With my husband’s decline into dementia, I was not prepared for all the home maintenance balls he had dropped along the way.
A couple of weeks ago our power went off. Our typical response to an outage is to wait 30 minutes for the storm to pass, and then fire up the generator. The generator was my husband’s pride and joy, along with the snowblower. When I suggested starting the generator, he informed me that it hadn’t worked for over 2 years, and probably needed servicing. He is a procrastinator, but not usually with his favorite toys.
I read a couple articles about routine home maintenance items; some of the articles included checklists. From those articles, I created my own home maintenance checklist based on what I know about the house. I sorted it by month, so I wouldn’t freak out by the length of the list. I’ve also asked some of the single women homeowners I know what they do and when. I have it all in my OneNote notebook called “Home Maintenance”, where I can reference it, and add to it.
As I wrote yesterday, my allergies are a mess. I called the heating people, and ordered three furnace air filters to be delivered in 1-3 days. They showed up on my steps 4 hours later. Last night after supper, we installed the new filter. The old filter was the dirtiest thing I’ve ever seen and hadn’t been changed since last fall when we had the ducts cleaned. I made a note to change the filter every 6 months.
I also vacuumed out the window A/C upstairs. It was in better shape, but still needed some attention. I added a note in my list to clean the window A/C in August, and to clean it when it is installed in May. I was on a roll. And this morning, my throat is no longer sore and my lungs are clearer. A win for me and my allergies.
I still haven’t had the generator serviced (I’m a procrastinator too), but my to-do list today includes a call to the small machine shop to make an appointment. I will also make an appointment to get the snowblower tuned up. It’s two months before we could have snow. Might as well prepare now.
I think we are all guilty of having ‘his’ and ‘her’ jobs but we really all should learn what to do, when to do it and who to call if something goes wrong. So pleased to hear that some of the work carried out has had a positive impact on your allergy response. Hope you are feeling much better.