Houseday

I'm house proud, meaning I'm proud of having worked hard enough to put myself into the position to buy some and also proud of the house I live in - It's my home and I have put a lot of time and money into creating a place in which I feel comfortable.

It can be a pain in the ass at times though, there's always something to do... and it seems always too little time to do it.

On Sunday I dedicated the day to doing house stuff; I'm not talking about cleaning and tidying, I mean general maintenance and preventative maintenance - jobs that seem always to mount up but often get pushed aside due to lack of sufficient time. Admittedly, some of it requires the right weather, climbing on my roof for instance, but if I'm honest with myself, and I always am, I have consciously ignored some of these things because a lack of time a lack of motivation to do those things when I have the time. I had to cowboy up and rectify that on Sunday though as we're coming into winter and a couple of the jobs are essential to prepare for it.

I started with a prioritised list to ensure the most important things were done first and that meant I was up on my roof cleaning gutters straight after an early breakfast; the weather was perfect for it, sunny, blue skies and 20°C in temperature.

For the record, I fucken hate cleaning gutters and getting on roofs, I fell off mine (cleaning gutters) back in 2021 and wrote a post about it - laughable now but not at the time - and getting up there is something I really don't prefer to do. Dirt, moss and leaves build up in gutters and if they're not cleaned rainfall can build up and overflow. Gutters are designed to overflow outwards during high rainfall but if they are too full of detritus they can run the water back into the roof cavity and that's big trouble. So, I clean my gutters two to three times a year...and hate every minute of the three hours it takes me.

While I was on the roof I checked the roof tiles for cracks, two required replacing, and next was the clean up around the house, the stuff that came out of the gutters, and then I moved on to the next task which was checking the integrity of the silicone seals in the gutters and around gutter downpipes; a couple had deteriorated a little so I removed and replaced the silicone and job done.

I lifted all the storm drain grates in my driveways and along the front of my garages and cleaned them next. These capture water that falls on the concrete and prevents it from entering the garage by running it away and down to the storm water system on the street. They're sort of like roof gutters but set down flush into the concrete of driveways so cars can drive right over them. After cleaning up from that it was lunch time but I pushed on with a small job of changing my garden hoses over on my hose reels front and back as the hoses tend to go hard with the harsh Australian sun over time, they crack and kink. New hoses on and working and now it was time for lunch.

After lunch I treated all my internal and external drains to a clean using special chemicals to remove any build up in there which can restrict flow and cause unpleasant smells and I also replaced the water-filter canister under the kitchen sink as it had developed a tiny leak which, if left unattended had the potential to moisten and ruin kitchen cupboards, or leak profusely causing even more damage. I changed the filter over at the same time, a bi-annual job.

From there it was up another ladder to remove and clean the reverse-cycle air conditioning return-filter in the ceiling and while that was drying out in the sun I cleaned all the ceiling air conditioning ducts/vents - it's amazing how much dust and fluff those bastards accumulate. While in filter-mode I also changed the filter in the rangehood over the stove, something I do twice a year.

I changed a dodgy lock/latch on my side gate, cleaned and serviced all my remote control garage doors (I don't like spiders so sprayed them with a long-term poison too)...and then stopped for coffee and a sugarless chocolate brownie.

It was pushing into the later afternoon by now and I had a few more things to go like removing and cleaning my window fly-screens, cleaning the windows inside and out and...hang on, that's it, list complete!

It was a full day, 18:00h by the time I was done, and I was tired at the end of it but I was satisfied with what I'd gotten done.

Maintenance on a house never ends, certainly not if one wants to keep their house in top-notch shape and avoid potential problems; it's much easier, and cheaper, to apply preventative maintenance than waiting for things to fuck up. It wasn't a bad day, at least I didn't fall off the roof again, and I felt good having completed my list...although there's new list waiting to be made for another weekend in the near future.

Do you take the time to maintain your house or do you wait for things to go wrong and fix them then? What chores around your house do you hate the most, gutter cleaning perhaps, snow shoveling/ploughing, painting? What skills have you had to learn to better care for your house and which would you like to learn moving forward? Feel free to comment if you would like.