Compared to other parts of the world, North Americans have a strong DIY culture. Both Canadians and Americans like to do things themselves instead of getting it done by someone else. Even those in white-collared jobs will do DIY projects at home, or have some basic idea of what building supplies to use to fix things up. This is different from Europe or Asia.
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America was, in many ways, founded on the idea of rugged individualism. It didn’t come from one exact point or another, doing it yourself is just seen as what you do when you can for most people, because self determination and independence are virtues many of us have more ingrained than we realize.
Is that unique to North America? I’m pretty sure people around the world outside of like maybe Western Europe and parts of east Asia are doing things themselves lol
There’s just really no point in spending time and money hiring someone to do something you can do yourself
Because we have “independence” culture.
The idea of “free and independent” is much more than political. It’s why so many people own cars instead of using public transit, desire to live in single family housing v. apartments and so on.
“I’m independent and smart. I don’t need to buy one/pay someone. I can do it on my own. There is value in being self-sufficient.” We see DIY as a way to prove we are capable. We get satisfaction from knowing we did it ourselves.
TL;DR a culture who’s foundational idea is “independence” will eventually have that idea leak into everything.
Because they are “Mexicans,” not “Mexicants.”
It fits with how spread out the US is. The US has a pretty fast delivery set up, but things can still take a bit for things to arrive. The effort to get a specialist to install things on top of that can be a real pain for some locations, even in parts of some cities.
Settler culture. My wife and I were in France last year. A woman in the parking lot of a rest stop had a dead battery. So I walked into the convenience store across the parking lot and got some jumper cables and jumped her off. About six or seven people stood around and watched me do it. Surely the French k ow how to jump start a car right?
I think the real question is: why don’t other places have a DIY culture?
Have you never felt the satisfaction of a job well done? The joy of building something with your own two hands? The bliss of putting something in your house and thinking “I made that!”?
Anyone without a DIY culture is living a lesser life.
This is going to diverge strongly from the standard “pioneer/individualist culture” answer I expect most to give but:
Home size and ownerahip plays in. You ever tried to maintain a decent tool storage setup or get a good workspace going in a small apartment or a packed house? It sucks and takes sacrifices. God forbid lugging materials up a ton of stairs.
Americans, Canadians, Australians: you get more people in single family houses, more with garages, more with larger yards, more in fairly all that jazz. Makes it MUUUUCH easier. Also comes with less dense population in a lot of places which can make contractors harder to find and more expensive to call. All have a solid DIY culture to go with that.
Because we are Americans not Americants
Pre-WWII labor was cheap and technology was expensive. Post-WWII labor became expensive and technology became cheap. It’s still the other way around in many parts of the world
It’s baked into our culture in some ways. I have trust issues taking my car to a garage after 3 garages tried to burn me, one successfully did unfortunately. Therefore I do a lot of my own automotive repairs. We have Youtube which is full of knowledge and you can teach yourself a lot of things. Not to mention DIY can be significantly cheaper.
Why would I pay someone to install a new light fixture in my living room, headlight in my car or faucet in my bathroom when I can do it myself?
High Cost of Labor.
Here plumbers and electricians are very expensive several hundred dollars for a very simple job (leaky faucet new outlet) several thousands for just a moderate job.
I had an HVAC quote which consisted of $15,000 for 2 days of labor, whereas in Asia or Eastern Europe and it might be only a couple hundred dollars.
So even for White Collar folks it makes sense to spend your weekend working on home projects
Money and quality. Cheaper to do it yourself and I often times get annoyed when someone does work for me because they don’t do it to the quality I want.
A big part of American culture especially as a man is self reliance if you can do it yourself then you do it yourself. It help saves money and gives you opportunity to talk shop with other guys. For example I never did any car stuff growing up so I felt alienated every time work small talk turned to vehicle maintenance.
If you have a larger project you hire members of you hire some friends to help and you pay them with money, booze, favors or experience for thier kids.
Also a large amount of middle Americans regardless of were they currently live and work are often the children or grandchildren of farmers and farm hands who depended on DIY for daily labor and past the additudes onto thier kids.
Because I can’t imagine how much it would cost even if I could find somebody to do it and I have pretty high standards. I’m also curious how things work and like to be good at DIY thinks. Just finished a marble patio and firepit. Working on the outside furniture next.
There’s things like finish concrete slabs, major plumbing and electrical that I hire out because of expertise and time but if I could do it, I would. I pour concrete mow strips and foundations now as well as block walls and veneering stone to them. I’ve built custom furniture for 35 years. My day job is a C suite executive.
High cost of labor + high cost of living + low wages for the average person = DIY everything you can.
If I couldn’t DIY 90% of the house repairs my home needed when I bought it, I wouldn’t even have a house because I couldn’t afford to renovate it. I didn’t want to per se, although it was rewarding, but it was 100% necessary for me.
Poor people problems require poor people solutions.
People in the US actually own their homes.
In most other developed countries home ownership is like <50%, or people live in multi-generational home. The few people who do own their homes do DIY just as much as Americans i’m sure, but most people are renting or living with family so they aren’t really allowed to modify much in their homes.
We literally had to build the continent. Europe had been settled for thousands of years when folks got on ships to settle the “new world.” Which was wilderness. Really think about that – there was really nothing physically here. Every building, every road had to be created. There was no foundation for our cities/towns/highways. Every settlement expansion meant starting over and stretching your resources. Every technological wave meant a doing things differently then before. This results in a variety of skill sets/you can do it mentality that gets passed down to each subsequent generation.
Not an American. (Vilnius, Lithuania. Lived in 2 other EU countries).
I like to build/fix furniture in my spare time. Here in many parts of Europe I need to rent a space to do it. It might cost half what I pay for my apartment. Nice that I’ve found a community workshop space, otherwise not sure if I could do it without cluttering my apartment building common spaces.
So most people just hire someone to do these things. When you have a space to do these projects – it’s weird to hire someone.
It is too easy for anyone to buy tools. No background checks or waiting period. I could literally own a hammer and rechargeable drill in a couple of hours.
People don’t make holes in walls. Tools do.
/s
Why would I pay another man to do something I can do myself?
If you are in the middle of the prairie you learn to do things for yourself. Not even just in pioneer times.
It is costy and can take too long to get someone to do repairs or build things for you.
I think it can be more generational though. My ancestors who came to the US were farmers or construction worker types. My grandfather repaired refrigerators and air conditioners as a business. My uncle repaired motors. My dad had a leather tool roll that he passed down to my brother. My mom sewed clothes and quilts. I inherited her sewing tools. My parents born in 1934 & 1942 would never have hired someone to fix their car, mow their lawn, fix their plumbing, fix their furniture, sew, cook, clean, cutting hair, etc unless the problem was really beyond their capabilities. I see younger people having fewer of those skills being taught to them though, doing less repair and more just replacing things or hiring someone else to fix things. I don’t think the DIY attitude is quite as stubborn in my generation or those younger. So maybe part of it is willing to take the time, having your own place and having knowledge.
Homesteaders and frontier settlers man. I wouldn’t be surprised if Australians and Kiwis were the same. When you live out in the middle of nowhere you can’t just call a guy.
Add to this, there is a big difference between multi-generational urbanites and country / suburbanites, here – DIY requires tools and tools take up space you don’t have in a cramped city apartment. A lot more Americans have that storage space than in Europe.
We lean (although it’s disappearing) towards a rugged individualism. Being able to take care of yourself and handle your own business is part of that. You shouldn’t rely to heavily on others.
I think it’s testimony to more equality and for more equal treatment of people regardless their profession and class.
It’s funny to say this but America probably has more equality than some other countries. That means that the housekeeper and the handyman and the nanny are not paid just pennies; they actually make enough money to make a living without humiliating themselves. That means that for the average citizen hiring a nanny or a housekeeper is quite expensive, if you have some other financial goals, so you learn to do it yourself.
You know which country has an even stronger DIY culture? Sweden! And I think Sweden is notorious for having one of the strongest class equality cultures
Think about the gene pool that exists in this country. Our ancestors are the ones who strove for a different life. They got on the boat/plane/etc. and had the balls to pack up and head to a new world. They wanted more, they wanted different. And we’re willing to go to great lengths to make it happen. When you head to a brand new life, you generally aren’t counting on a lot of help from others in order to do so. You don’t immigrate to a country with the notion that “the government will take care of me there!” You immigrate with the notion that I’ll largely be on my own and that I need to work my ass off to create a different life. The US is largely full of this mindset, although it gets less with every passing generation born here it seems.