (that is,
the television station/website based
solely on the idea of cooking) has an
entire section dedicated to disproving
the notion that cooking your own
meals takes too much time. By the
way, do you know the name of that
food which is always instantly available? Fast food. Eat that on a regular basis and let me know just how
much you accomplished in all that
time saved. Additionally: we have
these things called refrigerators (at
least, we do around here) that allow
you to *gasp!* store food for later
meals, thus providing you the opportunity to prepare a lot of food all at
once. I think trading 30 minutes for
seven nights of dinner is a fair trade,
don’t you?

And if you don’t like looking
at men while working with food,
there’s a pretty good chance you’d sit
and watch Giada de Laurentiis or Nigella Lawson (my personal favorite)
do anything anyway, so at least tune
in and learn a few recipes, will you?

Knowing how to cook will
save you money, it will generally
lead to you eating healthier and
feeling better, it will impress a lot of
people (ladies and gentlemen, alike),
and you’ll be a better man for it…
or, at the least, a man with a more
interesting diet.

ARIES

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DEC 2013 & JAN 2014