Get Into A Routine
Routines are important. They give us a sense of accomplishment and direction in between all the chaos and uncertainty of our day to day lives. We have routines for work, fitness, religion, cooking and many other things. Almost everything we do, on some level, involves routine to accomplish our goals.
Routine home maintenance is no different in that respect. Home maintenance is just as important as any other form of maintenance, except that in many ways it’s easier to shrug it off and wait until small things become enormous problems that now must be dealt with quickly and usually, at great expense. So many items we tackle on our jobs are the result of a lack of routine maintenance that would have prevented the small issues from becoming larger ones.
Home and Happy recommend that each household make a list or spreadsheet of the most common and necessary items to maintain on and in a house and to check this list regularly to make sure that it is being kept up with.
Inspect your entire house and make a list of all of the little and big things wrong that need fixing. Once you have this list, try to prioritize the most important to the least important and set a goal date to have each task completed by.
This list can involve monthly, quarterly and yearly tasks broken down into small descriptions of each task, a date to complete it by and the costs of the materials for each task.
Some suggestions for each category are as follows:
Monthly: Replace all AC/Furnace filters if needed.
Test smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and replace batteries if needed.
Clean and sharpen your garbage disposal unit and blades by running it with ice and lemon peels.
Quarterly: Check and clean gutters and downspouts as needed.
Check fascias and soffits for rot.
Check for drips, leaks and clogs in sinks and showers.
Check hose bibs for leaks and drips.
Yearly: Look for paint repairs on the interior and exterior of the home.
Clean out dryer vent.
Inspect windows and doors for caulking and sealing issues.
There are so many more things to keep in mind when owning or managing a home and it can be very overwhelming. An up-to-date list of all routine maintenance items is very important if you don’t want to be spending hundreds or thousands of dollars to repair a much larger issue down the road. A little bit of preventive and routine maintenance can go a very long way to making sure that your investment lasts and stays healthy for a long time to come.
