How to Track Household Maintenance with Maple
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Staying on top of all the household to-dos and maintenance can feel like a full-time job. Household maintenance tasks are always at the bottom of my “things I WANT to deal with” list and often that means they get forgotten or pushed aside. But we all know maintenance is important to the health of our households. Staying on top of the various checks and to-dos can prevent safety issues AND save a lot of money in the long run. Here’s how I use the Maple App to help our family stay on top of household maintenance:
Keep All Your Maintenance Info in One Place
If you’re like me, you probably have an old manilla folder somewhere that’s overflowing with documents, instruction manuals, and some hand-scratched notes. Maple helps you get rid of all that mess and organize important information in one place. Start by creating a “Household Maintenance” topic. Within the topic, you can house all of your tasks, reminders, notes and information. Add members of your household to the topic so that you can collaborate on everything below.
Create a Long Lens To-Do List
The first thing to build out is your checklist of to-dos. This can be everything from weekly activities to once a year tasks. Take some time to think through all of those boring tasks that often get overlooked, adding as many as you can remember. Of course, you can always add to this later! I like to break my to-do list down into the following sub-sections, but you can organize however works best for your household:
Monthly / Regular Maintenance
Winter
Spring
Summer
Fall
Add to Calendar and Set Reminders
Once all these items have been added to my checklist, I go through and make sure they are set to repeat based on the appropriate time of year. For example, I know that every month we need to replace our air filter, so there is a reminder set monthly on the same date to do that. To prep for winter each year we winterize our pipes and put a cover on the outdoor fixtures so I have that reminder set to repeat annually in mid-November… of course the “when” is dependent upon where you live, but that’s just another example of how to set this up so you don’t have to constantly keep track. You’ll get the reminders you need when the time comes each year to manage these tasks.
Use Notes to Replace Binders and Business Cards
One of the newest features in the Maple app is Notes - I LOVE this new feature because I can use notes to house all the extra information I need easy access to under different topics. In my “Household Maintenance” topic I’ve created 3 important notes:
Maintenance List - This is a copy of my overall annual checklist for household maintenance. It’s a bit longer and contains additional detail around certain topics, such as cleaning the kitchen exhaust hood.
Service Technicians - This note contains a list of all our service technicians and companies we use or have used for maintenance on our home. This includes our plumber, HVAC service, electrician, landscaper, pest control, etc. and their contact information so it’s all saved in one space and easy to find. I used to have a stack of business cards and old invoices shoved in a folder… no longer!
Appliance information - This note lists our appliances and corresponding information to each item so we can keep track and have easy access to each appliance in our home. I try to note the appliance, Brand/Model/Serial #, where we purchased, Warranty information, Service or Company phone number, etc. Having this list helps tremendously if you ever need service work or a replacement on an appliance in your home. You can also use this to include things like electronics - TV’s, Computers, etc.
While household maintenance can feel like a big drain on your time and energy, organizing all of these necessary lists and notes up front can save a ton of time and mental space later. Get started using Maple to organize home projects here.