what we don’t think about when we avoid maintenance

I avoid maintenance until the last possible minute. The kitchen sink gives me away first. The water drains more slowly, the plates stack tilt, and a faint metallic smell drifts in and out. I often procrastinate until my home becomes unbearable, then spend hours deep-cleaning. The dramatic “before and after” is satisfying. I call this reactive maintenance: repair as a crisis response. It looks productive because the results are visible, but the gratification comes not from caring, but from cleaning up the mess. Consistent maintenance offers no immediate reward. Its effects accumulate invisibly, through small, preventive acts repeated day after day. A sink that never clogs. A body that doesn’t crash. Such care has no dopamine hit, only the quiet of nothing going wrong.

Why do we avoid maintenance? Why do we only begin when it becomes impossible to ignore? Because the logic of deferral is familiar: spend now, pay later. We are trained to “pay” (attention) to meeting deadlines, not to sustain. Maintenance becomes something we owe, not something we do. Our culture has little patience for the slow accrual of upkeep. Maintenance rarely registers in the sanctioned currencies of productivity—time, money, selfhood—so there is no incentive to keep it up. I internalized that logic, learning to spend as little of those “more valuable” currencies as possible on something as basic as care.

This neglect is intentional. Planned obsolescence turns deterioration into a business model. Phones, cars, water bottles, and shopping bags are designed to break or feel outdated, making replacement seem not just rational but inevitable. The “burner” mentality—use it, toss it—becomes a reflex. Repair expenses are so high that they rival the cost of replacement. In this case, maintenance is hardly even considered. Our bodies aren’t replaceable, yet the market treats them as if they were. It sells quick fixes, productivity hacks, and energy drinks that treat the symptoms, not the causes. Over time, this shortcut economy rewires our habits, making maintenance feel “too expensive” in a system that refuses to value it. As we become more reluctant to maintain ourselves, burnout and breakdown become more frequent, thus feeding the very market that profits from them.

Energy, unlike time or money, is not recognized as a valid currency. We seldom account for its loss until complete depletion. Although reactive maintenance may seem efficient, it masks debt as productivity. Each delay compounds the cost: extra time, extra effort, sudden exhaustion. The debt accumulates. Reactive maintenance is de facto pseudo-maintenance: labor that appears restorative but sustains systems that exhaust us. This maintenance, meant to restore, ends up depleting further. The harder we maintain through exhaustion, the more maintenance itself begins to feel futile. The delay leaves us in a state of chronic sub-maintenance: just functional enough to postpone collapse. Each day, I seek to optimize my performance on an under-resourced condition. I tell myself my mind can override fatigue. But how can that be?

Screenshot of mobile application update version history.

Paradoxically, life itself is maintenance. Eating, sleeping, socializing, and working are all forms of maintaining status, identity, or function. Yet, few of these feel rejuvenating. If we are constantly maintaining or under-maintained, when do we ever get to upgrade? You cannot upgrade what is barely maintained. So-called “upgrades” are often just repairs in disguise, like bug fixes labeled as updates in mobile apps.

What do we lack to sustain consistent maintenance? It’s not about endurance or enforcing rigid routines, which I have never managed to persist in. The problem is not awareness either. We have always been warned about the importance of care, and nothing has changed. Wear-out just is so inescapable.

I saw this maintenance tag attached to an exit sign at a USPS store. Inspected monthly from January 2022 until April 2023, and then nothing. As long as it works, right? Only fix it when it breaks. We treat ourselves the same way. We don’t bother maintaining the exit, and so the way out stays broken. Deferral only delays further. Until?

Exit sign, USPS at East Broadway Street, New York. Photo: Rosaline Dou.