Keeping Up with Maintenance throughout Your Home

Maintaining a home can be much more difficult than one may think. Although the task seems simple enough, constant maintenance can get a little tricky. There is a myriad of tasks involved including: repairs to fix various problems and malfunctions that can sometimes lead to full-on construction or remodeling may need to come into play. Most importantly, you don’t want your home to get to the point that you are constantly repairing different features throughout the house. A key factor, then, is: regular service to your home and everything inside of it. It seems reasonable enough to keep up with your home through small chores every so often, rather than waiting long periods of time that would result in bigger and more expensive projects in order to fix a neglected area. Proper maintenance and upkeep throughout the house include areas like wood, roofing, various building components, landscape, electrical items and nearly every appliance in your home. Maintenance can involve an immense amount of upkeep and constant work throughout the home; therefore, it can be broken down into a few categories including: routine, corrective, preventive, cosmetic, and deferred types of maintenance. It is instrumental to know the property inside and out, so that you are aware of what type of maintenance a house needs and in what specific areas. Preventive and ongoing maintenance to rental properties requires a thorough knowledge of the property, its needs for upkeep, staffing required to accomplish the tasks and budgeting to accomplish them. A simple yet thorough checklist would help serve your daily or weekly routine of upkeep. For example, your checklist should include most of the following tasks in order for efficient and proper maintenance: cleaning of common areas; landscape maintenance; regular service to heating and air conditioning systems; periodic inspection of plumbing and electrical items; or proper upkeep of wood, roofing & other building components. Although it seems like a lot of tasks to do and chores to stay on top of, the big picture is that you are managing these tasks over a long period of time. As opposed to one that fails to keep up with maintenance around the house in which, at that point, would have much bigger and more expensive problems ahead of them. Maintenance is a very broad term when it comes to dealing with your own home. Let’s break it down into a few categories to tighten any loose ends and to fill in any blanks you might have. Some key areas of maintenance include: deferred, cosmetic, corrective, routine, and preventive. Deferred maintenance is referring to those properties that do not necessarily have available funds to make instrumental repairs to the home. Therefore, you’re the amount and type of maintenance must adjust to those standards. Cosmetic maintenance is basically intense touch-ups. It can include hanging new lights, putting on a fresh coat of paint, and overall adding more attractive fixtures throughout the home to give it a cozy atmosphere. Corrective maintenance refers to fixing problems that may occur throughout the house. However, this type of maintenance could be avoided with proper preventive maintenance. The problem that most people have with preventive maintenance is that it’s very easily neglected. An example of this could be simply changing an air filter or inspecting any features throughout the house carefully. Routine Maintenance is simply the cleaning of the home. Whether your routine is daily, weekly, or monthly, this maintenance is pretty simple and shows to be the one with the least concern. However, don’t become too lenient on any type of maintenance or you may fall behind before you know it. Maintenance for a rental property is extremely important. This involves preventive and ongoing maintenance throughout all areas of the house including repairs, construction, and even remodeling. No matter what type of maintenance it is, whether it is corrective, routine, deferred or cosmetic, the common goal is to simply not neglect any area of the home. Maintenance is needed in all areas throughout the home; however, it is the type of upkeep that varies.