Our home maintenance checklist has been well and truly ticked this year.
When you have a plan, a pandemic and restrictions (which seem to change quite quickly) it’s not hard to look for things around the home that need to be fixed, cleaned, decluttered and painted.
Here’s what got done over the last 3 months.
Home Maintenance July and August
July and early August are birthday months in our household, so not a lot got done as money was spent on celebrating.
There was a date night to the Gold Coast and a week later the news announced the hotel we stayed at was to become a quarantine hotel.
Amongst the birthdays, we also had school holidays.
Dad had finished painting our house in July and in August he was adding the finishing touches like cleaning the outside of our gutters and windows.
One morning while I was working and dad was outside, I heard an almighty bang near the garage which sounded like something or someone had fallen.
I went to lift the garage door to see what had happened. The door wouldn’t move, which I thought was strange as we had only paid to get the motor replaced back in March.
So I raced through the front door to see dad was still on the ladder. He had heard the loud noise too and said to check the spring on our garage door.
And on inspection, after 15 years, the spring had snapped – hence why the almighty noise in the garage. It’s normal for the spring to sound like an explosion when it does snap. It certainly got me out of my seat!
It was an unexpected expense… but hopefully one we won’t need to pay again for many more years.
If this year has taught me anything, it’s to expect the unexpected.
By mid August, all of us were sick with sniffles, colds and coughs. I got laryngitis and lost my voice for a week which meant I couldn’t work.
All of us got tested for COVID, and the results came back negative for us all. I think it took us a good month to get fully better with multiple days off work and school to get over whatever virus we had caught.
Home Maintenance September
September seemed to be the month that went the quickest for us.
We had planned a week away to Mermaid Beach, which I wasn’t sure if we’d have to cancel at the last minute due to new COVID cases in QLD. But it went ahead and now that holiday seems like a distant memory!
September was decluttering month. We went through the garage, rearranged our pantry and sorted the kids clothes.
The roof was also pressure cleaned as it always shows the dirt. It needed to match the newly painted exterior of the house.
We also put the finishing touches to our kids’ playroom. I finally got my Hayley Will’s prints framed locally, to hang up on the wall.
The kid’s room is now an updated space and doesn’t look like the kindy room it used to be. Of course it will evolve as the kids get older.
Our backyard gardens got a trim too and we have Yucca cuttings for days!
I don’t think there is much left to do on our home maintenance checklist. We still need to organise our electrician to do a few jobs around the house. I always create a list of jobs so they can all be done in the one call out.
The gardens also need an update and we’ve got to get the veggie garden ready for summer produce.
There’s always something to do around the house isn’t there?!
Other posts in the Home Maintenance Series
