Home Maintenance Schedule: Monthly, Seasonal, Yearly

Before you start: a word on safety and intervals

How often a job is needed depends on your home, the equipment you have and where you live. For each appliance or system, check the manufacturer's guidance, the manual or the advice of the person who services it, and use that as the interval in your schedule.

Anything involving gas, electrics, the roof or working at height is a job for a qualified professional. In this schedule, those items mean “book someone”, not “do it yourself”.

Monthly checks

Small, quick checks you can do while walking round the home:

• Test smoke and carbon monoxide alarms with the test button
• Look under sinks and around the washing machine and dishwasher for drips or damp
• Glance at the boiler or heating system for warning lights or unusual pressure readings, as described in its manual
• Check that extractor fans in the kitchen and bathroom still pull air
• Run water in rarely used taps and showers
• Look over the fuse box or consumer unit for anything that has tripped (call an electrician if something keeps tripping)

Seasonal jobs: before winter

Most households do a round of checks before the heating comes on:

• Book the boiler or heating service if it's due
• Bleed radiators if they're cold at the top (follow the manual, or ask whoever services your heating)
• Clear leaves from gutters and drains where you can reach them safely from the ground; anything higher is a job for a professional
• Check window and door seals for draughts
• Protect outside taps and pipes from frost
• Have the chimney swept before the first fire, if you use one
• Check that torches and spare batteries are where you expect them

Seasonal jobs: before summer

• Check the air conditioning or fans; clean or replace their filters as the manufacturer suggests
• Look at the outside of the house after winter: gutters, fences, paths, any loose tiles you can see from the ground (report anything on the roof to a professional rather than climbing up)
• Check and refresh the sealant around the bath, shower and sinks if it's cracked or mouldy
• Clean window and door tracks so they slide freely
• Service the lawnmower and garden tools before you need them

Spring is also when many people declutter and air the home; that's covered in our spring cleaning checklist.

Yearly jobs

• Boiler or heating service by a qualified engineer
• Chimney check, if you have one
• Electrical safety check when your electrician or local rules suggest it
• Check the home insurance renewal date and what it covers
• Look over the loft or attic for damp, pests or leaks
• Replace smoke alarm batteries if your alarms use them, and check the alarm's own replacement date on its label
• Check the water heater as its manual describes, or book a service

Filters deserve a quick mention: water, extractor hood and air conditioning filters each have their own rhythm. A repeating errand with stock tracking keeps them on schedule (see below).

Set the schedule up as repeating errands

A maintenance plan in a spreadsheet or on the fridge works until nobody looks at it. In Family Errands, each job can be an errand that repeats on its own schedule and reminds you on the day.

1. Create one errand per job

   Add a new errand in the calendar — “Test smoke alarms”, “Book boiler service”, “Clear gutters” — and pick the date.

2. Choose how it repeats

   Monthly, yearly, or every N months: every 3 months, every 6 months, whatever the manufacturer's guidance suggests for that job.

3. Pick a date that suits you

   Monthly errands can fall on a fixed date, on the last day of the month, or on a given weekday of the month, such as the first Saturday.

4. Keep yearly jobs off the weekend

   For monthly and yearly errands you can exclude inconvenient days: if the boiler service reminder lands on a weekend, it moves to the nearest earlier or later day that suits you, when it's easier to phone and book.

5. Add a reminder ahead of time

   For an all-day errand, set a reminder several days before at a chosen hour, so there's time to book an engineer.

6. Put the steps inside

   A seasonal round like “Before winter” can be one errand with checklist items, ticked off one by one.

If a month gets busy, skip one occurrence without touching the rest of the chain. To change a job later, choose whether the change applies to just this occurrence, to this and the following ones, or to all of them.

Small tricks that help

• A seasonal template. Write your “Before winter” list once as a note with a checklist. Each autumn, create an errand from the note; the note stays for next year.
• Calls you put off. For “Phone the heating engineer”, give it a time and make the reminder repeat every 15, 30 or 60 minutes until you mark the errand complete.
• Repairs without a date. “Fix the dripping tap” doesn't need a deadline. Create it without a date: it's shown every day until it's done.
• Filters and spares. Make the filter change a repeating errand and switch on stock tracking and the low-stock reminder: each completion lowers the remaining amount, and the app reminds you when only a few spares are left.
• See what's open. In the calendar, an orange dot under a date means something is still open that day; a grey dot means everything for that day is dealt with.

Share the schedule at home

If you share the home with a partner or family, share each maintenance errand with them by tapping their avatars. Everyone it's shared with sees it, edits it and sets their own reminder time. If you can't be in when the engineer comes, whoever can simply opens the shared errand: everyone sees the same date. Everyday cleaning jobs are in the household chores list; if you've just moved, see moving into a new house checklist for the first weeks.

Questions