I'm here today to talk about some chores that tend to be forgotten but doing these little things when you change your clocks forward/back are easy to manage. Several of these are things we all know and remember to do without fail and some I've just recently added to my list of chores to do when resetting all the clocks.
1) Change your smoke alarm batteries. I think this is a no brainer but an important task that bears the reminder. Twice a year change the batteries in your smoke detectors and/or carbon monoxide detector. It's an easy chore that could save the life of you and your family or quite frankly just stop those irritating little tweeps going off sometime during the year when the battery is dying and you are running from room to room trying to figure our which smoke detector is chirping...sanity is important my friends.
2) Change the batteries in your thermostats. Yep, most thermostats have batteries in them and a good rule of thumb is change the battery because you've probably got to change the time on those too.
3) Change the direction of your ceiling fans. Hey, you've got the ladder out anyways so change the way the fan blades are moving when the time changes too. No more wind gushes in the middle of winter because you forget to switch the blade direction.
4) Clean your oven. In the fall your oven is clean and ready to go for the holidays and in the spring you can get off all that winter cooking grime. I read an article recently that said many people wait to clean the oven the day or so before Thanksgiving and end up with no oven because the heating element burns out. Save yourself that headache and clean the oven out with the time change then if the unfortunate occurs you've got time to get a repair person in and the oven fixed before the holiday season hits full swing.
5) Clean your dryer vents. This one is SUPER important. I mean this could mean the difference in burning your house down or sleeping safely. Want a super helpful hint for doing this? Use your leaf blower! Just pull off the piece of duck work from the wall and stuff the end of the leaf blower in the hole and then just put that baby on full blast and blow out all that yucky stuff. We were a little late getting this done but we did it this morning and man, you can't believe the stuff we blew out of that vent. Twice a year to keep your home and family safe is important.
6) While you are in that laundry room cleaning out the dryer vent let's just give the area behind the washer and dryer a good vacuuming. I also pull the lint filter from the dryer and rinse it off under water, set outside in the sun to dry really good and stick the long skinny attachment on your vacuum and put it down inside where the lint filter goes. Also grab some cleaner and get to work on that washing machine. I clean the little compartments where the bleach/detergent/fabric softener go and on my front loader, I wipe out the rubber seals really good too. Be prepared to be grossed out, it's amazing the gunk that gets under those rubber seals. I also have a little filter thingy down at the bottom of the front of the washer that twists out. Make sure you put a big towel down before pulling that filter because a ton of water will spill out and you can rinse and clean that plastic filter off too.
There you go! Such quick, easy but yet important chores to do twice a year to keep your appliances running smooth, keep your family safe and give you a little bit of piece of mind. Not to mention you feel like you've accomplished great things when you get this much done in one day so put your feet up watch some football and eat some nachos. After all, you deserve it!
Peace, Love & Safety !!
