Every January the same homeowner resolutions get written down, and almost all of them are promises the house has been waiting on since before the holidays.
Haha, and then March happens. So let us talk about the shorter list instead. Not the twelve items nobody finishes, but the four or five that a house actually notices, and the order I would put them in if you asked me while we were standing in your kitchen.
THE LIST IS NOT THE PROBLEM. THE LENGTH IS.
The standard advice is fine and I am not going to pretend otherwise. Declutter. Touch up the paint. Service the furnace. Clean the gutters. Test the smoke detectors. Every item on that list is real work worth doing.
The problem is that a list of twelve resolutions behaves like a list of zero. The size of it becomes the excuse you use in April. Pick three. Write them somewhere you will still look in June, which is not the notes app you opened once in January.
I would also skip any version of this list that promises the work will pay you back at resale. No repair guarantees a higher price, and the people saying otherwise are usually selling the repair.
START WITH THE THINGS THAT GET WORSE IF NOBODY TOUCHES THEM
House work splits into two piles, and they behave nothing alike. The first pile is cosmetic. Paint, hardware, a light fixture, the color of a front door. That work holds still. Ignore it for two years and it looks about the same, slightly more dated.
The second pile is deferred maintenance, and it compounds. A gutter packed with leaves is a Saturday in October. Left alone through a wet winter, it is a fascia board and a patch of ceiling. The work does not sit there waiting. It grows.
So the boring pile goes first. Water, roof, drainage, heat. Nothing on that list is fun, and all of it is cheaper than the version of itself that shows up next year.
If you are not sure what is in the boring pile, go find out on a wet day. Walk the perimeter and watch where the water runs. Look at the ceiling corners and the base of the walls. Open the cabinet under the sink. Most deferred work announces itself long before it becomes a claim, and it does it in the rain, not in a spreadsheet.
A CALENDAR BEATS A MOOD, AND WHERE THE GYM COMPARISON BREAKS
A resolution about the house works a lot like a gym membership bought in January. Both feel like progress at the moment of purchase. Neither one has done anything yet.
That comparison gets you to the right instinct and then it hands you off to something less pleasant. It stops working because a gym charges you whether or not you show up, and a house mostly waits.
Mostly. A house does eventually bill you. It just does it quietly, through the thing you were not watching, on a week you had other plans for.
What fixes that is a date, not a feeling. The gutters go before the first real rain, not after. The furnace gets looked at before the cold week, not during it. Detectors get tested on a day you already remember, which is why so many people do it when the clocks change.
And if the honest answer is that you are not going to climb a ladder, hiring it out is not a failure of the resolution. It is the resolution. Get two or three quotes, put the chosen one on the calendar the same week, and the item stops being a thing you carry around in your head.
THE CHEAP VERSION OF ALMOST EVERY REPAIR IS DOING IT ON TIME
None of these are projects. They are the small habits that keep a house out of the expensive column.
- Gutters and downspouts. Clear them, then watch where the water actually goes. Water that lands against the foundation is the start of a much longer conversation.
- The furnace filter. Cheap, dull, and the single easiest thing to skip. A filter that has gone gray makes the system work harder than it should.
- Caulk and paint at the wet edges. Around windows, at the base of siding, anywhere water sits. A tube of caulk is not a project and a rotted sill is.
- The tree limb over the roof. Look up once a year. Trim what is touching or nearly touching, before wind does the trimming for you.
- Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Test them and replace what has aged out. This one is not about the house at all.
IF YOU ARE SELLING THIS YEAR, THE ORDER CHANGES
When a house is going on the market the list reorders, because a buyer prices different things than a resident does. A buyer walks in and quietly costs out the deferred work, then works backward from there. The cosmetic choices they will redo anyway, which is the part sellers find hardest to hear after paying for them.
That is roughly what I walk through on the preparation side of a listing, and it is also why some sellers decide to hand over a house with the work still in it. Both are real options, and the as-is comparison lays out what each one costs you in time and money.
If you are staying put, ignore that section entirely and do the work for yourself. A house maintained for a hypothetical buyer you have not met is a house maintained for nobody.
WHAT I WOULD TELL YOU TO WEIGH
- Time, honestly counted. A weekend project is usually two weekends plus the trip back to the hardware store. Budget for that version.
- Money you may need elsewhere. Some years the right answer is to fix what is leaking and save the rest, especially if income is uncertain or a big bill is coming.
- Repair versus remodel. Resolving to remodel a kitchen is not a resolution, it is a construction project with a resolution taped to it. Those are different commitments.
Question for you: which single item on your house list have you been walking past for more than a year?
Adapted from New Year’s Resolutions for Homeowners, originally published by Windermere Signature Properties at windermerecalocal.com.
WHEN YOU ARE READY
Let’s talk about what you want in an area.
Send me the areas you are considering and what matters most to you. I will tell you what each one is actually like, including the parts that argue against it. Nothing is committed by asking.
