How Home Maintenance Promotes Well-being

There’s no better feeling than waking up to a clean and well-maintained home. When your space is devoid of clutter, it’s easier to focus and be productive. In contrast, when your home is cluttered with dirty clothes splayed across the floor, your appliances are breaking down and grime is stuck to the kitchen counter, it’s not good for your mental health.

For this reason, keeping a consistent home maintenance checklist is a must. When you’re diligent about maintaining and improving your home, you create a peaceful living space while potentially increasing the value of your property.

The Benefits of DIY Home Maintenance

It’s no secret that a cluttered home can lead to an anxious mind. Research even suggests that clutter can lead to a decrease in life satisfaction among adults. It only then makes sense that a well-maintained home can lead to a happier life. Additionally, other benefits from regular home maintenance include:

• Enhanced home safety: By cleaning your appliances regularly, you can prevent potential disasters. For example, when you clean your dryer, you could reduce the potential of all-too-common dryer fires. 
• Increase home value: When you maintain your home’s curb appeal, it can increase the value of your house. This is particularly helpful if you’re thinking about selling your home or opening it up as an Airbnb so you can travel.
• Reduced energy consumption: When you seal and weather-strip your home, you could save money and energy on cooling and heating costs. 

Monthly Home Maintenance

Now that we’ve gone over the benefits of home maintenance, it’s time we addressed how to go about doing so. Keeping a maintenance checklist is a must. Not only does it help you keep track of your progress, but it also just feels satisfying to check accomplishments off on a list. You can do most of the activities below on a monthly basis to keep your house up to date.

1. Clean the Garbage Disposal

To prevent the growth of harmful bacteria and mold, cleaning your disposal is a must. Pour a mix of baking soda, vinegar and orange peels down the drain and turn on your disposal. This will clean the appliance while making your kitchen smell like citrus. 

2. Unclog Your Bathtub and Sink

To prevent water pooling in the shower and the sink, make sure to unclog each drain. If you’re having trouble unclogging something, try pouring boiling water down the drain to dissolve any stubborn gunk stuck inside. 

3. Clean dusty surfaces

It’s all too common that tables, windows, blinds and other surfaces gather dust. Dusting these surfaces can remove allergens so you’re not feeling congested first thing in the morning. To effectively dust, try not to use feather dusters. Instead, use water to dampen a surface, then wipe it down with a microfiber cloth.

4. Vacuum your dryer duct 

It’s no secret that dryers are a potential fire hazard. To prevent possible disaster, regularly vacuum and use a vent brush to clean your dryer duct. 

5. Replace HVAC filters

Regularly cleaning or replacing your HVAC filter is necessary to maintain a healthy level of air quality. Additionally, when your filter needs to be replaced but you fail to do so, your unit unnecessarily works harder and your electricity bill goes up. That said, you’ll want to replace your HVAC filter approximately every 90 days.

Since maintenance can take time, you may want to schedule your cleaning sessions in advance. Plan to clean on a day off, rather than tackling these projects after work. So long as you’re sprucing everything up about once a month, your living space will be in good condition and your mind can be at peace.

Monthly Maintenance Printable

To help you keep track of monthly maintenance tasks, use our printable checklist here. When you put your tasks in a bulleted list and check things off as you complete them, it keeps you organized and on top of things.

Daily Maintenance

While there are some cleaning tasks you only have to do once a month, some chores are better to be tackled on a daily basis. For example, washing the dishes and decluttering your room are useful daily activities that can make you feel better about your space.

Keeping a Positive Attitude

When you’re engaging in home repair and improvement activities, try not to treat it like a chore. Cleaning and organizing your household can be fun and therapeutic when you come at things with the right attitude. For example, a study published in the journal Mindfulness found that mindfully washing dishes could result in feelings of inspiration while decreasing stress. 

There are some easy ways to make your cleaning routine more enjoyable. For example, you could listen to an interesting podcast or audiobook while you dust the house or call an old friend and catch up while you do the dishes. 

Conclusion

Your home is a representation of your own mental state. If your appliances are breaking down and there’s clutter everywhere, chances are you’re not going to feel as good as you would if you were living in a well-maintained house. To this end, you’ll want to stick to a monthly home maintenance checklist while keeping your house clean and clutter-free on a daily basis. 

That said, don’t overwhelm yourself or feel like you need to do everything at once. If you don’t feel like you have the time to replace every appliance and polish every surface all in one day, just take things one step at a time. Maybe you replace your HVAC filter one day and vacuum your dryer duct the next. So long as you’re consistent, your home will be looking better and you will be feeling better in no time.