Although I’ve been an adult for quite a while now, I sometimes still find myself wishing for an instruction manual. There are so many things that a responsible adult should be remembering to do: flossing, oil changes, descaling your coffee pot, and so many more.

If you’re lucky (and I am!) you learn to do many of these things from your parents, but what about the things your parents never did that you’re supposed to do?! Like have your dryer vents cleaned? Never once did my parents have this done nor mention it to me. But in adulthood I learned that it’s part of regular house maintenance. And that not doing it is a fire hazard to boot. What else don’t I know about?

So this has inspired me to collect “how to adult” advice to share with you, and to see what you have to add to the list. I’ll start with home care and in a future post I’ll share personal care.

I really love caring for the homes we own, and investing in home maintenance is on my mind this year after spending the summer sprucing up our house in Eau Claire. As much as possible, Chris and I try to take a preventative maintenance approach. We’d rather spend the money now to maintain something, rather than waiting for it to break and suddenly be force to spend more money. Even so, as I made this list below, and queried the internet for ideas, I came across things we aren’t doing regularly that we probably should. These are the things that I wish some friendly automated service would remind about!

I have a Google spreadsheet where I try to always capture home maintenance and the cost. Putting this list together makes me want to add a tab to that with a list of everything we should be doing to make sure we stay on track.

Your own list of home care tasks will depend on your home and where you live, but do share even if they don’t apply to me as they likely will to someone else. Plus, I find regional and national differences fascinating! Here’s what’s on our list…

Regular Home Care We Do or Should Be Doing:

+ Change air conditioner filters. How often you change the filters depends on the filters you buy and your air quality. I’ve felt conflicted in the past about buying the more expensive air filters and changing them less often versus the cheap ones and changing more often (that’s my Dad’s advice). And a/c professional told me that the more expensive filters are often thicker and so harder for the air to flow through and he recommended the cheaper ones also. Currently we buy the cheaper filters and change ours every 2-3 months. What do you do?

+ Descale the coffee pot. We have a coffee pot that reminds us to do this, but if your doesn’t I see it recommended to do this every 1-3 months. Advice and how-tos for this abound on the internet if you need guidance.

+ Sharpen knives. I found a mobile knife sharpener who came to our house last year. He sharpened all of our knives, kitchen scissors, and our handheld garden shears. It took less than half an hour and was so affordable. I want to say it was less than $50! And our knives cut sooooo much better. He recommended getting this done every 18 months to two years, depending on how often you use your knives. Home sharpening is also an option, but I loved getting this done professionally and so well. (*Later addition to the post because it popped into my mind.*)

+ Annual air conditioner check. One of my fears is that our a/c will go out in the middle of the summer. Every year I always know someone who this happens to! It’s sounds incredibly disruptive, uncomfortable, and expensive. To avoid the situation, we have an a/c professional come and check out our system (air conditioner and furnace) in the spring before our a/c gets heavy use. The important thing here is to find someone very honest because the less honest ones will recommend all kinds of maintenance and upgrades.

+ Vacuum refrigerator coils. This is something we don’t do! But I see it listed as recommended home maintenance and I found this helpful how-do video. I just sent this to Chris so hopefully we’ll be taking care of this soon.

+ Clean windows and window screens. We’ve had this done a total of…one time since living here, eeep! We should do it much more often, at least annual probably. It’s so dusty here and it makes a difference. Because it seems mostly aesthetic and not directly tied to critical maintenance we obviously put this off, but we shouldn’t!

+ Maintain outdoor furniture and wash outdoor cushion covers. We are due to wash out outdoor cushion covers, and Chris would like to refinish the wood furniture he built (six years ago already!).

+ Window/door sealing and weather stripping. We had this done recently for our studio and should check our home doors. I think we need new weather stripping on our front door especially.

+ Exterior pressure wash. We can’t have our stucco house pressure washed because it might cause damage, but our studio would benefit from this. We should have this done this year!

+ Clean exterior dryer vent. There’s the lint trap in your dryer that you should clean before each use, but then there is also a dryer vent that needs to be cleaned every one to 3–5 years. The dryer vent is the exterior vent that vents your dryer air, and lint that your trap doesn’t catch, to the outside. This can build up with lint! If it’s clogged and the hot air can’t get out, and that’s a fire hazard.

+ Check and replace smoke detector batteries and smoke detectors as needed. Is there anything more annoying than the ominous “beep!” of a smoke detector at 2 a.m.? We’ve had the experience more than once, but no more because we stay ahead of changing our smoke detector batteries. Smoke detectors come in many varieties. At our house here in Arizona, we need to change the batteries every one to two years and the smoke detectors themselves every ten years. At our house in Eau Claire, the entire smoke detector/battery combo is good for five years. We have such high ceilings in our Arizona home that we hire someone to come and change all batteries or smoke detectors at once. We just had this done this past spring.

+ Check and maintain fire extinguishers. We keep fire extinguishers handy in the kitchen pantry and in our bedroom closet. These last for many years but should be checked every year (there’s a little dial that indicates if it’s ready to use).

+ Exterior house paint. We had the exterior of our house painted this spring and we needed it. It had been nine years since we last painted, and the sun and heat really takes a toll on stucco house exteriors. Our painter told us that exterior paint helps to seal our stucco walls from the elements. In the future we’ll try to do this before the nine year mark.

+ Roof check. Here in the Phoenix area, we have concrete tile roofs. Their lifespan is about 20-30 years and we are within that range with our home (built in 2002). We see a lot of people in our neighborhood getting new roofs so we know we’ll have to get one eventually too. It will likely cost between $15,000 and $20,000 uggghhh. Two years ago we had our roof checked, thinking we’d be told we needed a new one. We were delighted to hear that some maintenance was recommended but that we should have at least five more years with our roof.

What else would you add? What am I forgetting?

Happy home maintenance!