Might seem a little strange for me to be publishing a winter-related post — but did you know that the Southern Hemisphere includes most of South America, one-third of Africa, all of Antarctica, a small sliver of Asia (and parts of Indonesia) and all of Australia and New Zealand – experience their winter months when we here in the States are experiencing spring and summer?
You may think that wintertime is the season when you don’t need to worry about maintaining your home. After all, when the weather’s terrible, there is little you can do about peeling paint on the front porch or a BBQ grill that needs cleaning. It sounds like a great excuse to snuggle up under a blanket with a hot beverage, doesn’t it? However, there are some other home care tasks that you can do during the wintertime. Especially if you want to be ready to go once the better weather begins to arrive. Read on to find out what they are.
Test of your smoke detectors
Winter is a great time to work on issues inside the home. One of the most important of these is making sure that your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are working right. In fact, these things could literally save you and your family’s lives!
That means it’s a good idea to test them, replace batteries where necessary, and even give them a vacuum too. The reason being that dust and fluff can affect how well they work, as well as cause them to chirrup, something that can be annoying in the extreme!
Service your AC
Another smart task to get done during the wintertime is serving your AC units. The reason being that if you get this done in cold weather, you will be fully prepared when the day does start to warm up.
Of course, it’s always best to get a professional like the ones at Metro Express Service to come and perform this task for you. After all, ACs are complicated machines. Therefore messing with them is only likely to cost you more money in the long run, as well as prevent them from working correctly.
Budget
While not strictly a home maintenance task, taking a good look at your budget and making adjustments where necessary, is an excellent job to do during the winter. In fact, if possible, use this time to get an overview of your spending across the entire year. Something that it is much easier to do is you use an app that tracks your outgoings and then displays them on a dashboard visually.
Of course, as well as looking back over the last year, the winter is a good time to estimate your finances for the coming year as well. Something that should include what you expect your outgoing costs to be, as well as what you want to save and invest.
Cleaning
Traditionally, the most significant, deepest clean happens in springtime. However, there really is no reason why you can get yours done earlier than this if you so choose. To get the best home clean in winter you will need to pay attention to snow removal first, clear your paths and eaves of snow and ice and check your pipes aren’t frozen, this is the best time of year to set things up for your spring clean.
In fact, when it comes to pulling out pieces of furniture and appliances to clean behind them, you can really do this at any time of the year you like. Just be sure to look out for dust and food debris and clean up as much of this as possible. Otherwise, such nooks and crannies could become the perfect breeding ground for pests and microbes once the better weather does start to hit.
In fact, when it comes to pulling out pieces of furniture and appliances to clean behind them, you can really do this at any time of the year you like. Just be sure to look out for dust and food debris and clean up as much of this as possible. Otherwise, such nooks and crannies could become the perfect breeding ground for pests and microbes once the better weather does start to hit.
