A Handy Guide to Home Maintenance – Home Care Tips

Home care saves you money. Maintaining your home on a regular basis helps to prevent big, expensive problems from occurring in your house in future. And whenever a problem does occur, you would catch it early. Detection at an early stage is cheaper to fix if you are doing regular preventative maintenance.

Many homeowners have long lists of projects that they have been putting-off; it is time to create a schedule and a checklist to execute those. Little steps add up to big results. And if you create and follow a schedule for home maintenance, your home will remain in great shape throughout the year.

While we clean and wipe the home on a daily basis, that is not enough. Some items require deeper cleaning which takes more time and cannot be done daily. The following checklist divides the maintenance tasks on weekly, monthly and yearly basis. Let us explore these DIY tips that will keep your home in good shape.

Checklist for Home Care

1. Weekly home maintenance

Your weekly home maintenance ritual will be largely determined by the features of your home, but it may include some of the following tasks:

Floors: Give all your carpets and rugs a thorough vacuuming.

Garden: Get help or prune a tree or shrub yourself.

Bathroom: Clean the sink drain and shower, check for mineral deposits on the shower head.

Scrub the dingy or damaged tile grout.

Kitchen: Clean the outside & inside of all your appliances per week.

2. Monthly home maintenance

• Deep Clean Appliances

Appliances can get grime and gunk build-up over time. Your everyday wipe-down isn’t going to be enough. Most appliance manuals come with cleaning instructions, so don’t throw them away. Start from there when cleaning each machine.

• If your stove has removable grates or burner caps, remove them regularly and clean them in the sink – sometimes a good soaking really helps with stubborn build-up. Run your oven on “self clean” and then wipe out any remaining residue to eliminate the burning smell during cooking.
• Empty your fridge of all food and wipe down each shelf and drawer. Don’t put any expired food back in. Defrost the freezer and dump out old ice. Empty and clean the drip pan in the bottom of the refrigerator. Wipe the exterior with soap and water or stainless steel cleaner.
• When cleaning your refrigerator, don’t forget to clean the coils. Condenser coils are located on the back of your fridge. If they’re coated with dust and hair balls, they cannot properly release heat, and the fridge will have to work harder to stay cool.
• Clean the chimney hood and filter. This is one of those areas that we often forget about, but if you don’t take care of it on a regular basis, it will develop a nasty layer of grease and dirt over time.
• Clean gas burner, it will help your furnace run efficiently, keeping utility bills down.
• Dust light fixtures.
• If you have a fire extinguisher, make sure it’s fully charged.
• Visually inspect the outside of your home for problems or issues, such as loose shingles, damaged siding, insect nests, or overgrown trees or shrubbery.
• Wash windows and window screens
• Plumbing

Check under each sink and anywhere you have exposed pipes. Put the water on and look for signs of drips or leaks. Also be sure to check toilets to see if any are leaking. Finding leaks early can save you a ton of money in the long run if something bursts or floods.

• In case you have a garden then you must undertake the following

A good place to start is by walking your yard and making note of what looks damaged, overgrown, or just plain dead. Do all of the weeding. Remember to inspect your trees for dead limbs that need to be trimmed.

You must check your sprinklers, if you have them. Inspect each head to be sure it’s functioning properly. Look for clogs or leaks and replace valves accordingly so water can properly spray.

• Check Your Filters And Batteries

Check air filters, water filters. Also, check any device in your home that uses batteries. Smoke alarms and even wall clocks can run dead without you noticing, or worse, start beeping in the middle of the night.

• Clean your ceiling fans

3. Yearly home maintenance

• Scan the storage places for extras

Purging unneeded items is a great way to spend downtime. The garage, shed, attic, basement, closet and junk drawers are all great places to start with.

Empty each area completely and wipe or sweep it clean. Sort like items together and decide on what to keep and what you no longer need. When you’re done deciding what not to keep, you can sort your discard these items (donate, trash or sell)

• Room Make-over

Freshen up one room in your home. Pick any room, and give it a mini makeover. For instance, you can repaint it, switch curtains, move the furniture, and add plants and knickknacks to give it a whole new look. If you do this with one room per year, in a few years, your whole home will look terrific!

Keeping your home organized and things displayed neatly actually can save you money in the long run. When you can see what you have already, you’re less likely to accidentally purchase duplicates. Additionally, having an organized space often makes you less likely to bring home unnecessary extras that you know you don’t have a spot to store.

By following this checklist, you can have a wonderfully maintained home with a minimal investment of time and energy. Make a schedule of home maintenance tasks, you’ll feel more productive, and your home will thank you with decreased repair costs down the line!