Tips for Keeping Your Home Well-Maintained

Home is where the heart is—or so the saying goes. When it comes to the house you live in, it’s a lot easier to have your heart there if it’s a pleasant place to be. There are a lot of different factors that contribute to a pleasant home, from the people who live there to the memories it holds. One of the important, though perhaps not as fun, things you need to do is to make sure your home is well-maintained so you can live there safely and enjoy it.

Cleaning is an essential element of maintaining your home. A clean home is less likely to suffer damage due to dirt, grime, mold, and other problems that come from a lack of cleaning. Of course, cleaning a whole house all in one go can be pretty daunting. It’s a lot easier if you break cleaning the house into sections that are easier to tackle. You can use that breakdown to create a cleaning rotation that will make keeping up on cleaning the house easier. It can be tempting to skip a day or a room and catch it on the next rotation, but the better you keep up on cleaning, the less elbow grease you’ll need to use. The more frequently you clean, the less there will be to clean at any one time.

The nature of homes and living in them means that they’re prone to developing any number of common minor home issues. The problem is that when it comes to issues with your home, what starts as a minor issue doesn’t tend to stay minor. Unfortunately, problems don’t fix themselves. They’ll only grow bigger. The bigger the problem, the more expensive it’s likely to be to fix. You can save both your home and your wallet some trouble if you fix minor issues early before they get worse.

Water is a vital part of life, but it doesn’t belong in most of your home. Water can cause extensive damage to your home. If you want to maintain your home, it’s important to take steps to control the humidity in your home , as well as instances where water may collect in your home. Keep watch for leaks around your sinks, faucets, toilets, and pipes. If you find a leak, make sure you take action to correct it as soon as possible before greater damage is done to your home. It’s important to clean spills up immediately for similar reasons.

The average homeowner isn’t likely to be incredibly familiar with the different signs that indicate that your home needs more special attention and care. A home inspection, on the other hand, can alert you to those instances, especially when performed by an experienced, licensed inspector. A home inspection can reveal inefficiencies in your HVAC system. It can also identify issues with your electrical and plumbing systems, roof, foundation, and other structural components of your home. A lot of home inspections are done around the time a home is bought and sold, but you aren’t limited to just that time period. You can have an inspection done whenever you want, but in general, it’s a good idea to have one done every five years or so.

Pests can do all sorts of damage to a home. From insects that eat your wood to rodents who make their homes in your walls, there are a lot of different pests you should watch out for. The specific varieties may depend on where you live, but they’re all bound to be problematic. It’s important to take steps to protect your home from pests. Keep your food in sealed containers, make sure your doors and windows have good seals around them and trim plants so they don’t touch your home. Incidentally, this is another reason to clean your home regularly. Cleaner homes tend to be less attractive to pests.

If you stop to think about it, the list of things you should be doing to maintain your home is pretty long. It can be discouragingly long. Like cleaning, it helps if you divide maintenance tasks up into more manageable groups. You may find success arranging them by season. Colder months may be better times to focus on indoor maintenance, while warmer months may be better for outdoor maintenance. Some tasks should be done to prepare for winter , while others should be done to prepare for the growth that tends to happen during spring and summer. Using a seasonal maintenance checklist will help you keep on top of tasks that need to be done yearly to keep your home in good condition without making you feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount that needs to be done.

It’s safe to say that a lot of home maintenance is stuff you can handle yourself. Other tasks, however, aren’t ones you should be trying to do on your own. It can be really helpful to have a go-to list of professionals that you can look to for your home maintenance needs. Take HVAC maintenance, for example. As part of maintaining your system, you should be changing your furnace filter regularly. How regular depends on the type of filter you have, but that’s generally something you’ll be able to handle yourself if you want to. Having your system tuned up regularly is another important part of HVAC maintenance. Unlike your filters, tune-ups are best left to the professionals. Since the furnace should be tuned up in the fall and your AC tuned up in the spring, it’s helpful if you already have a company you trust that you can call to handle that sort of maintenance task.

Making sure you stay on top of home maintenance isn’t the most glamorous thing you could do with your time, but it certainly is important. When you keep your home maintained well, you protect it from damage, extend its life, and protect the safety and wellbeing of those who live within it. Take care of your home so it can take care of you for years to come.