Plot the downfall of the bourgeoisie.
Wash their sheets and pillow cases. Also vacuum. Dust mites are not healthy to have around.
My robot vacuum gets triggered any time I leave the house. Go out for dinner? Go to work? Grab coffee? Come back to a vacuumed house.
I know it’s better than nothing, but the reason I haven’t bothered to get one is that the vacuum guy on Reddit made me a solid believer in German bagged vacuums like Sebo. Almost everything else is exhausting dust everywhere it goes.
Exercise their water valves. Crawl under the kitchen sink and the bathroom sink, reach around behind the toilet, find the hot and cold valves behind the washing machine. Especially if you live in a hard water area as I do, in Southern California. I have it on my calendar to do it twice a year. If I don’t, the valves will eventually become calcified and ossified and worthless. I say this based on hard experience.
I bought a house last year and had to fix my washing machine immediately. When I went to turn off the water the valves themselves started to leak. I had to turn off the water to the whole house to replace the valves. What would have been a simple, quick, fix ended up as.an entire day’s project.
Wash the sheets
Check the air pressure in your tires. Seems like nobody does this these days.
Don’t most cars do that for you now? Mine does.
You should still check, as the tpms may only warn you when it gets too low but generally driving even just a couple psi off can have a big effect on fuel economy and tire life.
Clean the touchable surfaces on your devices and device keyboards.
Blow out the dryer duct.
Clean the lint trap on your dryer.
I know it sounds like something everyone already does, but when I moved into my house I found the lint buildup astronomical. The previous owners had hung a clothesline in there because I’m guessing the dryer didn’t work well.
Is it DIY? This sounds like one of the things I’d rather hire a professional for.
Depends how long it’s been. If it’s not too bad, it takes 5 minutes if you have a leaf blower.
But if it’s been 20 years… https://youtu.be/-ukqhzvljvI?si=Bso65IJtZhlRKvbJ
Wow. Nasty! We had ours professionally done less than a year ago and I’m pretty sure it was expensive, so maybe I’ll look into DIY next time.
As someone with a German shepherd, vacuum the carpets. You can never get that pet hair out enough, and just when you think you’re done there’s more! I can feel it pleasing my sinuses every time I vacuum
Not technically a chore, but a chore preventer: Close the lid before flushing the toilet.
I run an Airbnb hosting in a room on my house for like 3 years and I’m still amazed by how little people actually did it. Even after we sat a signal asking for it just above the flush button. Having feces particles all around your brushes, toothbrushes, towels, etc is an image nobody has but myself it seems.
This was disproved on mysthbusters
Damn Myth Busters!!!
Change your air filters regularly
Don’t know for other people but I should definitely clean my windows more often. I think I’ll do that today.
Clean under/behind appliances.
Ugh even that big ass fridge and stove?
Especially the fridge, mine was so clogged with dust under it I think improved it’s efficiency by 50% in 2 minutes with the vacuum cleaner
Flush your water heater once a year.
I know that I’m guilty of not doing this regularly, my dad, a former pipeftter and practically a living parody of the responsible homeowner dad who drove us all crazy with preventative maintenance routines doesn’t even do it regularly.
But it’s really not hard, I’m not going to write a guide here because if you just punch “how to flush a water heater” into your search engine of choice you’ll get plenty of good results.
It’ll improve the lifespan and efficiency of your water heater and decrease how much sediment and such you have in your hot water.
Also when you get a new water heater, replace the shitty plastic valve they all seem to ship with these days with a proper brass valve, it’s like a $10 part from home Depot and takes about a minute to swap them out. They probably use them because they know no one actually flushes their water heater anyway, but if you’re one of the few of us who do, you know how sketchy the plastic ones are, if you touch them more than about 2 or 3 times you feel like you’re going to break them.
How truly necessary it is will depend a lot on the quality of your water, if you have good, clean, soft water, it may not make a noticeable difference, if you have harder, dirtier water it might buy you a couple extra years with your water heater, and if your water quality is especially bad you may want to do it a couple of times a year. It takes a little bit for the tank to drain, fill back up and get to temperature, but it’s less than 10 minutes of actual hands-on work, and you can go do whatever the hell you want in the meantime as long as it doesn’t involve hot water.
You should also check and may need to replace the anode rod every few years, that can also increase the lifespan of your water heater. You’re probably going to need a beefy impact wrench though, they often really don’t like to come free.
I bought a house that was used as an office before getting remodeled and sold to to me. When I drained the hot water tank brown slime came out, it looked like a ribbon of brown mushroom. Gotta assume this was bacteria byproduct built up while the tank ran at low heat and saw little water use. I added bleach to sanitize while refilling it and drained.
Yes, power drills can clean bathtubs and toilets. Just use different brushes.
Checking on your neighbors.
I think that’s a really good point. Of course it’s easier said than done, and any particular neighborhood environment could make it difficult to accomplish. I live in suburban Southern California. Our neighborhood is near the beach, about 150 years old. We have condo boxes, old post-WWII flats, ranch style houses, apartments, AirBnBs. I’m retired, loquacious, and I keep an eye out. I’ve met most of my neighbors, know them by name, and I try to stay out of their hair. I even say hello to the AirBnB peeps. We have an older lady next door, kind of a shut in. Never saw her outside. One day I left a note in her mailbox, introducing myself and my wife. Told her we were always around, and if she needed a hand once in a while (as we all do), we’d be able to help. She got back to me and was very grateful and happy I dropped the note. You never know, you might make someone’s day or even save their life.
