What the house needs in January, south of the equator
13 jobs, in four groups.
January is high summer and the month for the jobs that want open windows and a hot dry day. Paint an inside room now, deep clean the carpets while they will dry by evening, wash the curtains and the blinds, and wash the light fittings while the light is good. Change the washers on any dripping tap, because in the dry summer months water is the thing worth not wasting. Look at the sealant round the bath and the shower and cut it out if it is black or lifting. Defrost the freezer in the month you have least in it. Outside, cut the growth back off the aerial and the dish while you can see what is new, and keep the bins washed out, which is a five minute job in weather that dries them in an hour. January is midsummer, with more than fourteen hours of daylight in Cape Town and Sydney and about thirteen and a half in Johannesburg. On the Highveld the afternoon storms and the hail are the weather to plan around; in the Western Cape it is the dry wind and the fire risk on the mountainsides; in south eastern Australia the bushfire season is at its height.
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.
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.
- Change the washers on the dripping taps
- Change the washers in January or February. A steady drip wastes a great deal of water over a year, which matters wherever there are water restrictions, and it is one of the simpler plumbing jobs.
Inside
- Wash the curtains and the blinds
- In December or January, when they dry in an afternoon and the windows can stay open while they are down.
- Look at the sealant round the bath and the shower
- Look at it in January or February. Black or lifting sealant means water is getting behind it, and replacing it takes an afternoon while repairing the floor underneath takes much longer.
- Defrost the freezer
- In January, when the freezer is often at its emptiest after the holidays. A thick layer of ice makes the motor run longer to hold the same cold.
- Deep clean the carpets
- In December or January, when the windows can stay open all day and a cleaned carpet dries quickly. A carpet that stays damp for long can smell worse afterwards than before.
- Wash the light fittings and the lampshades
- Once a year in January, in the long light evenings, when the dust shows and you can work without the lights on.
- Paint an inside room while the windows can stay open
- Paint an inside room between December and February, when the windows can stay open and the paint dries quickly. A room painted with the windows shut can smell of paint for a fortnight.
Outside
- Wash the bins out
- Still due this month. See November for how.
- Cut the growth back off the aerial and the dish
- Cut back anything growing towards the aerial or the dish in January or February, in the growing season, when the new growth is easy to see.
Tick them off as you go
This page is the plain list for January. The same list is tickable on the 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 for January, which covers what to sow, what to plant out and what is ready to pick.