What the house needs in January, north of the equator
11 jobs, in five groups.
January is the month the house is under the most strain and the month you can do least about it from outside. Everything is about heat, damp and the two working against each other: the heating is on, the windows are shut, and four people breathe out a couple of litres of water a night with nowhere for it to go. The jobs that matter now are indoor ones. Air the house for ten minutes a day even when it feels wrong, watch the cold corners behind wardrobes and in window reveals for the first black spotting, and keep the dryer lint clear because this is the month it runs hardest. Outside, the useful work is the shed work: cleaning and sharpening the tools while nothing needs them. If a hard frost is forecast, the outside tap and the exposed pipes are the two things worth checking tonight rather than tomorrow.
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.
- Check the extinguisher gauge and the fire blanket
- The needle should sit in the green. Make sure the blanket is still where it was and not behind something.
- Walk the escape route and find the window keys
- Everyone in the house should know the way out and where the keys are kept. Do it once a year and tell the children.
- Clear the lint from the dryer and its vent
- Every few weeks in the months you use it most. Lint is what turns a dryer fault into a fire, and the vent matters as much as the filter.
Water and heating
- Descale the kettle and the shower head
- Quarterly in a hard water area, less often in a soft one. A furred shower head sprays sideways long before it stops working.
Inside
- Watch the cold corners for condensation
- Behind wardrobes, in window reveals, on the north or south facing wall. Black spotting is mould and it starts as water on the glass.
- Air the house for a few minutes a day
- Even in the cold. Ten minutes of open windows costs very little heat and takes out the moisture four people breathe out overnight.
- Clean the oven properly
- Do it in the season you use it most, which is when the spills happen. Cold oven, proper cleaner, an hour of waiting.
The garden edge
- Clean, sharpen and oil the garden tools
- In the quiet months. A sharp spade is half the work of a blunt one and rust starts in the week they go away dirty.
- Clean the feeders and keep them filled
- Through the hard months, when it matters most. Clean them properly each time, because a dirty feeder spreads disease among the birds it feeds.
- Keep a hole open in the pond ice
- Stand a pan of hot water on it rather than breaking it, which sends a shock wave through the water that fish do not survive well.
Tick them off as you go
This page is the plain list for January. 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 forJanuary, which covers what to sow, what to plant out and what is ready to pick.