Home Wellness Checklist
You’ve got a home, so no matter what you do to pay the bills, you’ve got a lot to do. Even the smallest home requires an incredible amount of attention to detail: everything from routine maintenance to the occasional major mechanical snafu which is bound to happen somewhere sooner or later from your roof or attic to your main floors or basement. So this fall, why not invest a little bit of time to plan out how you can make your home as safe, efficient and enjoyable as possible? Even an hour or two with a pen, some paper and a cup of coffee can prove to be a powerful investment in the months and years ahead of you as a homeowner. You’ll set yourself up for the beginning of the new year -- and the new decade! -- by making a home wellness checklist. Here are three tasks we recommend to get you started as you consider as you plan out how to spend your time and money maintaining your home:
- Balance Your Budget.
If you haven’t done a thorough analysis of how much money you make and spend, then get your phone’s calculator ready and pull out physical or electronic copies of all your bills to give yourself a financial diagnosis. If your debits are exceeding your credits, then maybe there are some opportunities to save money and get your money going out at least matching the money that’s coming in, with the longer-term goal of actually saving money each month. If your home needs minor or major repairs that you think you can’t afford, then add up all the times you ate out last month and take that total as one starting point for reducing your spending. Could you eat out one less time per week in order to put $50 or so into your home’s maintenance fund? Packing your lunch could save your house! Or maybe there’s another way to trim some of the fat spending you’ve been doing -- but only a detailed budget analysis will give you ideas. - Inspect From Top To Bottom.
If you’re not sure what your home needs, or maybe you’ve been afraid![]()
to look because you don’t know what kinds of issues you’re going to find, you could always take part of a day off with a flashlight and a notepad to go through every nook and cranny of your home. Yes, this means squeezing into your attic and even crawling into your crawl space. If you’re not down with this idea and you have a few hundred bucks to spare, consider hiring a professional home inspector to do this for you. He or she should be certified by the Better Business Bureau and have great online reviews: beware of the inspectors who swear they’ve got tons of experience with homes, but in reality they’ve just created a business and a flashy logo. The right home inspector can find the major issues in your living spaces, and even a lot of the minor ones that you’ve been missing, and make recommendations to you for how to prioritize fixing them. In the long run, this inspection will pay for itself by helping you head off any issues like black mold that could develop into even costlier repairs as they get worse over time. Some inspections you may what to consider would be:
- Radon Testing
- Pest Control
- Air Duct & Dryer Vent Cleaning
- HVAC Maintenance
- Make a Routine Maintenance Plan.
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There’s an old saying that goes, “If you’re failing to plan, then you’re planning to fail.” Especially when it comes to home ownership, we’ve found this to be true. Without making a list of the critical daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual maintenance tasks -- and then setting aside the time and funds to do each of them -- you’re planning to fail your home, and all that’s going to mean is huge bills down the road. You may want to consider adding a few of these suggestions below to your home maintenance schedule:
- Changing AC/Furnace Air Filters
- Testing smoke/radon/carbon monoxide detectors
- Set water heater at 120F to prevent burns
- Dispose of any old paints/stains properly
- Make sure playground equipment is safe and free of pests
- Address outdoor landscape drainage – gutters, downspouts
to look because you don’t know what kinds of issues you’re going to find, you could always take part of a day off with a flashlight and a notepad to go through every nook and cranny of your home. Yes, this means squeezing into your attic and even crawling into your crawl space. If you’re not down with this idea and you have a few hundred bucks to spare, consider hiring a professional home inspector to do this for you. He or she should be certified by the Better Business Bureau and have great online reviews: beware of the inspectors who swear they’ve got tons of experience with homes, but in reality they’ve just created a business and a flashy logo. The right home inspector can find the major issues in your living spaces, and even a lot of the minor ones that you’ve been missing, and make recommendations to you for how to prioritize fixing them. In the long run, this inspection will pay for itself by helping you head off any issues like black mold that could develop into even costlier repairs as they get worse over time. Some inspections you may what to consider would be:
There’s an old saying that goes, “If you’re failing to plan, then you’re planning to fail.” Especially when it comes to home ownership, we’ve found this to be true. Without making a list of the critical daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual maintenance tasks -- and then setting aside the time and funds to do each of them -- you’re planning to fail your home, and all that’s going to mean is huge bills down the road. You may want to consider adding a few of these suggestions below to your home maintenance schedule:
These are just some of the many examples of essential tasks that you really should make time for on your calendar for your own sake, not to mention the sake of the people you love who live with you and are your guests.
Have questions about your home’s wellness? The service professionals here at AdvantaClean have been helping American homeowners like you since 1994 with every moisture mitigation and cleaning question you can think of. We’re locally owned and standing by to serve you anytime, day or night. Let us help you maintain your home, because it won’t be completely clean until it’s AdvantaClean!
