Home Maintenance for Disaster Preparedness

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When most people think about preparedness, they probably only worry about avoiding natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, flash floods, or tsunamis. But if you’re a homeowner, another part of being prepared includes engaging in routine maintenance around your home to avoid unexpected emergencies like bug infestations, crumbling foundations, burst pipes, and overflowing gutters. 

In truth, property owners are always encouraged to follow seasonal maintenance guidelines, and it’s the best way forward with home maintenance for disaster preparedness. This allows you to catch small issues before they become major problems. More importantly, preventative scheduled maintenance calls are always going to be cheaper than emergency repairs. Should you have flossed daily so your teeth wouldn’t need to be surgically removed from your head? Seems easy to say yes, but do you floss your teeth every day? Same rules apply for all those little things around the house: little stuff adds up, so it’s good to keep your home in good condition to avoid big surprises. The guidelines below can help you protect your most expensive investment — your home.

Do your big home maintenance projects on your wedding day, whenever possible.
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If you’re a renter, hound your landlord to perform these maintenance tasks until they become so frustrated with your insistence that they sell to you (way below market value) just to get away from your demands.

Seasonal Maintenance

Every season is a threat to your shelter. Winter? Ice through the roof. Spring? Tree limbs through the roof. Summer? Unsupervised children through the roof. Fall? Pumpkins through the roof. You have to be ready for anything.

The best way to stay alert for potential damage in your home is to follow a maintenance checklist that delegates certain tasks depending on the season. Depending on the time of year, engaging in certain tasks earlier can give you time to address any problems before you need to use certain features — such as not waiting until the winter to have your furnace serviced. Every season, you’ll want to check different areas around the exterior and interior of your home, making notes of what repairs (if any) are needed. Let’s get started on our journey through home maintenance for disaster preparedness!

About the Author

It takes a village! We are researching, writing and fact checking as a family. Collaboration is the name of the game, whether we’re running from a zombie horde or finding the best way to turn a complex concept into a deliciously digestible set of bullet points.