While our homes are places where we should feel the safest and most comfortable, it’s true to say that even they need a little maintenance once in a while. Even the most experienced homeowner can be taken unaware by issues that crop up from time to time, and will be able to tell you that good housekeeping means paying attention, and often, keeping up with the little tasks so that they don’t turn into major problems.
There are many steps you can take to make home maintenance a little easier, but none of them are worth thinking of or trying to keep up with if they’re not realistic and sustainable. Some guide that tell you to mow your lawn every single week or clean your windows every month aren’t giving feasible advice, and so it’s important to keep in mind the actual needs of the average, busy homeowner. As such, let’s consider some essential tidbits of advice from helpful home articles that can get you started and keep you ticking over as time goes by:
Keep Your Operational Manuals
When purchasing a household appliance, it’s important to keep the manual. It’s easy to throw this out along with the packaging (after all, who really needs a kettle box to hand?) but try not to get into this habit with everything. It will help you understand what to do when troubleshooting the device, including the more advanced instructions that may be required.
This can be essential with some devices installed into your home. For instance, if your fire alarm is being falsely triggered by a faulty detector, then knowing how to temporarily silence the alarms in the building while you wait for a technician to replace the faulty sensor can save your ears from hours of unnecessary, incessant beeping. If you must throw them out, consider if these appliances have downloadable manuals on the website you can save in your phone’s cloud storage.
Find Parts Manufacturers
With the new “right to repair” laws impacting many people positively across the UK and once again championing consumer rights, it’s important to make sure we leverage this as much as possible.
For instance, why replace your entire dryer for one fault when you could find a dryer heating element available here, saving you plenty of money in the process? This can also get you in the headspace of learning to identify faults, parts required, and enact replacements yourself. With online forums, you can be certain other owners have tried the same and can levy essential advice. Not only does this help you learn vital home-keeping skills, but can save you so much money over time.
Attend To The Small Tasks Now
As mentioned in the introduction, attending to a small task now can often prevent a small problem from becoming larger. It might be, for instance, that the chain of your garage door seems to squeak constantly, and you’ve been putting it off for months. But what if the chain or the mechanism becomes misaligned, or the latter breaks, and damages your vehicle?
The same goes for anything, like a loose staircase bannister, or a garden path patio slab that feels less secure than it can be. At best, you have to suffer with knowing that this task is completed for some time. At worst, you could cause injury, leakages, or require massive repairs to fix an issue that has gotten out of hand. As you can see, sometimes it’s just worth nipping the problem in the bud.
Invest In Some Worthwhile Tools
Heading to the hardware shop and making sure that you have a range of tools you can use should you need to is a necessary investment. From screwdrivers to spanners, from a handsaw to a vice, from lubricant to a level, picking up a basic recommended package is better than nothing.
While it might seem as though you don’t quite need those tools right now, when you need them, you really need them. Anyone transitioning from renting to owning can benefit from this tremendously, and make the most of it. You’d be surprised just how much this can save your skin – even if it means stopping a leak from causing damage as you call in a plumber.
With this advice, you’re certain to make home maintenance that little bit easier. We’d also recommend keeping the vital contact numbers of an electrician, plumber, pest control business and locksmith to hand, to save having to compare services during an emergency. You’re sure to benefit with that in mind.
