Let’s be honest here, the reason most of us do not put enough effort into maintaining our homes it that it can just feel like too much hard work. If you’re like me, you will have a handy list of excuses for not getting these jobs done. You may claim to just not have the time, or that you are just no good at DIY stuff. I used these types of excuses for years, as my home that was once so beautiful began to fall apart around me.
In the end, I needed to hand over a huge lump of my savings to get in the professionals, but this acted as a wakeup call. I soon found out that keeping on top of maintenance problems does not have to take up too much time, and even my clumsy fingers are good enough for most jobs.
Why Bother with Home Maintenance?
I think most of us fall into the trap of looking upon home maintenance as an unfair demand on our time. After all, we work hard all week and we come home to relax and put our feet up. It is this type of reasoning that can get us into trouble because doing these jobs is going to ultimately benefit us, so it is in our own interest to do them. Here are some of the good reasons for why you should bother with home maintenance:
- If you want to get the most out of your home, you will need to keep it well maintained. It can be annoying to have cupboards hanging off their hinges and things that don’t work in the house. This steady stream of irritation can be a source of stress in your life, and you do not need it.
- The irony is that it will usually be much faster to fix these problems than to ignore them. People can go to extreme measures to live with things that are broken when it would have been much easier to just to fix them.
- These neglected home maintenance issues will be reducing the value of your house. This means that when you go to sell you could end up losing a small fortune over things that could have been easily and cheaply fixed.
- If you leave these problems to fester, you might end up having to hand over a large sum of money to get everything fixed by the professionals – this is what happened in my case. It would have cost me next to nothing to stay on top of things if I’d just taken the time over the years to fix the small jobs as they happened.
- It is important to keep in mind that little problems tend to turn into big problems if you leave them to fester. It makes far more sense to deal with these things when they are still small problems.
- There can actually be a great deal of satisfaction to be had by getting these jobs done – a real sense of achievement and pride.
- By doing these jobs, you get to live in a nicer home with things around you that are functional.
Home Maintenance Tips for Lazy People
There is no need for you to turn into some type of DIY nut in order to stay on top of home maintenance. You should have no problem doing what needs to be done and still have plenty of time to unwind after a day’s work. Here are just a few home maintenance tips that will turn even lazy people into proud house owners:
- The key thing to home maintenance is to stay on top of things. The mistake that many of us make is to allow the problems to mount up, so that eventually we feel completely overwhelmed by the number of tasks that need to be done. If we fix jobs as they happen, they will never reach the stage of keeping us awake at night.
- If you have allowed things to slide then it is a good idea to create a list of all the jobs that need to be done around the house. You then want to prioritise this list by putting the easiest job first. Over the next few weeks, you can begin working your way through the list, but it is important that you only focus on one job at a time. Do not even think about all the work you need to do – just keep focusing on the current task. If new maintenance tasks come up you can just them to the bottom of the list. You do not need to set yourself any strict time limit.
- I’ve found it helpful to dedicate an hour of my weekend to home maintenance tasks. This is only a tiny chunk of the weekend, and so it is an easy commitment to make. Some weeks I end up going a bit over the hour and some weeks I do a bit less – it doesn’t matter so long as I keep to the spirit of the commitment.
- It is not necessary to become any type of DIY expert but it does help to learn some of this stuff. The internet makes this really easy, and I’ve actually grown to enjoy learning this stuff. You will find plenty of great DIY articles on this website, and you may also find it useful to join some type of online forum for home maintenance enthusiasts. They great benefit of this is that you can get quick and direct responses to your questions.
- I would suggest that you purchase a small tool kit that you can use for fixing things around the home. You probably do not need to buy anything too expensive, but you might also be best to avoid the really cheap stuff. Hopefully these tools will be of use to you for the rest of your life, so they are a good investment. One of the most common excuses that we will have for ignoring home maintenance is that we just don’t have the tools, so by buying your own set you will no longer have this excuse to fall back on.
- Some home maintenance tasks need to be done on a regular basis. I would suggest that you use some type of reminder system so that you don’t forget. This can be easily done using computer software or a task management app on your mobile device.
- Try not to rush through jobs. If you come at them with the right attitude, your efforts will be rewarded. It really does lead to a great deal of pleasure to know that you have done a job well.
