The Seasonal House Check I Run Four Times a Year

Put the whole thing on one page and stop trying to remember it. The seasonal check that runs in my house four times a year lives on a single sheet taped inside the utility cupboard door, and the only reason it happens consistently is that it is written down where I trip over it. Every version I kept in my head got skipped.

This is not a deep clean and it is not a maintenance program. It is a short walk through the house at each change of season, catching the things that quietly go wrong between seasons and dealing with them while they are still small.

The four checks that repeat every time

These four happen at every changeover regardless of the season, because they are the ones with the worst consequences when they are missed.

• Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Press the test button on each one. Four times a year is more often than most guidance suggests and it takes two minutes, so I do not see the argument against it.
• Under every sink and behind the toilet. Look and feel for damp. Slow leaks announce themselves as a soft patch of cabinet floor or a faint smell long before they announce themselves as a bill. I found one this way under the kitchen sink that had been going for weeks.
• Water heater and boiler area. A look for corrosion, damp, or anything stacked against them that should not be.
• Anything with a filter. Extractor hood, dryer vent, vacuum, air purifier, heating filter. Clean or replace whatever is due.

What gets added at each season

Spring

Screens go in and get checked for tears. Gutters get a look after the last of the winter debris. Outside taps come back on and get watched for a minute to be sure nothing split over the winter. Winter bedding and heavy curtains go into storage, clean and dry. The dehumidifier gets its filter rinsed before it goes on for the damp part of spring.

Summer

The lightest version of the list, since not much goes wrong in warm dry months. Fan blades get wiped, the ceiling fan direction gets reversed, and I check the exterior doors and window frames for paint that has cracked, because summer is when repainting is actually practical. I also look at the roofline from the garden with binoculars, which sounds excessive and takes three minutes.

Autumn

The longest list. Test run the heating on a mild day with windows open. Bleed radiators or change the furnace filter. Walk the doors and windows for drafts. Drain and shut off outside taps. Clear gutters once the leaves are down. Heavy curtains, rugs and winter bedding come out of storage.

Winter

Mostly watching rather than doing. Windows get checked for condensation and the sills wiped. Furniture stays a few inches off cold exterior walls. I look at the loft hatch seal and the corners of exterior rooms for any sign of damp, and I keep an eye on the pipe runs in the unheated part of the basement during a cold snap.

Nothing on this list is hard. The value is entirely in doing it before the season rather than during it, when everything costs more and takes longer to arrange.

The storage handoff, which is the part that goes wrong

Every seasonal check involves things leaving storage and other things going in, and this is where the whole system degrades if you let it. My rules are short:

• Nothing goes into storage dirty or damp. Not bedding, not curtains, not coats. Six months sealed up with body oils or moisture is what creates the smell and the stains you find later.
• Clear bins with latching lids, labeled on painter’s tape. The label says what is inside and where it goes when it comes out.
• An index card taped inside the cupboard door listing which bins exist and where they live. Four lines, updated whenever the contents change.
• One bin gets opened last on purpose. That is the maybe bin, and anything still in it a year later leaves.

The index card is the piece I would not give up. Before I had it, every changeover started with fifteen minutes of standing in the hall trying to remember whether the summer quilts were upstairs or in the wardrobe.

How long it actually takes

The repeating four checks take about twenty minutes. The seasonal additions run from ten minutes in summer to a couple of hours in autumn, and the autumn one is the only one that ever feels like a chore. Spread across a year that is maybe five hours total, which is less than a single afternoon spent dealing with one problem that was allowed to grow.

I do each one on the first weekend after the weather turns, rather than on a fixed date, because a calendar date in a mild year means testing the heating in August. The weather is a better trigger than the calendar.

Writing your own version

Copy nothing directly, because houses differ more than lists do. Mine has radiators, a damp basement, and old sash windows, so my list is heavy on bleeding, dehumidifying and drafts. A newer house with forced air and sealed windows needs a different set and probably a shorter one.

The way to build it is to write down every seasonal problem you had last year, one line each, and then note what would have prevented each one and when it would have needed doing. Sort those by season. That is your list, and it will be more useful than any generic one because it is made of things that have actually gone wrong in your particular house. Mine started at six lines and has grown to about twenty over four years, and two of those lines exist because I ignored a damp patch that got expensive.