Spring Cleaning and Home Maintenance Checklist Managed with HomeZada

Hello! I'm back. Last week I was a little under the weather, and so, with a little bit of cold medicine, I'm back to talk to you about spring cleaning. It's springtime in most places in the United States. I do recall that maybe over the weekend or end of last week, the New England area still got some more snow. That was not pleasant, and I feel for all of you in the New England area. And I hope you're staying warm and the weather is warming up. But we do have spring in the air and I'm so excited and I know many other people are as well. So let's talk about spring cleaning and home maintenance tasks and what you can do to better manage them and how you can do that through HomeZada. And thank you everybody for liking the video. And if there are specific topics you would like to hear, please let us know in the comments and I'll make sure to create a video On what's important to you specifically, 'cause there's a lot of different capabilities inside HomeZada and some things that you need to do around your house. So, I'm looking at my little notes here. One of the things we wanted to talk about with spring cleaning is what is it that you can get done very quickly, either in a weekend or in some other areas, And how can you take care of that, um, as quickly as possible? So a lot of things happen in the spring. We get really excited, we want to go outside, we want to get our windows open, we're ready to get all the fresh air in, we're ready to get the cobwebs out and get busy on starting to host maybe some parties or something. So first thing you can do to help get spring cleaning done is— I'm a firm believer, I love Love, love, love sparkly shiny windows. I happen to have a house with a lot of windows in my home, and I— it's a very sunny place where I live in Northern California, and I love to let the sunshine in, and I love when my windows are super clean. So I unfortunately don't like climbing on my roof, which also requires The ability to clean my windows because some of them are in some really odd locations. So I actually hire window cleaners, and I do this once a year, and I plan for this in my maintenance calendar inside my HomeZada. And so that's one of the first things that you can do to really start letting the sparkle in and the shine in is getting your windows clean, whether you can do it yourself or whether you would rather have a professional do it. And I tend to wait at least in our area because we have kind of a rainy season, until the rainy season is over because I don't want any spots on my windows for the summer. So, that's the first thing you can do. Second thing you can do is once they're all clean, make sure the tracks inside the windows are clean and also make sure the screens are clean. I'm a firm believer, please do not use a, what do you call it, a pressure washer on your screens. That has happened to me in the past, and someone used a pressure washer and it created more holes in the screen. So please do not use a pressure washer. If you want to use a hose to rinse things off, let them dry, great. Be careful at the pressure of your hose because it can cause the screen to bend and the holes get bigger in the screens and you get bugs inside your house. And nobody wants bugs inside their house. So be very careful. Sometimes you can wipe it down with a squeegee and a brush. Also be very careful and then slightly rinse it off in a sprayer mode and get all the suds off the screens and then you can put them back in place. That's one thing you wanna do. The other thing is when you open your windows you can let all the fresh air in, let it all air out your house. I'm a firm believer in that. I just love fresh air unless you have allergies. Unfortunately, my husband does have a few allergies and he grins and bears it for me for just a couple of hours and then I have to close up the house because he's allergic to grass and hay fever and that kind of stuff. But if you're not allergic to anything, definitely open the windows, let the fresh air in, let it flow. I turn on my fan sometimes to let the air really circulate 'cause I want all good air coming in. I'm also a firm believer, I love getting my carpets cleaned in the springtime. I was fortunate to have a lot of friends carpet cleaning business. And, um, I love when our carpets are really clean. They look almost brand new. And I do hire out for this, and I don't have any problems with my carpets. It's like they feel fresh, they're clean, they look beautiful. And I do it once a year. Same thing, I schedule it in my maintenance calendar inside HomeZada, and I also track the cost of These activities in Hamzala because I want to know what to budget for for the following year. So if I've spent money on a major project of any sort in a particular month, I gotta also watch my cash flow. And one of the things I did recently was I was able to get my painting inside my house done, and I came way under budget. Just FYI, ha ha ha. But Um, I have to wait a little while to get my carpets cleaned and my windows clean only because I've got a cash flow situation. So that's why I love using HomeZada and the maintenance calendar and the projects calendar, because I also see the cash flow that's going out and when it's going out inside HomeZada. So I love that, and I can move, um, my tasks, whether it's maintenance or cleaning In a variety of different places on calendars inside HomeZada, from month to month, from week to week, etc. The other thing that I like to do when it comes to spring cleaning and maintenance is it's the time to bring out my furniture, my outdoor furniture. So excited. I am one of these people, I really like to make sure my outdoor furniture can last a really, really long time, and I really take care of it. I'm fortunate that I have a garage big enough That I can actually store my furniture inside my garage. I do have to stack it, so I have to be very careful. My husband and his engineering self has got this, um, beautifully stacked wall of furniture, and I always get a little nervous, but he assures me that it is not gonna fall. And we carefully take all that furniture down. We make sure we wipe it down, um, 'cause it's been inside and it's maybe a little dusty. Maybe even rinse it off a little bit. And let it dry. Some of my furniture I need to apply maybe a sealer or— sorry, I have an itch in my ear. Maybe I have to apply a sealer or some other cleaner to the cushions or what have you, but that's on occasion. And I get all that out, and living in California, the season is really long, so I can have outdoor furniture for 8 months. I'm so excited. And, um, that lets me start getting ready and determining whether I want, I want to have people over or not. So, um, I get all that furniture out, and then I also spray down, uh, my bar area outside. So some people have a small bar area, some people have a bigger bar area. I have a bar area, but one of the things that, um, happens in our neck of the woods is there's a lot of rain. You may find this also in areas that have a lot of snow. Or a lot of humidity. Sometimes there's kind of mildewy or mossy type areas that build up on parts of the areas in your house. I have a tile roof, so sometimes I get a little bit of moss on the tile roof, but the sun will bake that off by the end of the summer. But I get it in some of my concrete area, my bar area, and some slightly other areas. And so— My husband uses a pressure washer to clean up some of that stuff. Now, we have been very careful about using our pressure washer in a lot of areas in our house over the last couple years because we've been in a drought and it does require a lot of water. So we haven't been as diligent in some areas, and fortunately the sun will bake it off. But this year with tons of rain, which means tons of mildew and— ugh— in our house. So my bar area, I wouldn't even sit at it right now. It's disgusting. But we're gonna pressure wash that, get it all nice and clean, and then wipe it all down so it's ready for when we have guests over. So that's another thing that we do, and it's kind of a maintenance task, kind of a spring cleaning task. Going back inside the house, I'm a big firm believer in— I don't know why the spring just gets me like super organized, but I love being organized. And you may too. I like to tackle really, um, deep cleaning projects in the spring as well inside my house. So I get my refrigerator coils vacuumed and dusted. I clean out my refrigerator itself because I want to pull everything out, clean it out, and then put everything back in. I am a firm believer in getting my hood ventilation system Clean, it's above the stove. And I have a unique one, but I can pull all the systems out and all the little components. And then I kinda soak them in hot water with a little bit of baking soda and dishwasher detergent because I really need it to loosen up a lot of the grease. And that's just, I love to cook and that's just gross, the grease coming down. Not to mention it can prevent fires. So I like to really get into a lot of areas. Recently, and I'll send a video out for any of you 'cause I did take a video 'cause it was so gross. I needed to clean under hidden areas. And I didn't realize that underneath my treadmill in my workout room, there was just like all this nasty, nasty dust. I mean, it was nasty. I don't think it's been cleaned in probably, man, a year, 2 years, 3 years? I don't know. It was— I just never think to clean under my treadmill. Ew. And when I was doing push-ups, I was like, this is totally gross. So, um, I also look at those hidden areas in my house. So underneath beds, underneath treadmills, or anything that's got a small crevice but it's open. And I just get, um, a long, um, component, long stick type environment, and get it all out of there. And sometimes I use a Swiffer because those things are throwoutable. Sometimes I have to use, um, a component that has a washable, um, piece to it that I can take off, but it's gross. I, I just— I think that's just sick. So I start looking for things behind things. I look for behind crevices of, of like walls. So I'm like constantly getting, um, gently getting something on my, um, baseboards behind, uh, furniture. And fortunately, I had part of my house painted, so I was able to pull a lot of that stuff out and clean it out before the painters came, which was really good. I also like to look at desk chairs. And people look at me, they probably think I'm crazy with this stuff, but I really like a clean house. But when you have a chair and it's a desk chair, and I believe in ergonomics, so if you have a good desk chair, please invest in it. It's good for your back, it's good good for your legs, your body, everything, your shoulders, stress. Highly invest in it. And we have 2 of those because we have 2 different offices in our house. But there's always an accumulation of dust on these chairs. It's disgusting. My husband's is a little bit worse than mine, I think, because he's in probably a more dusty part of the house. But I'm constantly wiping down these chairs. And I think Febreze is like one of my favorite friends in the whole wide world because I wanna make sure these chairs smell good too, 'cause you're just naturally sitting all the time. So I clean out those and I'm looking for hidden areas. I'm looking for just ready to get things clean. And then I'm also tracking all this as much as I can in my HomeZada. And I know a lot of people look at me like, so why are you tracking this in your HomeZada? Well, I'm tracking it because I wanna know when I last did it. And when do I think I need to do it again? So a good example is cleaning my refrigerator. I tend to clean my refrigerator every probably 5 months, maybe every 6 sometimes. My refrigerator I keep pretty clean because I'm— yeah, I'm particular. I'll admit to it. But I really do a thorough cleaning out of it. I mean, like, I clean out my ice maker. I clean out everything. And I remove everything, and my husband laughs at me because I won't go to the grocery store for weeks because I will empty the refrigerator and then decide, oh, I'm gonna put fresh groceries in it. It's gonna look beautiful until it gets messed up again. But I'm just really excited about the really great fresh fruits and vegetables that are getting ready to come during summer. And so I want to make sure that my refrigerator is really, really spotless and ready For those beautiful vegetables and fruits that are on their way. And so, um, I look at those types of things and I want to know when I last cleaned it, because if it does have germy-type areas, I may have to clean it a little bit earlier. I also look at, um, changing out my baking soda. I have baking soda in all my refrigerators, and I have several refrigerators. I have a small one, um, outside in my little kitchenette. I have a small one in a bar area, and then I have a very large one. And so I want to make sure that the baking soda is fresh. So I'm constantly wanting to make sure I can find all this information in the tip of my hands, and I can do that with HomeZada's app. And so when I get my phone on, and sometimes my husband's driving, and I'm like, okay, I got to go over my HomeZada maintenance tasks for the month or for the week. And I can quickly do it while he's driving and say, okay, we got to get this stuff done. And if it doesn't look like it's going to happen in the particular weekend we're going to get it done, we tend to do it and move the calendar items to another weekend. And we're realistic about things. Not everything gets done on time. Another thing to do: fresh air. Just giving you tips here. Just let me know what you like to do. Or for hmm air filters. Air filters. Um, I can talk about air filters all day long. I just get nervous about air filters and I want them to be changed. And I change them every quarter. We have a schedule in Homes Out. That's the only way we can remember because I can never remember when they need to get changed. But they always need to get changed in the spring, and I can't wait because I want that winter air out of my house and all the gunk and all the new air In my house. So my air filters are helping me do that. And then, um, the final piece that I always get done, um, probably mid to late spring, but definitely right before summer, is I have a scheduled, um, appointment with my HVAC, um, company. So HVAC, for those of you who don't— do not know, is heating, ventilation, air conditioning. I have a company that comes out twice a year, and we tend to schedule, um, the checks before summer and before winter. And the reason being is because it gets extremely hot out here, and like it does in many parts of the country, and I need my air conditioning to work when I need it to work, not break because I didn't decide to take care of it. I also need my air conditioning— my heating unit to work in the winter, but for now we're just going to talk about air conditioning. So what I do is I track my— I have my company come out because I'm not an HVAC expert. They come out and they check to see that my air conditioning unit is working well and that I don't have any leaks anywhere. I don't have furnace problems, everything like that. And so it ends up working out to my benefit. Also, I schedule that in HomeZada and A lot of people want to rely on their vendors to let them know when things need to get done. I don't do that, um, because sometimes my vendors forget. It's, it's normal. They have a lot of customers and sometimes they just forget. They get a lot of emergencies from their customers. And so I want to be on top of everything, and I know my schedule better than they do. So I need to be available and at home for them to check it. So, um, those are some tips that you can get done for spring cleaning and home maintenance. Check your HVAC equipment or your air conditioning equipment. Get behind all the crevices and underneath the beds and everything else that may be dusty. Check on anything in your kitchen that needs to be cleaned, whether it's drawers, whether it's refrigerators, ice makers, hood ventilation components, whatever. And then also clean your windows if you want to. Open your windows, clean your screens. Please be careful. As to the screens themselves. Clean the sills in your window, and then also get that furniture outside. So excited about furniture. Some of you may already have them covered and outside. Get those covers off, get ready, get the cushions out, let them all air out. And you may have umbrellas, get them out and get ready to get down for summer. So, um, I hope these tips were helpful. I tend to track them all in HomeZada because it's just easier for me, and I know when things need to get done. So, I hope you have a great day. I hope these tips were helpful. Tell us what you do for spring cleaning, if you do anything, or home maintenance, and what's important to you. We'd love to hear those tips because we want to share with each other what we're all doing and how we can take care of our houses a little bit better. Have a great day, and I will see you soon.