Ep 062 - What is the 10 Min Task That Could Save You $3000?

Welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, where you'll discover strategies to save money, save time, and be better organized in managing your largest financial asset and biggest expense, your home. Your hosts, John Bodrozik and Beth Dodson, who are co-founders of HomeZada, have been supporting homeowners for over 20 years. They are here to share with you their tips and suggestions, as well as interviews with industry experts, with the goal of helping you become a smarter homeowner. Now here's your hosts, John and Beth.

Hi and welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast, where we help take control of your home so it can take better care of you. I am Beth Dodson, and with me is John Bedrosian, my other co-founder in HomeZada. And I've been interviewing so many other people that it's been a while since John's been a guest or a co-host on our show.

It's great to be here, Elizabeth. I love it.

It's fun. Well, today we are talking Tasks, maintenance tasks to be specific. And let's face it, one forgotten task can cost thousands of dollars. And specifically what John and I wanted to get into today was talking about the difference between a one-time task versus what we refer to as a recurring task. And a lot of people may think, why does it matter? Well, we're going to tell you why a recurring task and a one-time task are both extremely important when managing your home. So just to clarify again, this is all about home maintenance. You know, those things that not all of us want to do, but we really need to do. So it's all about honey-do list, chores, whatever word you want to call it. But let's do it and let's dive in, John.

Absolutely. Yeah, I guess I can start by essentially my word. My view is recurring tasks are things that you need to do on a regular basis to your house to keep it operating efficiently.

Yeah.

And when I say regularly, sometimes it might literally be just once a year. Sometimes it might be 3 or 4 times a year. Sometimes it might be once a month. It's just a periodic time where you need to keep doing the task because our home is a collection of building materials, equipment, assets, etc., that are in constant use and they need regular maintenance to make sure that they're operating efficiently.

Yes, this is where John and I 100% absolutely agree. Like, you won't see that happen a lot, but we 100% absolutely agree. And to reiterate what John's saying, not only does it keep our home running efficiently, but I'll even beg to say that it also helps our home operate properly.

Yes.

In other words, if we don't do some of these tasks, It could actually be— and I don't want to scare anybody— but it could actually be life-threatening, and it could be cause for health conditions. And a lot of people don't think like that, and we'll get into some of those in a minute. But that's— I'm going to take it to the next level, going, yeah, don't fear your house, but you know, the tasks are important.

Yeah, without a doubt. The recurring task, it's What you're talking about is the downstream effect of not doing it.

Yeah.

Most of it sometimes has to do with money and cost and replacement, but oftentimes it has to do with the health and safety of the occupants of the home. And yeah, so those have also impacts because we're human, we live inside our homes, and not doing preventative maintenance or recurring maintenance is an issue.

Yeah. Wait, before we list some— before we list some suggestions, John, On recurring tasks. Let's define what a one-time task is.

Yeah, I look at a one-time task as something needs a repair. It's beyond a— it's beyond a, oh, I need to go clean out some filter. It's no, something has stopped working and I need to go fix it. Either I need to fix it or I need to hire somebody to fix it. That is what I would kind of classify as a one-time task. I'd say there may be one other category in that sometimes when we go troubleshoot something that's not working and we try to fix it, we end up having to replace it. Meaning it's just—

Yeah. It broke.

I tried to fix it. Maybe it fixed it for— and then it came back 3 months later and I tried to fix it again. Now I need to go replace it. So you could almost consider a small replacement of an item in your home. As a one-time task as well.

Yeah. So let's get into some of these examples. So since we just talked about one-time tasks, let's talk about those examples and then let's talk about recurring task examples. So let's share with the audience what we think are one-time task examples.

One-time task is your garbage disposal stopped working. and you need to fix it.

Okay.

Or troubleshoot why it's not working. You click the button, it's supposed to spin, all of a sudden it doesn't spin. That's an example of a one-time task.

So it's basically what I'm hearing in that particular case is something that normally operates. Now it's time to figure out why it's not operating.

Yes.

Okay.

Another example is Your refrigerator is not as cool as it should be.

Okay.

You're, you're noticing water buildup on the inside of your refrigerator. You're like, hmm, something's amiss here. I need to go figure out what this is. Maybe it's a one-time— it is a one-time task to troubleshoot why your refrigerator is not as cold as the thermostat setting it normally shows.

Yeah, yeah, I can see that. One of the other things I thought of was, um, Because I've got to deal with this right now. Yes, John and I have home issues just like the rest of you. Um, we have a kitchen faucet and it's got a slight leak around the knobs. And I'm like, it's not spraying, it's not crazy, it's not going whatever. And it will require either a tightening of something Or it will require a replacement of a small part of something. So for some people might say, oh, this is fix-it task. I'm like, yeah, it is, but it may just be an adjustment task where you're not actually— you don't need to fully repair everything, you just may need to adjust it. So to John's point, troubleshooting is part of that task orientation. In order to determine what the next steps are for that one-time task.

Right, because troubleshooting oftentimes is you've noticed that something is not working the way it normally does, and you have to figure out why first.

Correct.

As another example is your shower head is not spraying out water in a normal sort of circular pattern, and you're like, hmm, why is my shower not spraying the way it did before? Got to troubleshoot sort of why that is. You could call that sort of a fix-it or a one-time task.

Yes.

So, lots of little things like that. And yeah, I think that— well, just maybe a segue is that a lot of times people will write their own little to-do lists like you said.

Oh, yeah.

And so, they'll write all these things down on a to-do list. But sometimes a one-time task is as the result of not doing a recurring task.

Totally. Totally. So let's get into what examples are recurring tasks. And you know, one of my favorites is changing that air filter. Changing the air filter regularly. And when I say regularly, I mean 3 to 4 times a year, and I've gone as far as, as doing it 6 times a year because we unfortunately had wildfires. And you don't think of it at first, but then because your house is all closed up, but you need to look at those air filters and you're like, whoa, no, these are black, they need to go.

Yes.

So Air filters is one of my favorite recurring tasks.

Yeah. And I'll just go back to the fix-it task. I'll use the examples I used. Your refrigerator is not cool as it used to be. So, you're going to go do a repair task. Well, oftentimes, not always. The reason why is your refrigerator has a compressor unit either above it or below it. And one time, a recurring task that you should do once a year is pull that thing off and get a vacuum cleaner to vacuum all the dust that's collecting around it. So all of a sudden you notice that it's not as cool as it should be. Well, if you had set up a calendar system to remind you to do that once a year, then maybe you would never have that one-time fix-it task.

Correct.

Because the refrigerator's pretty much keeping everything cool as needed.

Yeah. That's a— that is definitely the case. Same thing with the shower head that you brought up, that example. Oftentimes it's literally just cleaning the mineral gunk out of the shower head from the water coming through and what have you. And that's an easy cleaning task that you do regularly to make sure it's operating properly.

100%. It's like once a year, go to your 2 or 3 bathrooms with a shower, unscrew the head, blow out the thing, clean it out, boom, you're done.

Yeah, I mean, there's so many. I mean, and we know there's so many, but even, um, why is it escaping me real quick? But even your dishwasher. A lot of people think that your dishwasher just operates and you don't have to clean out the filter in there. The fortunate part is newer dishwashers have made it easier to clean it out.

Yeah, some will beep at you and tell you that you need to do something.

Yeah.

You just have to discern what the beeping is for.

Correct. Yeah, because you might not know. So cleaning out that— and that even leads us to more filters because I'm all about the filters— is dryer vents.

Dryer vents, yes.

Cleaning the back of your dryer vents.

Most people open their dryer door and pull the clothes out and there's a little lint thing, and most people will clean that because it's easily accessible. But many homeowners don't realize that the back of your dryer is connected to a duct, and that duct goes to the outside of your house, so that hot air is going out to the outside of your house. Well, oftentimes the back of your dryer vent gets also clogged with lint.

Yeah.

And that is absolutely a preventative maintenance task that should be a recurring that you should do at least once a year, maybe twice, depending on how much laundry you do.

Yeah.

And yeah, and it's one of those things that if you don't do it, it becomes a potential— you think it's a one-time task because you're unaware of the task at hand. And then all of a sudden you're like, hey, you— it used to only take an hour to do a load of laundry, you know, drying, drying the clothes. Now it takes like an hour and a half or 2 hours. It's taking longer to dry my clothes. And you're wondering like, why is that? Well, oftentimes, not always, is the reason is the back of your dryer is clogged with all that, um, excess lint, lint, and it's not drying efficiently.

Yeah, and to our point, now I don't want to scare people, but if you don't clean it, there's a fire hazard. Lint is highly flammable.

Highly flammable.

Highly. And so these are kind of the examples of what these recurring tasks are, and they're generally— so, John, what we're talking about is really simple things. Yes, really simple.

Most recurring tasks for keeping a home operating efficiently and safe and healthy is literally just having a schedule that sends you the reminders over when to do these things. And therein lies the challenge, is that most homes don't come with a schedule. So the homeowner has to create the schedule, and then they either forget or don't do it or aren't aware that they should do it. And then sometimes there's arguments over if the home is owned by a couple, which person is responsible for creating the schedule.

Yeah.

Which person's responsible for doing the task, because there are recurring tasks in Inside the house and outside the house.

Correct.

So, the recurring task to me is literally just making a commitment to creating a schedule of all these little things and the frequency over when they need to get done so that a system reminds you of when they need to get done because your brain is occupied with so many other things.

Oh, so many.

Nobody's gonna remember all these tasks in their head. It's just easier when a system reminds you of them.

Yeah, and so let's talk about that. You, you know, we are also the co-founders of HomeZada, and so part of the reason why we created HomeZada was to help homeowners, one, stop having these arguments about who's doing what, where, when, and how often, and then also to help them Understand that there are systems in place that can help us allow our brain to focus on these amazing creative things that we need for the rest of our life, and then we take the mundane off of their plate and put it in a system that sends reminders. So let's talk a little bit more about why HomeZada provides that value to homeowners.

Great point. And it's very simple. At signup, when you create a property for your home, Homes Auto will automatically create a recurring schedule for you.

Hmm.

And because it's created that recurring schedule for you, it's also automatically going to send you an email reminder when that task is due. And it'll also, at the end of every month, give you a link over, hey, these are the 3 tasks that you should do this month. So it's kind of aggregating your monthly tasks because generally speaking, there's about, let's just say, 30 to 40 of these preventative recurring tasks that need to be done. Not all of them need to be done in the same month because oftentimes these are dependent on seasonality. Things that you should do in the winter is different than the spring and the fall. Lots of sort of dynamics around there. But again, you're the recurring Schedule piece in Homesata is the most valuable, one of the most valuable, because it eliminates the work over creating the recurring schedule. It's done for you, and the alerts and emails are automatically going to send you to remind you of these things because you either A, don't know you should do them, or you know you should do them, but you oftentimes forget because there's no reminder system sending you the reminder to do them.

Yes, and you know, one of the things that I think is really interesting is a lot of people seem to think that, oh my gosh, now I have all these tasks to do, because when you hear 30 to 40 tasks that you need to do around your house, and even though you said, listen, you don't have to do them all at once, from a time element, it actually doesn't take you that long.

Yeah, most of it—

It really doesn't.

Correct. Each one of these tasks is usually like, you know, 10 minutes max.

Yeah. I mean, that's it. And then when you add a bunch up in a couple hours during the day, it's like your honey-do list for the weekend. You're like, okay, I'm done. And I can free myself up for other things on the other weekends and enjoy my life. Correct.

And so all it is is a little bit of time being aware of what you need to do. And most of these things can be done with basic household tools. Right. Screwdriver, hammer, you know, different kinds of screwdrivers kind of mentality. Not even a little bit of know-how. Exactly. So it's not like you need— a bulk of these do not need specialized tools to go do these things.

Yeah. So let's do some rapid-fire things.

Sure.

You and I both. I think these questions are going to be fun. So give me an example of recurring tasks that people never think about? And you can't say the ones we've already done— said. I have one.

Go for it.

Um, walking around your house to see if there's any gaps, like around your windowsills or anything like that. Walking around, checking every window out, every door out to see, hmm, am I losing heating and air Because I've got some sort of gap somewhere and I need to seal it up.

Yep. All right, I'll give you one. I'd walk around your house and check to see whether tree branches are growing over your roof.

Good one. Or too close to your windows. Yeah.

Too close to the windows.

Yeah, that's a good one.

Again, this is the reason why is plants and trees grow. So it may be great today. Yeah, no issue. And then if you ignore it year after year after year, suddenly the plants and the trees have grown and they've grown into your HVAC unit on the side of your house, or they've grown over your gutters. So just literally the, the, in this case, the recurring task is just walk the outside of your house to see whether you have any overgrown trees or shrubs.

Yeah, and the reason for that too is high winds. If ever you have any high winds, which anyone who has rain usually has some level of high winds, it could crack your glass too and your windows, and then you got to repair windows, and that leads to more problems because water's getting in your house and blah blah blah blah blah. I mean, John and I will tell you, these simple tasks that we can do, if we don't do them, it is way more challenging. Okay, but a couple more questions. What's one maintenance task you've personally forgotten?

Draining the hot water heater.

Oh yeah, that's a tough one.

So yeah, your hot water heater is important because you have hot water every day, and a maintenance task that's suggested once a year is to partially drain it and Why? Because a lot of the places around the country have minerals and deposits in our water, and those minerals and deposits will accumulate at the bottom of your hot water heater. And if the draining part will drain all those minerals and deposits out, and if you don't drain them, it's just a— just imagine a pyramid of all these deposits growing inside your hot water heater.

Mm-hmm.

And then all of a sudden you no longer have hot water right when you're about to take a shower before to go to a work meeting. And/or your hot water heater started flooding because it broke.

Yeah, you're definitely cold plunging it on that shower.

Not only is it a financial pain by not doing that task, but it's a lifestyle pain if you really needed to take that shower.

Like, no, cold plunges are not my thing. I know a lot of people love them, but they're not my thing.

Well, it's one thing if it happens in the middle of the summer. It's a different thing if it happens in the middle of the winter.

Oh my gosh, it's crazy. I'll tell you which one I've personally forgotten because recently I had to do it because I forgot it was— and yes, I still use my HomeZada, but I just forgot it was, um, I was traveling, I think. Over the stove, the ventilation hoods.

Yep.

The cleaning grates.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh, you talk about buildup in a, um, Grease and grime? Oh, you— yeah, you're specifically talking about buildup in the hot water heater. And now I got all this grease and grime. Oh, it's disgusting. I, I literally had to soak everything so that it would come out because I was like, this is absolutely disgusting. And I'm like, is any of this dripping on my existing food that I'm loving cooking? And then, you know, for people who are not out there There is a big risk. Like, I keep giving the fire risk ones. Isn't that funny? Like, I don't want fire in my house.

I mean—

And then this is the fire risk. You can't make this up.

I mean, I don't want—

It's like the number one—

Exactly.

I don't know if you know, but not cleaning your fume hoods is like the number one reason why there are fires in— there are kitchen fires in a house per insurance companies or something.

Yeah, and for those people who don't realize why, right? Imagine you've got a year's worth of cooking and you've done with grease and oil and stuff, and that's building up on the top of your thing. And you don't clean that, and all of a sudden you do it one more time and a little flame pops up. Now that flame has caught on to a fuel source that's stuck to that grate, and it's tied to your wood cabinets right next to it, and then bammo, you have a kitchen fire.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's one task I will say— what was one task I don't ever forget is I check my fire extinguishers and their usability all the time. I'm pretty good about that. What about you? Is there one that you won't forget?

Air filters.

Yeah, you're pretty good about air filters.

I've sort of missed air filters in the past for a year, and then they got black, and it's probably not healthy. Dust and gunk on them. Exactly. So I won't miss changing the air filters.

So speaking of which, so we went through these quick little Quick little tasks that we have forgotten or not forgotten. Let's talk about, and we want to finally end this on, why is it that if we do not perform these recurring tasks and these, what we refer to almost as preventative maintenance tasks, and even some of these repair tasks, why is it that we need to do them?

So I guess one big reason is all of your equipment and building materials and appliances were built by some manufacturer, and they have essentially what I call the useful life.

Hmm.

And, you know, let's just say the refrigerator in this example. Most refrigerator manufacturers probably say your refrigerator will last You know, 15 years, 20 years kind of mentality.

Mm-hmm.

But if you never clean it or do that sort of a compressor sort of thing, then after 5 to 7 years of just ignoring it, then all of a sudden your refrigerator breaks. It stops working and you have to have— you have to replace your refrigerator. It's the same with the hot water heater. Hot water heaters are usually going to last 15 years.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And if you're not draining it, you're going to have to replace it in year 5 versus year 15. So you get hit with an unexpected $2,000 to $3,000 replacement bill versus a 15-minute task once a year that would have preserved the life of that hot water heater for another 10 years. So you can spend that $3,000 on a vacation versus a new hot water heater.

Yeah, so I agree with you. I think that if we just spend a little bit of time each month On our things around our house, we could prevent things. Because to your point, the one tip that I like to do that I definitely need to be reminded of— walking around the house and looking at the windows and stuff like that. And you also, coincidentally, we both said like walking around the house and looking at things either internally or externally on how things operate. If there was any damage, or there was a risk of potential damage, then the damage could get worse. And to—

100%.

What I mean by that is, um, if you, if you do have trees growing into your windows and there is a high wind and it does crack your glass, and it— during rainy season, because it's generally when this happens, you get rain coming into your house and it's damaging your floors, your furniture, your walls, Your drywall, anything that's in there, which could cause even additional flood. And all of a sudden, you now, depending on whether you want to do it or not, you have to file a claim. You may or may not get your claim honored because generally, and this is one thing people forget about, if you are not performing preventative maintenance on certain areas of your house, those claims are— Irrelevant, and you've got to come out of pocket for those repairs.

Well, even if you are, most insurance policies have a deductible, which is code for you have to pay the deductible before the insurance company pays the rest. So, correct, very common deductible in insurance, but varies, could be $2,500 or $5,000. Yeah, so the tree branch breaks, breaks the window, and let's say it stops raining and you don't have any damage, but you have to replace the window and this, that, and the other. Maybe that's a $3,000 or $4,000 thing. That's— you're not, you're not going to get reimbursed because you have to pay that because of your deductible anyway.

Correct. That's a good point. And so there's a lot of costs involved if you're not taking care of things that don't need to occur until the lifespan of that particular piece of equipment or appliance goes through its place, its life cycle. But the other thing that we talked about briefly is Safety and health. And we talked about 2 fire areas, your dryer vent and your— over your stove, your ventilation there. Coincidentally, they're both called vents. Um, but if you don't care, that could cause more damage in your house, which could cause not only a risk for more funds going out of your house, but 2, It could cause physical damage to you as an individual if you're not caring for somebody. And then the other one is health. Obviously there's a health assessment when there's fire involved or too much smoke involved.

Mm-hmm.

But additionally, in checking smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors— high on our list— but also, for instance, we talk a lot about air filters If you're not changing the air filters, then that has an impact on your respiratory system within your body and whether or not you can breathe accurately. And think about it this way as well: you're in your home, you've got the air, the heat on, you've got these terrible— look at my face— you've got these terrible, um, uh, blackened air filters And you're sleeping in this. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

Yep. Another impact over not doing these preventative recurring maintenance tasks is your monthly energy bills and water bills could be higher than they need to be. So, going back to your— if you're not caulking around your windows, Then, you know, cold air is escaping in the summertime and warm air is escaping in the wintertime, and your HVAC is working harder because it's escaping. Same thing with our dryer vent sort of thing. Your dryer is working harder, so your electricity bill is going up.

Yeah.

So there's ongoing— if all of your equipment is not working properly, then it's working harder and longer. Which means your energy and water bills are going up too.

Yeah. So we touched base on a one-time task, a recurring task, why recurring/preventative tasks in a maintenance capacity are valuable, what the impact is if you don't do them. John, to end this out, what's the one What's one thing you think HOMZADA could remind us of every year? You do yours, I'll do mine, that you would love to see out of HOMZADA or see it today. One thing.

One thing? One, just one thing to remind every homeowner about preventative maintenance?

One.

I'd probably say clean your gutters.

Oh yeah, that's a good one.

Because pretty much every home gets rain, every home gets buildup in their gutters, and if you don't do it, it's not only a financial cost but it has a long-term health implication because gutter— gutters that don't drain create leaks leaks get in the walls, then those walls can turn into mold, which turns into a health issue. So not cleaning your gutters is a huge, um, both financial and health reason why I would want everyone to make sure that they do that.

Yeah, no, I think that's a good— that's a great one. That's a great one because nobody really thinks about their gutters that much.

No.

You know?

Yes.

Um, I You know, I— you're gonna laugh at what mine is, but it's typical. It's typical. Is spray, because I have all these like potions that I have. Yes, I have all these like aromatherapy potions that I spray all over my house. Spray consistently for critters inside and outside my house.

That's what I would want.

So you're—

Your own form of pest control.

Yes, because I have some levels of pest control, but because I have so many critters, I need, you know, oils for spiders in my garage. I need oils for squirrels to stay out of my trees and— or at least off my cushions, because they decided to eat my outdoor furniture cushions. And little by little, I need those types of scenarios and all my little concoctions to spray so each little critter stays outside my house, not inside it.

That is a fantastic one because we probably don't have enough time, but if you've got all these pests, they can be damaging to your home, especially if they get in your home and all these other kinds of things. So having some recurring task to have some sort of pest defense from getting into your home is a huge important thing. Yeah, pest defense.

Pest defense is the best defense. I'm gonna have to do a podcast on nothing but all the variety of pests because—

You can!

Let's do it!

Let's do it! Pest defense!

Yes, we need to. So, um, any last parting thoughts?

Nope, I'm good.

Ah, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun. Uh, we love talking about all these crazy things about home because the home is a complex entity that we get to share our lives in, and they get to be— I believe our homes get to be part of our lives and part of our families in an indirect kind of way. And so we hope this— these tips on maintenance And one-time versus recurring tasks are better clarified for you and hope you understand more about what, uh, HomeZada can do for you as well, outside or inside the box of HomeZada. And if you have any more suggestions or questions that you want us to bring to you, please let us know in the comments. But meanwhile, if you think anyone needs to understand more about a one-time task versus a recurring task and some of these tips we gave you, please by all means share this with as many people as you think could benefit and subscribe because we always like to make sure you're getting the next podcast we're going to be providing you. And you know, the pest defense is the best defense may be one of those. So stay tuned if you have pest defense being best defense. But, uh, we want to thank you so much because we know your time is super valuable. But thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it, and we hope you have a wonderful day. This is Beth and John signing out from Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast.

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