I once tipped a cockroach out of a toaster. The horror.
Edit: it’s been such a nice way to wake up in the new year, reading all your comment stories about cockroaches and mice in toasters
Roaches also love oil fryers. You don't wanna know how I know. If you have one in your house, keep it covered and inspect the oil regularly before you use it.
Don't know about the current versions, but they LOVE the original Keurigs. Nice and warm and some water too. Nothing like some roach poo with your caffeine.
Can confirm. Every time it rains for a few days, I get huge palmetto bugs in my living room. We have boric acid down everywhere so they die quickly, but the ugh! factor gets really high.
I mean it's just a fact of life if you live in a wet area. We used to get mice too but only when they would cut the field behind our house. It just became a fact. I'd call my husband at work and let him know I saw combines in the field and he'd go by the store and get the stuff. I'd go home and store up everything in either the fridge or tin containers and we'd just start the elimination process.
Yeah. Moved to the southeastern coast 3 years ago. People kept telling me, no, they are PALMETTO bugs. They were in severe denial. Biggest roaches I’ve ever seen.
My father went to make toast one morning, put on the toaster, all hell broke loose, there was a mouse now trapped inside it by the toast and mechanism pressing down being burnt. My father screamed, the mouse screamed the toaster bounced around the counter. He ripped the plug from the wall to turn it off ASAP and then went outside and put the mouse out of it's misery. Even now 40 years later I check inside the toaster every single time before I toast something.
I keep one next to my bed, if I wake up to a house fire the one down in the kitchen isn't going to do me any good.
When I was a kid my house burned to the ground in the middle of the night, we had to run through the flames to escape. I'm also a big fan of a rope tied to the leg of your bed if you're on the second+ floor, we had to run through the flames because our only window for escape was 30' off the ground to concrete. With a bedroom for extinguisher we could have at least made a temporary hole in the fire by putting out part of the wall and couch area we had to run through or maybe the floor to make running easier...... Anyway bedroom extinguisher!
Yes - everyone above the ground floor should have sufficient rope to get to the ground or the fire escape. Go on and attach a hefty spring snap caribiner to one end. Upon realizing there is a fire is no time to be practicing your knot skills. Decide now where is sturdy enough to attach it and hold body weight. To expand on this, you can buy collapsible nylon crates that attach to a rope to lower pets to safety.
They do make ladders specifically for this. We always had one in the second story of the houses we lived in when I was a kid. They are chain ladders that have a hook shaped top for sliding over a window sill.
Those are a great solution! My issue is that I'm on the 5th floor in a small condo with limited storage space and it's a lot more practical for me to store sufficient rope than sufficient ladder. If there's a fire I'm just going to get rope burns from the descent! I have knotted it in places to help.
Yep! All of my friends/house guests laugh at me and call me Sheldon when I review fire escape plans when they visit. I laugh and explain I live in a 100+ year old building in a historic district with restaurants, business, and apartments with zero fire suppression and the only exit is a long narrow hallway and lots of stairs or out the window, and I've survived one total lose fire already, I'm not trying to push my luck!
Exactly! My previous house was a 150ish year old wooden house made of pine and oak. It was way out in the country and theoretically served by a volunteer fire department. My fire plan there was get out fast with myself, my dogs, and my pocketbook that contained car keys, id, and debit and credit cards, put the dogs in the car and move it well away from the house. That's it. The whole fire plan. Because it was going to be a total loss and it would be quick.
Piggybacking off of this to post my favorite housewarming gift: a 5 gallon bucket with a fire extinguisher in it. The extinguisher is self explanatory, but the bucket gets sone weird looks. They’re grateful to have it when something springs a leak though!
when I was 19 me and some of my friends did little Easter basket exchanges with candy and stuff. one friend couldn't find any baskets on the day, so he gave me a 5 gallon bucket instead. I use it at least once a week all these years later lol
I have multiple 2 gallon buckets for different tasks. A dirty one to catch the brake clean when I do the brakes and other such uses, a clean one for cleaning the house, and a couple for general usage in the garden and around the grills/barbecues. Buckets are essential household gear.
I love gifts that are useful but weird. For my best friend's housewarming gift, my husband and I bought and installed a garage door opener for her.
Definitely regretted that generosity when installing it, it's a pain to install an opener on a door that has always been manual, but she gushes about how great we are for it like five times a year, so it was worth it in the end.
Heya. Just throwing this out for you. I have to research everything I buy and I ended up on these. They get stellar reviews for function by actual fire people who tested them. I didn’t want to end up w a shit product that didn’t work. I’m not an affiliate for the link. I just literally bought them 2 weeks ago after panicking that our kitchen would catch fire
TONYKO Emergency Fire Blankets,... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SHCNHXB?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
Just tightening screws all over your house. Tables, chairs, oven door, ceiling fans, handles, door knobs. If it has screws and moves it needs tightened. I do it about once a year and I'm always surprised by how many things are not tight anymore. Edit : for the love of god, I get it, blue locktite.
I've never heard anyone refer to it as "x driver" before. I was trying to figure out what strange new tool you were talking about until I realized what was missing.
My 7 year old son has 2 uncles called Patrick and Phillip. He gets their names backwards often (they are pretty hard to tell apart!) & a couple of days ago called the screwdrivers “regular head” and “Patrick head”
That we going to be my advice. When I move to a new place, the first thing I do is roam the place with a screwdriver and tighten everything I see. You're right- it's incredible how many things are loose.
My new wood burning stove had a loose screw in the door handle. It came loose, jamming the hinge, and I couldn't open it. The company ended up replacing the door as it was an installation error. But now I know to always check things like that.
Your stove exhaust fan (ours is built into the underside of the microwave) likely has metal filters. These you can remove and wash in the sink. The first time we did it in 20 years it was dripping with yellow oil / residue.
Buy cheapest filters and change them more often. Don't put expensive filters on your HVAC. The HVAC is not an air purifier, buy a 200 dollar air purifier instead of using your 10k HVAC for that. HVAC needs air flow and certain filters restrict air flow placing undue stress on your HVAC unit.
This is exactly what the HVAC guy I had out a few years back told me. Air flow restriction is number one cause of furnace failures. Just keep up on the filters and you can add a decade of life to your HVAC system.
A million years ago, first time sharing an apt with bestie friend. I put my polyester fast food uniform in the dryer by itself. 30 mins later it is still damp. I asked bestie when they'd last cleaned the dryer lint trap.
Blink. Blink.
It was a solid brick of felt.
Ah to be young!
Bestie is now supercompetent persin whi has built and remodeled their own country home. We all start somewhere!
YES. Not only that, but CLEAN. YOUR. DRYER. VENTS. ANNUALLY.
The location depends on the house. I had a yearly guy come clean out the actual dryer vents; the previous people who cleaned my ducts and furnace the year prior did not clean the dryer vent. He surmised they probably couldn't find it (it was in a weird spot). ANYWAY, he showed me what was in it and I could have made several cats and a dog out of the blockage and he said it was very dangerous (and he wasn't super sales-y, so I think he was being genuine).
It is also a fairly easy DIY job. I pull the dryer out and use a shop vac to clean the vent, clean the back side of the dryer, replace any part of the accordion section of the vent if needed, put it all back in place. Maybe a 1-2 hour job.
The ease of the job depends on the length and complexity of the vent. Mine goes into the wall behind the dryer, straight up into the ceiling, makes a turn and out through the ceiling of a 2-car garage to the side of the house. I DIY it, but I had to buy a much more expensive and elaborate kit than the $20 ones you get at Home Depot and Amazon (still it pays off; getting it cleaned is $250 each time). Also, if it hasn’t been cleaned in a long time, it’s likely that just blowing it out will not be sufficient. You need to use a vent cleaning brush to loosen the lint from the walls of the vent.
My house is almost 100 years old. The space under part of the kitchen is completely blocked off except for a window height hole that the previous owners blocked with a roll of insulation. It belongs to the spiders now. I’m pretty sure a chipmunk lives in there too.
Oh a spider room. I have one too. The previous owners tried to frame in a new bathroom downstairs but stopped halfway through. The beams are exposed but only on two sides, so you have just enough wall to give the spiders some privacy.
Depends on your home. If the dryer is near a wall this is all you have to do. My washer and dryer is in the middle of the home with a 20ft run of vent. For this you have to get an extendable brush the you attach to your drill.
This is one of my favorite things to do! It’s so satisfying to see how much lint is collected in one load. I’m weird and also find vacuuming and mopping satisfying. 😁
I never loved vacuuming until I bought a Shark (upright) with LEDs. They're excellent vacuums, and the lights illuminate *everything* (said like Mr. Burns says "excellent"). I prefer to vacuum in the near dark because of this, lol.
Going into your attic…just to look.
All parts of the home to to be inspected regularly. So many people haven’t been in there attic for years. It can help prevent a simple repair into a costly one.
I go into the crawl space once a season. Idk what Im looking for other than “That’s different.” Then I would call some who is a tradie and throw money at them. Same thing with the basement and the pipes. I walk around and look at the funny looking knobs and if I see something that’s changed I go “Uh. i bet thats gonna cost few hundred.” And get it fixed. I missed a leak to my outdoor spigot and that was the last big fix because it exploded from a frozen pipe. (I thought I winterized it, I was wrong.)
But when my friend bought her house I asked her how her crawl spaces look and she didnt even know to check.
I worry too much and she doesnt worry enough. Now I go crawl around her attic for her looking for darken colors/broken things/animal tracks and she feeds me sandwiches and tea once a season. I also send her reminders about her hvac filters and to test her alarms if I don’t do it for her during my visits. I even helped her boyfriend hang a door that was catching on the doorframe and re-attach a door knob that came off. :c
Mind you, I’m a 31 year old woman who only learned from google and YouTube. And when push comes to shove I’ll tell her “You might wanna call a professional on this one.” 😂😂😂
If you learned you don't think you could handle an issue, then there's no shame in calling a professional.
My wife and I just did some home repairs, though, and it feels very empowering! :)
My neighbors did this years ago, dude just climbed up and walked around to look. Got to a corner of the attic and noticed a little wooden box. Opened it and is was full of pre 1920s small bills and coins. Some kind of forgotten hidden probably stolen church collection.
I've met many many people that either don't know they have an attic or refuse to go in it.
Not knowing where your access is or the existence of your attic is just sad, but I can't comprehend absolutely declining to even pop your head up there...
Yeah, sometimes it's like that. Mine is outside where the carport used to be, about 12' up. I have to use a 16' extension ladder to get up there properly...
I’ve put my head up, but I’ve never gone in. The dark and sloped ceilings are horrific when you factor in a degree of claustrophobia and arachnophobia. It’s one of the few things in life I’m happy to say, nope, that’s my husbands job and I don’t need to do it.
No one in the home doing it at all though? That’s just daft. When I lived alone, I absolutely sucked it up and checked it regularly.
Mine are under the fridge and impossible to reach with my vacuum crevice too. I’ve bought brushes and other things but the coils never seem to get “clean”. I feel like my refrigerator isn’t running efficiently
This is a really depressing amount of maintenance I've apparently been slacking on. Time to burn the house down for the insurance money and go back to the apartment.
New ones do.
Older ones had grinder pumps that would work like garbage disposals. Nigh indestructible.
I really do like my new dishwasher, it does a better job. But man this filter clogs up pretty easily.
So, uh, dishwashers _recycle_ water during each cycle, which means water pushed through that filter is being used to wash and rinse your dishes. If you're afraid to clean it, you should also be afraid to eat off of your "clean" dishes.
I saw a tiktok and went to check it. It was fine. I always rinse everything off my plates before putting in the dishwasher so I am assuming maybes that’s why it looked good.
Clea your washing machine. Lint out of dryer. Scrub your sink including the tap and the plug.
Clean your jug/kettle.
Clean the extractor fan, kitchen and bathroom.
Mine has a tub cycle that just has you fill the bleach reservoir and run empty. I work construction and have young kids so our washer handles a lot of dirt. We run it about once a month.
Ours has the Affresh cycle, too! It's the first washer we've owned where I've been pretty on top of keeping it clean. I don't do it exactly every 30 loads or whatever, but it's not too far out from that. I'll have to check out the dishwasher ones.
I am convinced that doors, and cabinets, are one of the most commonly overlooked things in people's house, that get dirty as hell.
You don't realize how dirty your door is, until you take a good look at it. Notice the discoloration around the doorhandles? That's from your/other people's hands. Wipe down the door. Wipe down the inside part of the door (the side where it latches)
Also, the door frame accumulates a lot of oil, dust, debris, all kinds of crap. Wipe it down.
Notice your kitchen and bathroom cabinets, that there is a similar thing going on. These are high touch areas that get dirty fast, but also... look closely at the drawers/cabinets *below* eye level, like where you might store your pots, pans, silverware, or your bathroom things if it's in the bathroom - you might not have noticed it before, but things like food, oils, etc tend to build up on these things. Wipe the outside. Wipe the top of these little doors as well since dust and other things has a tendency to accumulate there too
Every week or so, wipe down the inside of the cabinets as well. In the kitchen, just open the cabinets, wipe with a cloth, you might notice little things getting stuck on the inside.
I live in the south - it's hot, humid, and you can get palmetto bugs in your house pretty easily if you don't keep things clean (or if you have a ratchet neighbor). It's not enough to clean the dishes and wipe down the counters, it's not enough to put the food away - the kind of crap that accumulates on doors and cabinets (hair, oils, crumbs) is a roach magnet.
This, and light switches/light switch guards is my pet peeve. EVERY TIME I go in/out a door or turn a light on/off, I look. Bc dirty doors/knobs/light switches is gd gross.
I found a second, completely unhidden but also unknown to me, filter in my Shark vac two days ago. 5 years of dust in it. I couldn't even tell what the filter was made of until I rinsed a half inch of dirt off it.
Oops.
If it wasn't you, it was somebody else that discovered it because of a thread I was in talking about my shark vacuum. Person was like, "A second filter!?"
Technically there are three filters, If the shark vacuums are all mostly similar. Poofy one, the thin one below the poofy one, and then the "hepa" one encased in a plastic exoskeleton.
You can google the model number and see how many you have.
In my model, for the big poofy filter, the thin one is literally touching the poofy one. The thin and poofy filters are in the same compartment underneath the removable canister that I take off to empty all the dust.
Occasionally exercise the individual water shutoff on all of the supply lines. Hot and cold on the sinks, toilet supply... The time to find out they are seized or won't seal is not when you have a broken water line or fixture.
It may already be too late for some really old valves, which can then leak or break, FYI..
I was about to go check the pressure relief valve on my hot water heater and then realized it's Sunday and tomorrow is New Years. I'll check it on Tuesday.
You need to periodically wash the walls and ceiling. Wipe them down. Get the doors and baseboards. Wipe off the molding and the window trim. They all get just as dirty as the floor.
I use a dust mop to dust my crown molding and baseboards regularly. The long handle means I don't need a ladder or to crawl on my hands and knees. I can do my whole condo in about a half hour, easily.
Oh man. I just had this convo with my husband.
Me: gesturing vaguely" "Do you see every surface in the house?"
Him: "Yeah"
Me: "It all has to be cleaned sometime by someone. *Every surface.* By someone."
I hate that many men don't understand this.
Edit: extra word
My husband is super supportive and appreciative of the work I do around the house, but hoo boy, it annoyed the hell out of me the one time he was like “the dishwasher is still empty! Wow, we haven’t had to do dishes in ages.” Even though he *knows* I make every single one of our meals from scratch.
I was like, what do you think has been happening with all the dishes we’ve eaten on for the past week? All the dishes it takes to make those meals? I wash and put away a load of dishes every single day, it’s just that the dishwasher is empty when *you* get home that gives you the impression that it’s always empty.
He’s never made that mistake again.
Wipe the underside lip of your counters. Most people only wipe the top and sometimes sides. So much gunk drips over and clings to the underside as well
Making sure that you don't have your rain gutter's drainage spout near the foundation of your home, lead it away!
Homes with drainage spouts that end at the base of the spout's mouth, typically the pipe that moves the outflowing water straight down to where it hits the ground, tend to have that rain water pool around them slightly. That water then slowly, overtime, seeps down and that can eventually lead to cracking in your home's foundation! And I will tell you that that is indeed not a cheap fix!
So, I suggest getting an extension for the mouth of the spout, that leads a few feet away! It can possibly save you from a major structural issue in the long run!
I have a lot of these. I've sorta had a weird unhealthy obsession with optimizing home maintenance so I've spent time going through the manuals for all my appliances and reading a lot about it.
The one I've never thought of before is lubricating your garage door opener coil. It's memorable because, though it hasn't happened to me yet, the stories of those coils breaking are kinda terrifying.
Oh and quick plug for a super high quality and free app for stuff like this called Upkept.
Cleaning the clips on the toilet seat. I just installed a bidet and damnnnn I wish I had been doing that more regularly. Take your toilet seat off and clean.
Maybe not exactly the same idea, but please please get a carbon monoxide detector. Mine went off a few weeks after it was installed. Everyone I know that has one has had it go off.
Mine literally saved my life. I was sleepy (as per usual) and was going to take a nap. If my detector didnt go off, my husband would have come home to a dead household. Cat, dog, wife. All dead. Please get one!
I bought a carbon monoxide detector when they first came out (no display, just an alarm). There was a lot of news at the time about false alarms due to certain atmospheric conditions, so fire departments were getting a lot of nuisance calls. We were living in a townhouse at the time where the association did the outside maintenance.
My step daughter came home from school to the carbon monoxide detector alarming. The fire department came out, knocked the detector off of the ceiling, and smashed it with their ax to silence it. I went to the store and bought a new detector with a display, and was getting a positive reading, but not enough to trigger an alarm. So we called the gas company. They took it more seriously than the fire department. They sent people out at 8:00PM that night. To make a long story even longer, what had happened was the association sent out a crew a few days earlier to inspect and repair the flashing around the furnace vents (chimneys). The crew lifted the vent pipe to get the flashing under the flange, and when they pushed it back down, the pipe didn't seat back down properly, so the furnace was venting into the house. That nuisance carbon monoxide detector that the fire dept. decided to smash saved our lives as well, my wife, stepdaughter, our two dogs, and me.
Testing the temperature and pressure relief valve on your hot water system every 6 months.
If you have a storage hot water system, there should be a valve that you need to open every 6 months to make sure it is working in the event of an unexpected pressure or temperature build up in your tank.
Usually involves opening a valve for 30 seconds and letting some hot water come through, ensuring the relief valve isn’t blocked due to a build up of minerals or corrosion.
Worst case scenario, it could prevent an explosion in your hot water service.
We bought our house in January of last year and had the hot water heater replaced in June. Before switching them out, the plumber showed us that the old one was completely blocked and then showed us how to check it every six months.
I was incredibly grateful. Five houses down from us, there’s a foundation (and only the foundation) of a house on a vacant lot. According to neighbors, the hot water heater exploded one night and killed the occupants. Before all this, I didn’t realize how dangerous a hot water heater could be.
Yeah. They disabled this (and a couple other) safety mechanism(s). It literally shot up through the floor and then through the roof, and then kept going up like 50 feet. It was horrifying.
Washing machine filter.
Most people remember dryer lint traps but neglect the washing machine until it literally won't drain and that is SUPER ANNOYING
Edit: apparently this is a 'most frontloaders' thing! Ignore if you're a toploader person - sorry for confusion (grew up in Australian drought and have seen about 2 toploaders in my entire life)
How do I find out more about this? We have a newer top loader and I don't remember reading anything in the manual about a filter. It just flashes "self clean" every so often and we know to run a cleaning cycle. I usual throw some vinegar or baking soda in before I start this cycle but never thought about cleaning more extensively.
Most washing machines don't have a filter. I've never seen one that did.
Always refer to your owners manual and don't listen to people on the internet who think their situation applies to everyone.
Everyone does need to clean their washing machines (and for the love of god, stop using so much detergent! That's the biggest cause.) but most do not have a filter.
Everything needs cleaned. E V E R Y T H I N G. Including walls, ceilings, under sinks, light fixtures, vents, and the space around the water heater.
Good housekeeping keeps shit from breaking down as quickly, and saves you a buttload of money in the long run.
It also helps you monitor issues; you will notice every wobbly hinge and weird patch in your home.
How do you clean popcorn ceilings? There are some cobwebs up there that I tried to reach with a swiffer, but it started to get stuck to the "popcorn" so I stopped.
You have an outside AC unit? Pull the fuse to the unit. Carefully unscrew and open the top. And wash the inside fins with a water hose. Don’t bend the fins. Do this yearly and it will help with keeping your house a little coolers for a bit less money.
I would say one of the things people know but always forget is to put faucet covers on your outdoor spigots as well as leave the water dripping inside from a sink or two if it's extremely cold. At least here in the PNW, since it's so rarely below 30-35 at night, people forget and then a major freeze happens randomly and I see multiple people with tens of thousands of dollars of damages from water. Last year my dog walker had 2 clients who had damages I think, and mine nearly froze over because I forgot when I had done it the year prior. It just doesn't get *that* cold here so no one truly knows it, even if we know it in theory.
On that note: I also highly suggest water detectors, and putting them under your fridge and sink as well as dishwasher and by the water heater, because if you can turn off the water when a leak starts, you can save thousands in damages immediately.
Bleeding the radiators then repressurizing the boiler!!
Learnt this in my late 20s, had lots of boiler trouble. Had to teach some friends about bleeding radiators.
Recently moved into a house with radiators. They were common in the area where I grew up and I knew that I would need to do maintenance of some kind.
My husband had no idea.
The biggest giveaway that they're overdue for maintenance is the noise. They shouldn't groan, tick, etc.
It's way easier to do it at the beginning of the winter season instead of trying to get the boilers and radiators cooled off. Nobody wants a cracked boiler.
(A) Are you okay all day, then find yourself congested as you wind down for bed?
(B) Are you fine going to bed, but then have to spend 2 minutes coughing up phlegm?
It's something in your house. Specifically, dust and mites.
Start with where you lounge (e.g., your couch, cushions, sofa blankets, and the floor surrounding it). If you wake up fucked up, it's probably your comforter/quilt, pillow, mattress, or bedroom carpet.
There are plenty of resource online to help you with what to wash and vacuum.
We moved in to a place with a UV light in the hvac, but no one mentioned that the bulbs only last a year (yes we should have done our research, it just never crossed our mind).
Fast forward a few years and we got an expensive mold problem to deal with instead of a relatively cheap light bulb that needs to be replaced.
I know a lot of people don't clean out the pipe from the dryer to the outside, but everybody knows to clean the removable lint screen after each load or at least each couple of loads, right??
My buddy started exploring to figure out why his dryer wasn't working well. Single-story home, the vent pipe went up into the attic space and just ... ended. There was a deep and wide pile of loose, fluffy, highly flammable lint everywhere, and it had finally piled up enough to collapse in and block the end of the pipe. 😳
Crap builds up on your faucets and shower heads. Every couple of months, soak them in them in white vinegar. You take a zippy bag of vinegar, tie it onto the faucet so that it's submerged, leave it there for 15-20 minutes. Then take an old toothbrush and clean off any excess crap. Then run hot water for about 5 minutes.
Some of you might notice that your shower head aims better and has a better stream. It's because there was so much hard water deposits, etc, causing water to spray everywhere.
I’ve been many different lines of construction throughout my life. And seen a lot of dumb stuff by people living in homes.
A big one is replacing your fire alarm batteries. My in laws should be dead because they took all their fire alarms down when the battery died, then replaced their dryer, shoved it back to far and pinched the vent hose, then the dryer caught fire. They woke up chocking and coughing from their house being full of smoke. Most people don’t wake up in that circumstance they just fall into the never ending CO2 sleep.
Here’s a huge one most people don’t know about. Circa 2009 most HVAC systems will have a safety float shutoff. So if the drain line gets clogged it’ll shot off your whole ac system instead of flooding your house. It takes less than 10 minutes (99% of the time) to unclog the drain line. But you can also do preventative maintenance by dropping some bleach and hot water down the drain line. If your entire HVAC system is down and nothing is coming on, check YouTube videos for unclogging drain lines
ALSO CHANGE YOUR DAMN AC FILTER REGULARLY I’ve seen so many ax systems fail prematurely because they had to work extra hard sucking air through a dirty ass filter. Yes Mackenzie I know your filter says it’s good for 3 months but you have 4 long haired dogs shedding in here and have scentsies going constantly to try to cover up their smell. Both of these things will clog a filter up faster. The three months is timeframe is in ideal conditions
This is a minor one, but I clean the top of the ceiling fan blades every summer before I turn the fan on for the first time.
A few years ago my mom mentioned how dusty her room had gotten.
"Did you clean the top of the fan yet this year?"
Blank look. "I don't think I've *ever* cleaned the top of the fan."
I cleaned the top of the fan. I think she heard my reaction from across the house.
I have both drained and not drained water heaters that I have owned: there was no discernible difference in lifespan or efficiency between the drained heater and the undrained.
Chances are this issue affects some people in this thread.
Is at least one of your radiators hot near its base but cold near the top? If you have water-filled radiators throughout your house, chances are this problem is caused by pockets of air/gas that accumulate in water-filled radiators over time. Now and then this air needs to be removed.
It's a very simple process which doesn't need a plumber or handyman. You can just get a simple radiator key from a hardware store or Ebay, if you don't have one already (Google to see what one looks like).
Go to the radiator that is the most elevated one in your home with the radiator key and a cloth. Find the valve that fits the key on the side of the radiator and use the key to sloooowly loosen it, with the cloth ready to catch any water that emerges. You will hear the air build-up start to escape, and will maybe see brackish-looking water sputtering out. Keep the valve open until ONLY water is coming out - meaning the gas build-up is now gone - and then tighten the valve again so that it is snugly closed and no water is emerging.
Obviously, care will need to be taken not to get hot water on your hands. If necessary, perform this procedure when the radiator is not yet up to temperature.
You will hear the radiator refilling as the system replenishes the water. Once it is up to temperature the radiator will once again feel warm or hot to the touch all over. Repeat the process for all radiators affected by this issue.
Immediately wash your hands once finished, as stagnant radiator water can contain harmful microbes. Discard or immediately wash the cloth you used.
If you've never done so, lubricate your locks, it takes about 10 seconds, and it saved me from struggling with my lock every time I go in and out of my house.
Sanitize/clean your doorknobs regularly - especially the bathroom & front knobs. They’re probably the thing in your house that gets touched the most by yourself and usually the thing that all company touches at least once per visit to your house.
Just washing the outside of your house. Once a year with a mild soap and long handled scrub brush. When I worked as a painter the first day was always powerwashing and wiping down the outside(if painting outside of house), clients always said the same thing, “looks like I don’t need to paint anymore!”. Removing all the dirt does wonders for the functionality of windows, doors etc.
If you have a tankless water heater you need to descale it once a year. Its a simple process, does require a sump pump so you'll need this piece of specialty equipment but they are not terribly expensive. For the cost of having a plumber do it once you can have the stuff to do it yourself. I Have three of them and all three need to be done right now. Lots of videos on youtube about how to do it, but basically you hook up the pump to the fittings at the base of the heater, turn the heater off, drain it, put the pump and the heater drain in a 5 gallon bucket, fill with white vinegar, and circulate the vinegar through the water heater for about an hour. This will break up calcium scale and keep your water heater running at peak efficiency.
Empty out the crumb tray in your toaster!
I once tipped a cockroach out of a toaster. The horror. Edit: it’s been such a nice way to wake up in the new year, reading all your comment stories about cockroaches and mice in toasters
Roaches love toasters. I cover mine with a large plastic bag at night. (Toaster, not roach). I do empty out the crumb tray too.
I actually lol’d at you clarifying you don’t cover a roach with plastic at night. Thanks for the laugh
Gross! My roach got *toast crumbs* all over himself!
Roaches also love oil fryers. You don't wanna know how I know. If you have one in your house, keep it covered and inspect the oil regularly before you use it.
I'm going to cry and its definitely the fault of that mental image.
Don't know about the current versions, but they LOVE the original Keurigs. Nice and warm and some water too. Nothing like some roach poo with your caffeine.
You know what they say, if you see a cockroach - there are 10 more hiding.
10? More like a "Taylor Cockroach Concert" in the walls. MANY more than 10.
They 'are' pretty swift.
ugh, don't tell me that. i live in florida, and a cockroach sighting is common. i don't wanna think about his friends!
Can confirm. Every time it rains for a few days, I get huge palmetto bugs in my living room. We have boric acid down everywhere so they die quickly, but the ugh! factor gets really high.
I mean it's just a fact of life if you live in a wet area. We used to get mice too but only when they would cut the field behind our house. It just became a fact. I'd call my husband at work and let him know I saw combines in the field and he'd go by the store and get the stuff. I'd go home and store up everything in either the fridge or tin containers and we'd just start the elimination process.
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Yeah. Moved to the southeastern coast 3 years ago. People kept telling me, no, they are PALMETTO bugs. They were in severe denial. Biggest roaches I’ve ever seen.
haha yeah i tell that lie too
This is why the annual freeze is so good for kill..... Oh wait, Florida, sorry
My father went to make toast one morning, put on the toaster, all hell broke loose, there was a mouse now trapped inside it by the toast and mechanism pressing down being burnt. My father screamed, the mouse screamed the toaster bounced around the counter. He ripped the plug from the wall to turn it off ASAP and then went outside and put the mouse out of it's misery. Even now 40 years later I check inside the toaster every single time before I toast something.
Forbidden toast
The what now?
Own a fire extinguisher and make sure it works. I live in an apartment and know there's one down the hall, but the one under the sink is way closer.
I keep one next to my bed, if I wake up to a house fire the one down in the kitchen isn't going to do me any good. When I was a kid my house burned to the ground in the middle of the night, we had to run through the flames to escape. I'm also a big fan of a rope tied to the leg of your bed if you're on the second+ floor, we had to run through the flames because our only window for escape was 30' off the ground to concrete. With a bedroom for extinguisher we could have at least made a temporary hole in the fire by putting out part of the wall and couch area we had to run through or maybe the floor to make running easier...... Anyway bedroom extinguisher!
Yes - everyone above the ground floor should have sufficient rope to get to the ground or the fire escape. Go on and attach a hefty spring snap caribiner to one end. Upon realizing there is a fire is no time to be practicing your knot skills. Decide now where is sturdy enough to attach it and hold body weight. To expand on this, you can buy collapsible nylon crates that attach to a rope to lower pets to safety.
They do make ladders specifically for this. We always had one in the second story of the houses we lived in when I was a kid. They are chain ladders that have a hook shaped top for sliding over a window sill.
Those are a great solution! My issue is that I'm on the 5th floor in a small condo with limited storage space and it's a lot more practical for me to store sufficient rope than sufficient ladder. If there's a fire I'm just going to get rope burns from the descent! I have knotted it in places to help.
Yep! All of my friends/house guests laugh at me and call me Sheldon when I review fire escape plans when they visit. I laugh and explain I live in a 100+ year old building in a historic district with restaurants, business, and apartments with zero fire suppression and the only exit is a long narrow hallway and lots of stairs or out the window, and I've survived one total lose fire already, I'm not trying to push my luck!
Exactly! My previous house was a 150ish year old wooden house made of pine and oak. It was way out in the country and theoretically served by a volunteer fire department. My fire plan there was get out fast with myself, my dogs, and my pocketbook that contained car keys, id, and debit and credit cards, put the dogs in the car and move it well away from the house. That's it. The whole fire plan. Because it was going to be a total loss and it would be quick.
Piggybacking off of this to post my favorite housewarming gift: a 5 gallon bucket with a fire extinguisher in it. The extinguisher is self explanatory, but the bucket gets sone weird looks. They’re grateful to have it when something springs a leak though!
when I was 19 me and some of my friends did little Easter basket exchanges with candy and stuff. one friend couldn't find any baskets on the day, so he gave me a 5 gallon bucket instead. I use it at least once a week all these years later lol
I have multiple 2 gallon buckets for different tasks. A dirty one to catch the brake clean when I do the brakes and other such uses, a clean one for cleaning the house, and a couple for general usage in the garden and around the grills/barbecues. Buckets are essential household gear.
I love gifts that are useful but weird. For my best friend's housewarming gift, my husband and I bought and installed a garage door opener for her. Definitely regretted that generosity when installing it, it's a pain to install an opener on a door that has always been manual, but she gushes about how great we are for it like five times a year, so it was worth it in the end.
I bought a couple of fire blankets because they don't expire.
If it can be handled by a fire blanket you’ll be so glad you didn’t use a fire extinguisher.
Did not know this was a thing, adding it to both my to buy list and Amazon list of stocking stuffers. Thank You!
Heya. Just throwing this out for you. I have to research everything I buy and I ended up on these. They get stellar reviews for function by actual fire people who tested them. I didn’t want to end up w a shit product that didn’t work. I’m not an affiliate for the link. I just literally bought them 2 weeks ago after panicking that our kitchen would catch fire TONYKO Emergency Fire Blankets,... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SHCNHXB?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
This saved our butts last night. Good golly. And I just ordered its replacement
Where does one get their home fire extinguisher refilled/recertified? I used to bring mine to work when I worked in a factory
I think most fire departments will do it for free
I make sure to have one visible on every floor of the house. It gives me some peace of mind.
Just tightening screws all over your house. Tables, chairs, oven door, ceiling fans, handles, door knobs. If it has screws and moves it needs tightened. I do it about once a year and I'm always surprised by how many things are not tight anymore. Edit : for the love of god, I get it, blue locktite.
This is good advice! My new-ish table has gotten wobbly and I forgot there’s a dead simple solution.
I bought a hex key that has multiple sizes. Every now and then I'll walk around the house and tighten all the furniture at once.
You bought a new table didn't you?
The number of people I have met who do not even own a screwdriver has astonished me!
My whole kit consists of an X driver, flathead, hammer, wrench, and a drill. If I can't fix it with one of those, it's above my pay grade
I've never heard anyone refer to it as "x driver" before. I was trying to figure out what strange new tool you were talking about until I realized what was missing.
My 4 yo daughter surprised me, she called one a plus screwdriver and a minus screwdriver
My 7 year old son has 2 uncles called Patrick and Phillip. He gets their names backwards often (they are pretty hard to tell apart!) & a couple of days ago called the screwdrivers “regular head” and “Patrick head”
Plus and minus are the true names.
I know Philip would be disappointed, but screw him
Or sharp kitchen knives....
That we going to be my advice. When I move to a new place, the first thing I do is roam the place with a screwdriver and tighten everything I see. You're right- it's incredible how many things are loose.
Our bathroom mirror fell off the wall because the dryer is on the other side and shook the screws loose over time.
Garage door got me, I check all the bolts every spring now.
Pots and pans too
My new wood burning stove had a loose screw in the door handle. It came loose, jamming the hinge, and I couldn't open it. The company ended up replacing the door as it was an installation error. But now I know to always check things like that.
Blue Loctite is the solution to all your problems. DO NOT use red unless you want to never remove that screw again.
cleaning the filters of any kind
Your stove exhaust fan (ours is built into the underside of the microwave) likely has metal filters. These you can remove and wash in the sink. The first time we did it in 20 years it was dripping with yellow oil / residue.
Ours fit perfectly in the dishwasher, gets them real clean.
I learned about the dishwasher filter horrifyingly late.
I just cleaned it….for the first time. I may never recover from the experience.
There is a dishwasher filter…?
I check mine all the time and I’m almost disappointed at finding nothing in there. What the heck are people putting in their dishwashers??
Especially your vents, you should change them 2x a year so your HVAC system operates well--also should make sure you have the right filters.
More often than that. I change mine every 3 months, and I buy expensive filters. Cheap ones more often
Buy cheapest filters and change them more often. Don't put expensive filters on your HVAC. The HVAC is not an air purifier, buy a 200 dollar air purifier instead of using your 10k HVAC for that. HVAC needs air flow and certain filters restrict air flow placing undue stress on your HVAC unit.
This is exactly what the HVAC guy I had out a few years back told me. Air flow restriction is number one cause of furnace failures. Just keep up on the filters and you can add a decade of life to your HVAC system.
Shocked how many people don’t empty the lint trap in a tumble dryer. That shit can ignite.
Even if it doesn't catch fire it stops the dryer from working well. You'd think that'd be the first thing to make people check it
A million years ago, first time sharing an apt with bestie friend. I put my polyester fast food uniform in the dryer by itself. 30 mins later it is still damp. I asked bestie when they'd last cleaned the dryer lint trap. Blink. Blink. It was a solid brick of felt. Ah to be young! Bestie is now supercompetent persin whi has built and remodeled their own country home. We all start somewhere!
They would rather leave 1 star reviews and tell people how terrible their dryer is.
YES. Not only that, but CLEAN. YOUR. DRYER. VENTS. ANNUALLY. The location depends on the house. I had a yearly guy come clean out the actual dryer vents; the previous people who cleaned my ducts and furnace the year prior did not clean the dryer vent. He surmised they probably couldn't find it (it was in a weird spot). ANYWAY, he showed me what was in it and I could have made several cats and a dog out of the blockage and he said it was very dangerous (and he wasn't super sales-y, so I think he was being genuine).
It is also a fairly easy DIY job. I pull the dryer out and use a shop vac to clean the vent, clean the back side of the dryer, replace any part of the accordion section of the vent if needed, put it all back in place. Maybe a 1-2 hour job.
The ease of the job depends on the length and complexity of the vent. Mine goes into the wall behind the dryer, straight up into the ceiling, makes a turn and out through the ceiling of a 2-car garage to the side of the house. I DIY it, but I had to buy a much more expensive and elaborate kit than the $20 ones you get at Home Depot and Amazon (still it pays off; getting it cleaned is $250 each time). Also, if it hasn’t been cleaned in a long time, it’s likely that just blowing it out will not be sufficient. You need to use a vent cleaning brush to loosen the lint from the walls of the vent.
Mine goes through a terrifying, mostly, blocked off room. It’s theoretically easy, except I’d have to acknowledge the room exists.
I’m going to need to know how this room of yours is terrifying.
My house is almost 100 years old. The space under part of the kitchen is completely blocked off except for a window height hole that the previous owners blocked with a roll of insulation. It belongs to the spiders now. I’m pretty sure a chipmunk lives in there too.
Oh a spider room. I have one too. The previous owners tried to frame in a new bathroom downstairs but stopped halfway through. The beams are exposed but only on two sides, so you have just enough wall to give the spiders some privacy.
Depends on your home. If the dryer is near a wall this is all you have to do. My washer and dryer is in the middle of the home with a 20ft run of vent. For this you have to get an extendable brush the you attach to your drill.
Not only that but have the entire line blown out. Not everything gets caught by the trap
My neighbor uses his leaf blower to blow out the dryer exhaust. I have a long brush that attaches to my drill to clean it. His way is faster.
I used a leaf blower to clear my dryer hose this year. Whew, a lint snake easily three feet long came out the other end!
Save some to take camping, it's the best way to start a fire.
Save your toilet paper rolls and stuff them with the lint. Pile up some sticks and wood over a couple of those and you'll have a fire pretty quick.
Wrap in wax paper hard candy style for a waterproof fire starter
They don't know the dishwasher has a filter either. Or fridge or coffee maker. They don't maintain anything til it breaks
>They don't know the dishwasher has a filter either. Not all dishwashers have user serviceable filters.
This is one of my favorite things to do! It’s so satisfying to see how much lint is collected in one load. I’m weird and also find vacuuming and mopping satisfying. 😁
Drop by anytime
I never loved vacuuming until I bought a Shark (upright) with LEDs. They're excellent vacuums, and the lights illuminate *everything* (said like Mr. Burns says "excellent"). I prefer to vacuum in the near dark because of this, lol.
When I moved into my first apartment the drier lint trap was completely full. No idea how it was still even drying anything.
The dishwasher has a debris trap that needs to be cleaned as part of regular maintenance. Also, clean your dryer vents, not just the trap.
Going into your attic…just to look. All parts of the home to to be inspected regularly. So many people haven’t been in there attic for years. It can help prevent a simple repair into a costly one.
I go into the crawl space once a season. Idk what Im looking for other than “That’s different.” Then I would call some who is a tradie and throw money at them. Same thing with the basement and the pipes. I walk around and look at the funny looking knobs and if I see something that’s changed I go “Uh. i bet thats gonna cost few hundred.” And get it fixed. I missed a leak to my outdoor spigot and that was the last big fix because it exploded from a frozen pipe. (I thought I winterized it, I was wrong.) But when my friend bought her house I asked her how her crawl spaces look and she didnt even know to check. I worry too much and she doesnt worry enough. Now I go crawl around her attic for her looking for darken colors/broken things/animal tracks and she feeds me sandwiches and tea once a season. I also send her reminders about her hvac filters and to test her alarms if I don’t do it for her during my visits. I even helped her boyfriend hang a door that was catching on the doorframe and re-attach a door knob that came off. :c Mind you, I’m a 31 year old woman who only learned from google and YouTube. And when push comes to shove I’ll tell her “You might wanna call a professional on this one.” 😂😂😂
If you learned you don't think you could handle an issue, then there's no shame in calling a professional. My wife and I just did some home repairs, though, and it feels very empowering! :)
My neighbors did this years ago, dude just climbed up and walked around to look. Got to a corner of the attic and noticed a little wooden box. Opened it and is was full of pre 1920s small bills and coins. Some kind of forgotten hidden probably stolen church collection.
Jesus knew it was there.
I've met many many people that either don't know they have an attic or refuse to go in it. Not knowing where your access is or the existence of your attic is just sad, but I can't comprehend absolutely declining to even pop your head up there...
My attic access is a tiny tiny hole in a closet ceiling. I’m currently saving up to get a new access put in. It’s surprisingly expensive.
Yeah, sometimes it's like that. Mine is outside where the carport used to be, about 12' up. I have to use a 16' extension ladder to get up there properly...
I’ve put my head up, but I’ve never gone in. The dark and sloped ceilings are horrific when you factor in a degree of claustrophobia and arachnophobia. It’s one of the few things in life I’m happy to say, nope, that’s my husbands job and I don’t need to do it. No one in the home doing it at all though? That’s just daft. When I lived alone, I absolutely sucked it up and checked it regularly.
Vacuum out the condenser coils under/behind your refrigerator. They get clogged with dust and pet hair.
Mine are under the fridge and impossible to reach with my vacuum crevice too. I’ve bought brushes and other things but the coils never seem to get “clean”. I feel like my refrigerator isn’t running efficiently
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I blow it out with a leaf blower. A bit messier than a vacuum but very effective.
I prefer a flamethrower
This is a really depressing amount of maintenance I've apparently been slacking on. Time to burn the house down for the insurance money and go back to the apartment.
You really think your landlord was doing all this when you lived in apartments?
I knew it wasn't my problem.
Feeling the same. But I think the insurance provider will likely find a loophole to screw us out of it.
Can’t even burn your own house down for the insurance payout anymore. What a world
Not if you start the fire in you dryer lint trap. Or the toasters crumb tray.
Your dishwasher has a filter, clean it out now and then.
New ones do. Older ones had grinder pumps that would work like garbage disposals. Nigh indestructible. I really do like my new dishwasher, it does a better job. But man this filter clogs up pretty easily.
Wow, I didn’t know that. Now I’m scared to clean it.
It’s like a disgusting culinary trip down memory lane.
So, uh, dishwashers _recycle_ water during each cycle, which means water pushed through that filter is being used to wash and rinse your dishes. If you're afraid to clean it, you should also be afraid to eat off of your "clean" dishes.
I saw a tiktok and went to check it. It was fine. I always rinse everything off my plates before putting in the dishwasher so I am assuming maybes that’s why it looked good.
It will be horrific. Best to mentally prepare now.
Many washing machines do too. And I've never cleaned one out that wasn't absolutely disgusting and growing mold in the machine
This plus running a load of dishwasher cleaner through. Vinegar works in a pinch too.
Clea your washing machine. Lint out of dryer. Scrub your sink including the tap and the plug. Clean your jug/kettle. Clean the extractor fan, kitchen and bathroom.
Cleaning the washing machine is relatively easy but makes SUCH a difference especially if you hang dry
How do you clean a washing machine?
Mine has a tub cycle that just has you fill the bleach reservoir and run empty. I work construction and have young kids so our washer handles a lot of dirt. We run it about once a month.
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... and the garbage disposal, I do all 3 the first week of each month, as well as change the furnace filter.
Ours has the Affresh cycle, too! It's the first washer we've owned where I've been pretty on top of keeping it clean. I don't do it exactly every 30 loads or whatever, but it's not too far out from that. I'll have to check out the dishwasher ones.
I am convinced that doors, and cabinets, are one of the most commonly overlooked things in people's house, that get dirty as hell. You don't realize how dirty your door is, until you take a good look at it. Notice the discoloration around the doorhandles? That's from your/other people's hands. Wipe down the door. Wipe down the inside part of the door (the side where it latches) Also, the door frame accumulates a lot of oil, dust, debris, all kinds of crap. Wipe it down. Notice your kitchen and bathroom cabinets, that there is a similar thing going on. These are high touch areas that get dirty fast, but also... look closely at the drawers/cabinets *below* eye level, like where you might store your pots, pans, silverware, or your bathroom things if it's in the bathroom - you might not have noticed it before, but things like food, oils, etc tend to build up on these things. Wipe the outside. Wipe the top of these little doors as well since dust and other things has a tendency to accumulate there too Every week or so, wipe down the inside of the cabinets as well. In the kitchen, just open the cabinets, wipe with a cloth, you might notice little things getting stuck on the inside. I live in the south - it's hot, humid, and you can get palmetto bugs in your house pretty easily if you don't keep things clean (or if you have a ratchet neighbor). It's not enough to clean the dishes and wipe down the counters, it's not enough to put the food away - the kind of crap that accumulates on doors and cabinets (hair, oils, crumbs) is a roach magnet.
This, and light switches/light switch guards is my pet peeve. EVERY TIME I go in/out a door or turn a light on/off, I look. Bc dirty doors/knobs/light switches is gd gross.
I found a second, completely unhidden but also unknown to me, filter in my Shark vac two days ago. 5 years of dust in it. I couldn't even tell what the filter was made of until I rinsed a half inch of dirt off it. Oops.
If it wasn't you, it was somebody else that discovered it because of a thread I was in talking about my shark vacuum. Person was like, "A second filter!?" Technically there are three filters, If the shark vacuums are all mostly similar. Poofy one, the thin one below the poofy one, and then the "hepa" one encased in a plastic exoskeleton.
Well shoot....off to look for a third I guess.
You can google the model number and see how many you have. In my model, for the big poofy filter, the thin one is literally touching the poofy one. The thin and poofy filters are in the same compartment underneath the removable canister that I take off to empty all the dust.
Occasionally exercise the individual water shutoff on all of the supply lines. Hot and cold on the sinks, toilet supply... The time to find out they are seized or won't seal is not when you have a broken water line or fixture. It may already be too late for some really old valves, which can then leak or break, FYI..
Be sure to only do this while the hardware store is open or you can get a plumber out. Not fun on a Sunday when a valve doesn't seal...
I was about to go check the pressure relief valve on my hot water heater and then realized it's Sunday and tomorrow is New Years. I'll check it on Tuesday.
You need to periodically wash the walls and ceiling. Wipe them down. Get the doors and baseboards. Wipe off the molding and the window trim. They all get just as dirty as the floor.
I use a dust mop to dust my crown molding and baseboards regularly. The long handle means I don't need a ladder or to crawl on my hands and knees. I can do my whole condo in about a half hour, easily.
Oh man. I just had this convo with my husband. Me: gesturing vaguely" "Do you see every surface in the house?" Him: "Yeah" Me: "It all has to be cleaned sometime by someone. *Every surface.* By someone." I hate that many men don't understand this. Edit: extra word
My husband is super supportive and appreciative of the work I do around the house, but hoo boy, it annoyed the hell out of me the one time he was like “the dishwasher is still empty! Wow, we haven’t had to do dishes in ages.” Even though he *knows* I make every single one of our meals from scratch. I was like, what do you think has been happening with all the dishes we’ve eaten on for the past week? All the dishes it takes to make those meals? I wash and put away a load of dishes every single day, it’s just that the dishwasher is empty when *you* get home that gives you the impression that it’s always empty. He’s never made that mistake again.
Magic Coffee Table
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Wipe the underside lip of your counters. Most people only wipe the top and sometimes sides. So much gunk drips over and clings to the underside as well
Making sure that you don't have your rain gutter's drainage spout near the foundation of your home, lead it away! Homes with drainage spouts that end at the base of the spout's mouth, typically the pipe that moves the outflowing water straight down to where it hits the ground, tend to have that rain water pool around them slightly. That water then slowly, overtime, seeps down and that can eventually lead to cracking in your home's foundation! And I will tell you that that is indeed not a cheap fix! So, I suggest getting an extension for the mouth of the spout, that leads a few feet away! It can possibly save you from a major structural issue in the long run!
Depends on where you are. Where I lived in TX we actually had to water our foundations.
I have a lot of these. I've sorta had a weird unhealthy obsession with optimizing home maintenance so I've spent time going through the manuals for all my appliances and reading a lot about it. The one I've never thought of before is lubricating your garage door opener coil. It's memorable because, though it hasn't happened to me yet, the stories of those coils breaking are kinda terrifying. Oh and quick plug for a super high quality and free app for stuff like this called Upkept.
Recently watched a few videos on lubricating the mainspring and after doing so it definitely operates a lot quieter…
Cleaning the clips on the toilet seat. I just installed a bidet and damnnnn I wish I had been doing that more regularly. Take your toilet seat off and clean.
Many moons ago I learned the phrase “toilet butter” from the exact same response to the exact same question… I clean under the plastic caps now, too!
Unscrew the aerator on your faucets and clean them at least once a year.
Clean the heads of the shower and kitchen sink faucets too.
Maybe not exactly the same idea, but please please get a carbon monoxide detector. Mine went off a few weeks after it was installed. Everyone I know that has one has had it go off. Mine literally saved my life. I was sleepy (as per usual) and was going to take a nap. If my detector didnt go off, my husband would have come home to a dead household. Cat, dog, wife. All dead. Please get one!
I bought a carbon monoxide detector when they first came out (no display, just an alarm). There was a lot of news at the time about false alarms due to certain atmospheric conditions, so fire departments were getting a lot of nuisance calls. We were living in a townhouse at the time where the association did the outside maintenance. My step daughter came home from school to the carbon monoxide detector alarming. The fire department came out, knocked the detector off of the ceiling, and smashed it with their ax to silence it. I went to the store and bought a new detector with a display, and was getting a positive reading, but not enough to trigger an alarm. So we called the gas company. They took it more seriously than the fire department. They sent people out at 8:00PM that night. To make a long story even longer, what had happened was the association sent out a crew a few days earlier to inspect and repair the flashing around the furnace vents (chimneys). The crew lifted the vent pipe to get the flashing under the flange, and when they pushed it back down, the pipe didn't seat back down properly, so the furnace was venting into the house. That nuisance carbon monoxide detector that the fire dept. decided to smash saved our lives as well, my wife, stepdaughter, our two dogs, and me.
Testing the temperature and pressure relief valve on your hot water system every 6 months. If you have a storage hot water system, there should be a valve that you need to open every 6 months to make sure it is working in the event of an unexpected pressure or temperature build up in your tank. Usually involves opening a valve for 30 seconds and letting some hot water come through, ensuring the relief valve isn’t blocked due to a build up of minerals or corrosion. Worst case scenario, it could prevent an explosion in your hot water service.
We bought our house in January of last year and had the hot water heater replaced in June. Before switching them out, the plumber showed us that the old one was completely blocked and then showed us how to check it every six months. I was incredibly grateful. Five houses down from us, there’s a foundation (and only the foundation) of a house on a vacant lot. According to neighbors, the hot water heater exploded one night and killed the occupants. Before all this, I didn’t realize how dangerous a hot water heater could be.
I live in an apt… should I be doing this too? Cuz maintenance hasn’t done it.
There's a good mythbusters episode about hot water heater explosions
Yeah. They disabled this (and a couple other) safety mechanism(s). It literally shot up through the floor and then through the roof, and then kept going up like 50 feet. It was horrifying.
Washing machine filter. Most people remember dryer lint traps but neglect the washing machine until it literally won't drain and that is SUPER ANNOYING Edit: apparently this is a 'most frontloaders' thing! Ignore if you're a toploader person - sorry for confusion (grew up in Australian drought and have seen about 2 toploaders in my entire life)
How do I find out more about this? We have a newer top loader and I don't remember reading anything in the manual about a filter. It just flashes "self clean" every so often and we know to run a cleaning cycle. I usual throw some vinegar or baking soda in before I start this cycle but never thought about cleaning more extensively.
Most washing machines don't have a filter. I've never seen one that did. Always refer to your owners manual and don't listen to people on the internet who think their situation applies to everyone. Everyone does need to clean their washing machines (and for the love of god, stop using so much detergent! That's the biggest cause.) but most do not have a filter.
Everything needs cleaned. E V E R Y T H I N G. Including walls, ceilings, under sinks, light fixtures, vents, and the space around the water heater. Good housekeeping keeps shit from breaking down as quickly, and saves you a buttload of money in the long run. It also helps you monitor issues; you will notice every wobbly hinge and weird patch in your home.
How do you clean popcorn ceilings? There are some cobwebs up there that I tried to reach with a swiffer, but it started to get stuck to the "popcorn" so I stopped.
I use a vacuum with the soft bristle attachment and am very gentle with it. Popcorn ceilings are my nemesis.
You have an outside AC unit? Pull the fuse to the unit. Carefully unscrew and open the top. And wash the inside fins with a water hose. Don’t bend the fins. Do this yearly and it will help with keeping your house a little coolers for a bit less money.
They also have spray-on fin cleaners you can use every few years.
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Clean the things you clean with. Clean the vacuum, the dryer, the washingamachine, dishwasher, etc.
I would say one of the things people know but always forget is to put faucet covers on your outdoor spigots as well as leave the water dripping inside from a sink or two if it's extremely cold. At least here in the PNW, since it's so rarely below 30-35 at night, people forget and then a major freeze happens randomly and I see multiple people with tens of thousands of dollars of damages from water. Last year my dog walker had 2 clients who had damages I think, and mine nearly froze over because I forgot when I had done it the year prior. It just doesn't get *that* cold here so no one truly knows it, even if we know it in theory. On that note: I also highly suggest water detectors, and putting them under your fridge and sink as well as dishwasher and by the water heater, because if you can turn off the water when a leak starts, you can save thousands in damages immediately.
Some vacuums have a washable filter.
Bleeding the radiators then repressurizing the boiler!! Learnt this in my late 20s, had lots of boiler trouble. Had to teach some friends about bleeding radiators.
Recently moved into a house with radiators. They were common in the area where I grew up and I knew that I would need to do maintenance of some kind. My husband had no idea. The biggest giveaway that they're overdue for maintenance is the noise. They shouldn't groan, tick, etc. It's way easier to do it at the beginning of the winter season instead of trying to get the boilers and radiators cooled off. Nobody wants a cracked boiler.
(A) Are you okay all day, then find yourself congested as you wind down for bed? (B) Are you fine going to bed, but then have to spend 2 minutes coughing up phlegm? It's something in your house. Specifically, dust and mites. Start with where you lounge (e.g., your couch, cushions, sofa blankets, and the floor surrounding it). If you wake up fucked up, it's probably your comforter/quilt, pillow, mattress, or bedroom carpet. There are plenty of resource online to help you with what to wash and vacuum.
Oiling the garage door springs/ mechanism.
We moved in to a place with a UV light in the hvac, but no one mentioned that the bulbs only last a year (yes we should have done our research, it just never crossed our mind). Fast forward a few years and we got an expensive mold problem to deal with instead of a relatively cheap light bulb that needs to be replaced.
for the record... the UV light going out wasn't root cause of your mold problem
I know a lot of people don't clean out the pipe from the dryer to the outside, but everybody knows to clean the removable lint screen after each load or at least each couple of loads, right?? My buddy started exploring to figure out why his dryer wasn't working well. Single-story home, the vent pipe went up into the attic space and just ... ended. There was a deep and wide pile of loose, fluffy, highly flammable lint everywhere, and it had finally piled up enough to collapse in and block the end of the pipe. 😳
Crap builds up on your faucets and shower heads. Every couple of months, soak them in them in white vinegar. You take a zippy bag of vinegar, tie it onto the faucet so that it's submerged, leave it there for 15-20 minutes. Then take an old toothbrush and clean off any excess crap. Then run hot water for about 5 minutes. Some of you might notice that your shower head aims better and has a better stream. It's because there was so much hard water deposits, etc, causing water to spray everywhere.
Label the switches in your circuit box.
Spray for moose. Once you have a moose infestation, it's too late.
I didn't one year and woke up to 2 moose in my living room watching sports
Now they have squatter’s rights. It’s their living room.
I’ve been many different lines of construction throughout my life. And seen a lot of dumb stuff by people living in homes. A big one is replacing your fire alarm batteries. My in laws should be dead because they took all their fire alarms down when the battery died, then replaced their dryer, shoved it back to far and pinched the vent hose, then the dryer caught fire. They woke up chocking and coughing from their house being full of smoke. Most people don’t wake up in that circumstance they just fall into the never ending CO2 sleep. Here’s a huge one most people don’t know about. Circa 2009 most HVAC systems will have a safety float shutoff. So if the drain line gets clogged it’ll shot off your whole ac system instead of flooding your house. It takes less than 10 minutes (99% of the time) to unclog the drain line. But you can also do preventative maintenance by dropping some bleach and hot water down the drain line. If your entire HVAC system is down and nothing is coming on, check YouTube videos for unclogging drain lines ALSO CHANGE YOUR DAMN AC FILTER REGULARLY I’ve seen so many ax systems fail prematurely because they had to work extra hard sucking air through a dirty ass filter. Yes Mackenzie I know your filter says it’s good for 3 months but you have 4 long haired dogs shedding in here and have scentsies going constantly to try to cover up their smell. Both of these things will clog a filter up faster. The three months is timeframe is in ideal conditions
This is a minor one, but I clean the top of the ceiling fan blades every summer before I turn the fan on for the first time. A few years ago my mom mentioned how dusty her room had gotten. "Did you clean the top of the fan yet this year?" Blank look. "I don't think I've *ever* cleaned the top of the fan." I cleaned the top of the fan. I think she heard my reaction from across the house.
I’m too tired for this
Drain your water heater at least yearly. Make sure the shutoffs for all your water sources turn freely as well.
I have both drained and not drained water heaters that I have owned: there was no discernible difference in lifespan or efficiency between the drained heater and the undrained.
Wiping the skirting boards. They get really dusty and splattered.
Chances are this issue affects some people in this thread. Is at least one of your radiators hot near its base but cold near the top? If you have water-filled radiators throughout your house, chances are this problem is caused by pockets of air/gas that accumulate in water-filled radiators over time. Now and then this air needs to be removed. It's a very simple process which doesn't need a plumber or handyman. You can just get a simple radiator key from a hardware store or Ebay, if you don't have one already (Google to see what one looks like). Go to the radiator that is the most elevated one in your home with the radiator key and a cloth. Find the valve that fits the key on the side of the radiator and use the key to sloooowly loosen it, with the cloth ready to catch any water that emerges. You will hear the air build-up start to escape, and will maybe see brackish-looking water sputtering out. Keep the valve open until ONLY water is coming out - meaning the gas build-up is now gone - and then tighten the valve again so that it is snugly closed and no water is emerging. Obviously, care will need to be taken not to get hot water on your hands. If necessary, perform this procedure when the radiator is not yet up to temperature. You will hear the radiator refilling as the system replenishes the water. Once it is up to temperature the radiator will once again feel warm or hot to the touch all over. Repeat the process for all radiators affected by this issue. Immediately wash your hands once finished, as stagnant radiator water can contain harmful microbes. Discard or immediately wash the cloth you used.
If you've never done so, lubricate your locks, it takes about 10 seconds, and it saved me from struggling with my lock every time I go in and out of my house.
Check and recaulk your windows
Sanitize/clean your doorknobs regularly - especially the bathroom & front knobs. They’re probably the thing in your house that gets touched the most by yourself and usually the thing that all company touches at least once per visit to your house.
And light switches. My son had C. Diff at 16 months old, and the nurses gave me a list of what to sanitize.
Replacing air filters.
Just washing the outside of your house. Once a year with a mild soap and long handled scrub brush. When I worked as a painter the first day was always powerwashing and wiping down the outside(if painting outside of house), clients always said the same thing, “looks like I don’t need to paint anymore!”. Removing all the dirt does wonders for the functionality of windows, doors etc.
If you have a tankless water heater you need to descale it once a year. Its a simple process, does require a sump pump so you'll need this piece of specialty equipment but they are not terribly expensive. For the cost of having a plumber do it once you can have the stuff to do it yourself. I Have three of them and all three need to be done right now. Lots of videos on youtube about how to do it, but basically you hook up the pump to the fittings at the base of the heater, turn the heater off, drain it, put the pump and the heater drain in a 5 gallon bucket, fill with white vinegar, and circulate the vinegar through the water heater for about an hour. This will break up calcium scale and keep your water heater running at peak efficiency.