Sometimes it feels like life is so chaotic. And we struggle to get our arms around the details moving and flowing in our life. When it comes to our homes and overall home management we get bogged down with all the details necessary to keep our home running smoothly. Wouldn’t it be nice to get the management of our homes organized so that life can run a little easier? These three tips are sure to make it easier for you.
Create a Home Maintenance Schedule
Instead of waiting for your equipment and appliances to break or not function, get in the habit of creating a schedule of the tasks you need to take care of home’s equipment. For instance, changing your air filters every 3 to 4 months helps keep your air quality clean. Not to mention, your heating and air conditioning units functioning and spreading good air in your home. Cleaning your stove hoods keeps your home safe because the grease build up has been washed away. Grease is one of the top areas of fire. A clean stove and hood reduce the risk of fire. These are just a few of the types of home maintenance that is good practice to maintain a healthy and efficient home.
Creating a home maintenance schedule can also help you manage your cash and your time. Our homes are one of the biggest expenses we have. To know exactly when you will need funds to pay for your window and carpet cleaning can help manage your cash flow throughout the year. Knowing what your anticipated costs for the following year will also help you budget against other financial needs like school clothes or vacations.
A home maintenance schedule can also help you manage the costs associated with hiring contractors to perform jobs that you may not feel comfortable performing. Jobs like climbing a ladder to clean out gutters. Some folks have a fear of heights and roofs are not the place to be if you have a fear of heights.
Some tasks do not cost dollars, but they do require your time. And understanding when you can take care of these tasks is important to managing your family time. Hiring a professional may cost you more money, but you get back precious time to have fun.
Keep Household Documents in a Central Location
Many of us have our household documents spread out all over our home. Real estate documents in one file cabinet, receipts of our items in another file cabinet, and business cards of all our contractors in a junk drawer. We may also have ripped out pieces of magazine paper in a file for all the potential design projects when it’s time for a change, and any bills or contractor documents that show all that has been done to our homes for tax purposes when we are ready to sell our homes. So, finding all that we need, when we need it is harder than we thought when our papers are spread all over the place.
Keeping documents in one central location makes life so much easier. If you choose a physical location in your home, pick one spot and move all the documents to this spot for easy access. This will also help if anyone else in the family like a spouse needs to access the documents when you are not around. If you choose an online solution, look for password protected sights that can house documents for everything in your home like owner’s manuals, photos, warranty cards, contractor business cards, receipts, mortgage documents, appraisals, and more. An online solution can also help you manage other family member documents that may not live near you but you need to be aware of the details should something happen to those family members.
Managing the Items at Home
Have you ever been to the store and you could not remember if you had a specific item in your home? Like that new cheese grater that you just had to have! But you realize when you get home that you have four other cheese graters. Yikes! Now this is wasted money, wasted time if you have run back to the store and return it. And too many redundant items in your home that leave little room for other fun kitchen gadgets.
If you take the time to document all the items in your home by taking photos and tracking the details of all these things, you can avoid the over spending of what you already own. You can also understand the details of the items if you happen to be at work and away from your home. This is important when you need to make that call to fix the faucet because it broke and you are stuck at work.
Details of the contents of your home can help in case an emergency presents itself like a burglary or flooding from a broken toilet. These itemized details will be ready when you need to make a claim to your insurance company. There is nothing worse than forgetting all the items you had in the home when they are no longer around to view them because those thieves just needed them all whole lot more than you did.
Whether you perform your own home inventory or hire for the job, documenting the things you own can really help you in those cases you never thought of.
Finally Organized
These simple tips can make life a whole lot easier by getting organized now. This can be a great fun project to also include kids. Watch them walk around with your mobile phone taking photos of all you own.
