We’re moving on from how to lighten your mental load in finances to another area of our homes – home maintenance, repair, and upkeep. This column topic could almost be a book!
You could take some drastic measures to help reduce the mental labor of home ownership by buying or downsizing to a smaller home. Or you could live in a condominium where you pay for someone else to handle all outdoor upkeep and maintenance.
Another option is a tiny home, which reduces both physical and mental labor – a big reason for this trend. If you do choose one of these options, you’ll drastically reduce your mental load with homeownership. But tiny homes may not be viable for a lot of people.
Repairing, maintaining, and taking care of a home involves a multitude of monthly, seasonal, and yearly tasks. Most of these you can do yourself, but some involve paying a professional. For this mental load, and many others we will talk about later in this series, I highly recommend a checklist.
I adore checklists! I use them in my grant consulting business to help break down the many components of large applications. Turns out they’re useful in both business and in the home.
The site lifeoptimizer.org (how’s that for a great name that relates to what we’re talking about?) says the reason why checklists are good is simple – without them, it’s easy for us to forget things. Don’t we know that too well when we refer to mental labor?
The site goes on to say that besides helping you do your task correctly every time, other benefits of using a checklist include:
- Saving your brain power for more creative things. Since you don’t have to remember all the steps you need to take, you can use your brain for something more creative. That’s one goal we can reach after reducing the mental load!
- Saving time. You eliminate having to remember the steps, so you can devote the entire time on doing the task. Hallelujah! Less stuff to keep track of.
- You can delegate more easily. If you ever want to delegate a task, your checklist will make it easier for you to hand it over. Delegation is another wonderful tool we will refer to often. By giving the checklist to the person you delegate to you can describe exactly what you want.
I found numerous checklists available online to help you keep track of your monthly, seasonal, and yearly home maintenance tasks. The site prudentreviews.com, which was created specifically to help make life easier for homeowners, offers an excellent one.
Once you have your checklist, I recommend automating as many tasks as possible. My furnace and air-conditioning maintenance man sends us a postcard every fall and spring as a reminder to schedule our yearly furnace and air conditioner tune up. I receive an email reminder every year when it’s time to tune our piano.
For companies that don’t send notices, I like to schedule an automatic yearly reminder in Outlook for other maintenance tasks.
Amy Shankland is a writer and fundraising professional living in Noblesville with her husband John, two sons, two dogs and a cat. You can reach her via email at amys@greenavenue.info.