What the house needs in December, south of the equator
12 jobs, in five groups.
December is high summer and a month with more going on in the house than in it, so keep the list short and useful. Test the smoke alarms, which takes two minutes and is the most valuable thing here. Rinse the dust off the solar panels from the ground with a hose rather than a pressure washer. Paint an inside room or deep clean the carpets if you have the days, because the windows can stay open and everything dries by evening. Wash the curtains. Clean the barbecue and check the gas hose before the season proper. Oil the garage door track and test the safety stop. Outside, look for a wasp nest in the roof space while it is still small, and wash the bins out in weather that dries them in an hour.
Safety
- Test every smoke alarm
- Press the button on each one until it sounds. It takes two minutes and it is the single most useful thing on this list.
- Look in the roof space for a wasp nest
- Early in the summer, while a nest is still small and quiet. A nest found in June is a small job and one found in September is not.
- Oil the garage door track and test the safety stop
- Twice a year. Put something solid in the way and check the door stops and reverses, then oil the track and the rollers.
Inside
- Run a hot empty cycle in the washing machine
- Quarterly, at the hottest setting with a machine cleaner or a cup of soda crystals. It is what stops the door seal smelling.
- Wash the curtains and the blinds
- In the warm months, when they will dry the same day and the windows can stay open while they are down.
- Deep clean the carpets
- In the season the windows can stay open all day, because a carpet that dries slowly smells worse than it did before.
- Paint an inside room while the windows can stay open
- Warm dry weather with the windows open is the difference between a room that smells of paint for a day and one that smells for a fortnight.
Outside
- Touch up the outside paintwork
- In dry settled weather with a few dry days behind you and a few ahead. Bare wood left over a winter costs far more than a tin of paint.
- Wash the bins out
- In the warm months, when it matters and when they dry in an hour. A rinse and a splash of disinfectant is enough.
- Clean the barbecue and check the gas hose
- Before the first one of the year. Perished hose and a corroded regulator are what turn a barbecue into a news item.
- Clean the decking and oil it again
- Wash it, let it dry for two or three days, then oil it. Decking left bare goes grey and then splinters, and neither can be undone.
- Rinse the dust off the solar panels
- Twice in the dry season, with a hose from the ground and never a pressure washer. Dust costs a few per cent and is free to remove.
Tick them off as you go
This page is the plain list for December. The same list is tickable onthe house through the year, where the ticks are kept on your own device and cleared at the start of each year. Nothing is sent anywhere.
The garden half of the month is on the almanac page forDecember, which covers what to sow, what to plant out and what is ready to pick.