Out of Sight, Out of Mind Is Not A Good Plan
Your home is far more than just a place to reside, it’s where you live. It provides a feeling of safety and security, like a mother’s hug. It’s the place you want to be when everything around you is falling apart.
If your home is a place of shelter you don’t want it to be the thing falling apart.
Whether you rent or own your home, it’s one of your biggest investments. It’s where you spend much of your time, money, and life. With it being this important, you need to take care of it.
If our homes are so important, why are they neglected?
We are creatures of habit, whether good or bad. We preform our daily routines of coming and going and rarely bother to look around. Unless a doorknob falls off in our hand or there’s no hot water for our shower, or the sink gets stopped up, or the AC doesn’t work, or any number of other problems occur, we just go through life without giving any thought to the condition of our homes.
Maintenance isn’t going to prevent every big problem from happening, but it decreases the likely hood. Having a scheduled maintenance plan will also help you find needed repairs before they become major.
Having an intentional plan is important, but it won’t work if you don’t use it.
With everything else going on in life, how can we remember one more thing? We don’t have to if we have a scheduled plan. First you need to decide if home maintenance is important enough for you to bother with. If it doesn’t bother you when you’re forced to deal with a big problem, then don’t worry about it. You’ll know the sump pump has quit working when you replace the carpet, baseboard and lower portion of the sheetrock in your basement.
The most important part of the maintenance plan is having a system in place that works for you. I use my computer calendar for this. I can set reminders for different time periods and it will automatically remind me. Just this last weekend I was reminded that is was time to clean the coffee maker. If it hadn’t been for the reminder it wouldn’t have gotten done. Whether you use a computer, a paper calendar or something else, you need to follow through regularly.
The overwhelming maintenance mountain becomes manageable if you break it down into shovel size amounts.
Your home and life are specific to you. Your maintenance plan needs to be designed to fit those specificities. Different manufacturers of appliances and home equipment will have their own recommendations, so you should schedule your plan around that. If you have hard well water you might need to clean faucets, shower heads, coffee makers, etc. more often than recommended. If you don’t use some things regularly, they might need less maintenance.
Next week we’ll dig deeper into the specifics of what a maintenance plan includes, complete with a downloadable Home Maintenance Checklist for you to use.