What are some household chores people should do more often?

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Exercise their water valves. Crawl under the kitchen sink and the bathroom sink, reach around behind the toilet, find the hot and cold valves behind the washing machine. Especially if you live in a hard water area as I do, in Southern California. I have it on my calendar to do it twice a year. If I don't, the valves will eventually become calcified and ossified and worthless. I say this based on hard experience.
- Do you mind ELI5 what exercising valves means? Is it just opening and closing?
  
  Yes
  
  I'm no good with kids, but basically turn the things on and off a few times, to make sure they don't get stuck from mineral build up or something. If you need to change your faucet, you need to be able to turn the water off and this is what these valves do.
- I bought a house last year and had to fix my washing machine immediately. When I went to turn off the water the valves themselves started to leak. I had to turn off the water to the whole house to replace the valves. What would have been a simple, quick, fix ended up as.an entire day's project.
  
  Related tip: if your washer has rubber hoses running from the hookup to the washer, replace them with good quality metal ones. The rubber ones will eventually fail.
- It depends what kind of valve they are. There is a kind that you don't need to worry about that for. I don't remember the terminology, I'm hoping someone who knows this stuff better will clarify my comment. The valves with the oval knobs tend to be the troublesome kind, the kind with a straight handle that only turns 90 degrees doesn't need exercise and it's unlikely to fail.
  
  Your comment has been my experience. I've been a homeowner in the same house for 30 years. We did a remodel after we first arrived. Gotta say we were naive about many things, plumbing fixtures included. Most of our pipe valves were (as you described) those oval knob jobbies. They are simple compression fixtures that screw in for many turns until the valve closes. These are terrible, awful and very bad. Mine suffered corrosion and froze in place. We recently went through another remodel, and among other things, had all new valves installed. This time we used 1/4 turn brass valves. A simple 90 degree turn and the valve is closed. Much less susceptible to corrosion/rot, etc. They cost more during installation, but in the long run you save time, money and sanity.
  
  The one possible downside is that you should try to be careful to close them slowly to avoid a water hammer effect.

149 comments