What the house needs in January, south of the equator
13 jobs, in five 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.
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
- A tap dripping once a second is thousands of litres a year. It is one of the few plumbing jobs that is genuinely simple.
Inside
- 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.
- Look at the sealant round the bath and the shower
- Black or lifting sealant is water getting behind it. Cutting it out and doing it again is a Saturday, and the floor below is not.
- Defrost the freezer
- Once a year, in the month you have least in it. Every centimetre of ice makes the motor run longer for the same cold.
- 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.
- Wash the light fittings and the lampshades
- Once a year in the light months, when you can see the dust and can work without the lights on.
- 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
- 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.
- Cut the growth back off the aerial and the dish
- A branch across a dish is a picture that fails in bad weather only. Do it in the growing season when you can see what is new.
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.