Adhering to a fixed seasonal home maintenance schedule will often prevent small problems from becoming big ones when it comes to your home sweet home.
Akin to a health check-up, regular house maintenance is critical for the upkeep of every house. This entails vetting your exterior, appliances, heating and cooling, plumbing, security, and electrical systems to keep your home looking its best. When you schedule your essential home maintenance task, it’s better to have a home maintenance checklist that makes your work smoother and more efficient.
Why do You Need Regular Home Maintenance?
Well, you’ve got yourself a new house, had it done up and are attracting a lot of likes on social media handles for the pictures of your house that you’ve uploaded. Congratulations! But hey you’re not done! As a homeowner, besides ensuring that your house looks good, home maintenance is of humungous importance. Maintenance primarily comprises minor repairs to equipment around the house, looking for leaks and cracks in walls and roofs, flooring and wall paints, et al.
While everyone swears by the importance of house maintenance very few are able to answer why house maintenance is necessary. So here you go –
01. Saves you money in the long-term
Research claims that a dollar spent on maintenance equals 100 dollars spent on repairs … that’s a whopping saving of 99 dollars! The reason being ageing and inefficient equipment use up a lot more money and resources than new equipment. For instance, an unmaintained air filter gobbles up more energy than one whose filters have been recently cleaned.
02. Increases the value of your home
If you intend to put up your house for sale then a well-maintained house will attract a huge volume of qualified buyers who would be happy to pay you the market price for the same! One of the easiest ways to maintain your house is call house cleaning Perth for deep cleaning and enhancing your house’s appearance.
03. Protects your house from secondary damage
For instance, an unmaintained water pipe may lead to water bursting out of the pipe and damaging your furniture or flooring or worse messing up the electrical wiring of your house.
04. Improves your living experience
Besides enhancing your confidence in the integrity of every single part of your house and lending you a feeling of comfort and security a well-maintained house ascertains that you don’t have to bear up with a noisy air filter or a furnace that spews dust or excessive noise of a creaky door… et al.
05. Helps to keep away pests
The number of bugs in a house is directly proportional to the maintenance level of a house … need we say more?
Nobody wants to share their place with pests, but these bizarre insects can infest almost anywhere. But don’t worry, we care for your every concern; we have some helpful tips to prevent pest infestation at your sweet home. Here you go- Top 8 Tips to Prevent Pest Infestation at Your Home!
Home Maintenance Checklist
Now that I have got you hooked on the need for regularly maintaining your house, I am sure you have your daily maintenance checklist as well as weekly maintenance checklist as it’s very basic. So, let me provide you with a monthly and seasonal home maintenance checklist to help schedule your updates, repairs, and cleaning –
Monthly House Maintenance Checklist
Once In Every Two Months Home Maintenance Checklist
Once In Every Three Months Home Maintenance Checklist
Once In Every Six Months Home Maintenance Checklist
Seasonal Maintenance: Spring Home Maintenance Checklist
Seasonal Maintenance: Fall Home Maintenance Checklist
Yearly Home Maintenance Checklist
Monthly House Maintenance Checklist
Following is the list of home maintenance tasks for monthly maintenance –
- Ensure that the fire extinguisher is fully charged, and if need be recharge or replace the same
- Clean out the rubble from the basin and bathtub plugs and drain holes
- Flush the garbage disposal with a combination of hot water and baking soda
- Check your water softener salt drum and if necessary, replenish the salt
- Check the filters of your air heating system (especially if they are fiberglass filters)
Once in Every Two Months Home Maintenance Checklist
Following is the list of home maintenance tasks once every two months maintenance –
- Clean the grills of your wall furnace
- Clean the grease filter of your range hood
Once in Every Three Months Home Maintenance Checklist
Following is the list of home maintenance tasks once every three months maintenance –
- Clean the aerator of your faucet
- With regards to your tub drain assembly, clean out the debris, check the rubber seal and if need be replace it
- Clean the debris from the floor and outdoor drain grates
Once in Every Six Months Home Maintenance Checklist
Following is the home maintenance list for once every six months maintenance-
- Do a test run of the batteries of your smoke detectors and if required replace them
- Check your toilets, and the hoses and if need be, replace them
- Inspect the sealing around bathtubs, showers and washbasins; and replace if required
- Change the forced air heating system in case the user’s manual commends high–efficiency pleated or HEPA-style filters
- Tauten up the gutter connections of the garbage disposal
- Clean the water inlet filters of the clothes washer; examine the tubes and in case you notice a leakage, replace them
- Wash the blades of the fan and the casing of the range hood
- Blow out lint from the ducts and adjoining regions of the clothes dryer
- Check the wiring for worn-out cables and wires; and if required either repair them or if irreparable replace them.
Electrical maintenance is a crucial part of your home maintenance as it affects you, your house and your household appliances. So, be very careful with it. Follow these Electrical maintenance Tips and ensure that you and your family live in a safe place.
Seasonal Maintenance: Spring Home Maintenance Checklist
Post the thawing of the ground and budding of the trees; it’s time to prepare your house for spring. Parallel to your regular spring-cleaning project, you’ll also want to consider these general home maintenance tips.
Refer to this spring home maintenance checklist to ascertain that everything in your house – from the basement to the roof – is in top-notch shape –
- Scrutinize the surface of the roof, attic and soffits and if required have the same repaired
- Clean out the gutters and the down sprouts or opt for no-maintenance versions of the same. Examine and repair fragile areas; inspect for proper drainage and if required repair them
- Inspect and clean siding and repair if need be
- Inspect the exterior sealing and supplant any that is weakening
- With regards to window sills, door sills and thresholds – fill the cracks, caulk the edges, repaint and replace if required
- In the case of windows and door screens – clean the screening and if required repair or replace the same. Strengthen or repair any lax or impaired frames and recoat if need be; ascertain that damaged, spent or lost hardware is replaced; oil door hinges and closers
Seasonal Maintenance: Fall Home Maintenance Checklist
In many regions, autumn is the perfect season to take care of general home maintenance projects … the reason being the dry weather and moderate temperature. Prior to embarking on your seasonal home maintenance checklist, check both the interior and exterior of your house. Most of these tasks can be accomplished sans the assistance of a professional, but in case a home improvement project is beyond your abilities then it’s always safer to call for assistance.
Here is our seasonal home maintenance guide for fall:
- Inspect the surface of the roof, eaves and soffits and if required repair them
- Clean, examine and repair fragile spots of the gutters and down sprouts; ensure that the gradient is adequate
- Clean the flue of the chimney or stovepipe; repair any cracks in the flue or any loose or crumbling mortar
- Check and clean siding and if required repair the same
- Inspect exterior sealing and replace any that is in a bad shape
- Storm windows and doors – Substitute any splintered or damaged glass; repair any slack or broken frames; and if need be repaint them. Switch impaired hardware, and oil hinges and closers of doors
- Inspect the window and door weather stripping and in case it is in a bad shape or if it does not fasten then repair or replace it
- Vet and clean all the fragile points of your thermostat; examine its accuracy and in case the thermostat is not functioning efficiently then have it replace
- Those living in low temperature zones need to turn off the valves to outdoor faucets
Yearly Home Maintenance Checklist
There are some house maintenance tasks that need to be unfailingly tackled on an annual basis. Here’s sharing a snapshot of some of them –
- Commission a professional to examine the septic tank. In fact, it would be a good idea to pump the tank annually
- Have a ‘rooter’ clean out the main line especially if your yard is home to mature trees; for the simple reason that there is a chance of the roots of these trees cracking the pipe while hunting for moisture
- Drain water from the water heater until it is sediment-free; check the temperature pressure relief valve; clean the burner and ports of the gas heater
- Book a professional to vet your heat/air conditioning system
Friendly Word of Advice
- Before doing any electrical work, be sure to shut off the power
- Some plumbing repairs also require that you shut off the water supply, and yes, we also have written some helpful plumbing maintenance tips. Do you want to go through it? Then here you go –17 Plumbing Maintenance Tips for Your Home
The above process lists common home maintenance tips that you can use as a starting point, but then again, every house has its own issues. So just don’t turn a blind eye when something starts to show warning signs and you should be fine. Revisit the above homeowner’s maintenance checklist on a regular basis (start of a month and a season) to keep your home in prime working condition. Gharpedia repeats that if any of the jobs extend beyond your skill level or lead to more involved repairs, then don’t hesitate to hire a professional to help.
Have you noticed something?
We didn’t write anything about your garden maintenance or lawn maintenance in the whole article though it’s a most beautiful corner of your house. Because it needed daily or weekly care. So, we give detailed guidelines for taking care of a lawn, especially for you… A Homeowner’s Guide To Lawn Care
Image Courtesy: Image 2
Author Bio
Huta Raval – An English Literature and Journalism Topper, Huta Raval has graduated from the L D Arts College, Ahmedabad. Post serving for 23 years in the NBFC and Public Library Sectors her desire for ‘writing the unwritten’ brought her to the creative field of content writing. Her clientele comprises of NGOs, Blogging Platforms, Newspapers, Academic Institutions, et al.