Asklemmy @lemmy.ml

1y ago

What are some household chores people should do more often?

149 comments

Plot the downfall of the bourgeoisie.
- I just went from weeks behind on chores, to planning ahead.
- Cooking and serving the rich
  Edit: i just realised how this could be read in two completely opposite ways
- Is it still a chore if it’s a pleasure to do?

Hijacking your thread to advocate for my lazy ideology. Disclaimer I have pretty severe ADHD so this might be extreme for most people but for me this makes life liveable.
Forget trying to make things look super tidy and neat like in an IKEA commercial. Make your living space functional, comfortable and easy to maintain. Reduce the amount of physical, mental and emotional effort required to maintain your environment. For example, for laundry:
Don’t iron anything unless you really need/want to. (Job interview, going on a date, appearing in court, etc.)
Anywhere you’re liable to undress, have a basket for dirty clothes. It should be open-topped (no lid!) and mobile, like a laundry basket, so when you need to do a load of laundry, you can pick up and use the whole basket - functioning both as the hamper and the basket. Bedroom and bathroom are the usual places for this! You want the act of tossing dirty clothes in the laundry to be just as easy as tossing it on the floor.
There’s no such thing as odd socks. They’re called mix ‘n’ match socks now. Like Mashems!
No neatly folded clothes or hangers or anything like that, except for very special things such as in point 1 - everything just gets dumped into big drawers based on category. I have little fabric boxes that fit into a kallax to keep this relatively neat looking but super easy.
If something can’t survive going in the washing machine mixed load cycle and the tumble dryer daily load, it is not welcome in my life. (There’s a similar rule about the dishwasher!)
You get the idea. Embrace your laziness, don't bother yourself with half a second what people might think of how you live. This is surprisingly neat and orderly and takes almost no effort to maintain. If you keep finding your basket is misplaced, buy another basket and keep it in two places. Stop fighting the current and go with your flow. Accept who you are, even if you’re a lazy removed like me!
- There’s no such thing as odd socks. They’re called mix ‘n’ match socks now. Like Mashems!
  Or just get black socks and don't worry about mixing and matching.
  
  You can do that too, but it’s less fun! I’m just very easily amused, of course, but there’s something joyful about wearing odd socks. Especially if they’re contradictory. Like, I wonder what people think of someone wearing one bright pink sock and one yellow sock. Or one sock that says “Star Wars” on it and another sock that has dinosaurs. I have some Star Wars Han Solo socks where Han Solo looks like John Travolta. That’s not relevant to this, but every time I see those socks, they make me laugh because he looks very funny.
  
  Best thing I did was throw all my old socks away and just bought a dozen of the exact same socks. Never have to worry about sorting them or getting annoyed when one inevitably goes AWOL
  
  When Marino wool socks go on sale at Costco, buy 10 of the same pairs.
  
  Every ten years or so I get rid of all my socks and boxers, then buy new ones. All the same brand and at most two types. I never have to worry about finding a pair that match each other or anything like that.
- Also
  6 Don't bother making your bed. I don't know why my parents ever ingrained this habit in me, but one day I was like... why am I even doing this? and so I stopped. Of course, I still change my sheets and pillow cases regularly, but I don't see a reason for making my bed every day.
  
  I do it, because it makes a massive difference to me how tidy my bedroom feels and how welcoming the bed looks at the end of the day. I just have a duvet though, so it's 10 seconds of pulling on each corner until it's reasonably even - not going for perfection!
  
  I enjoy having a tidy bed, it makes me feel more relaxed. Also got drilled to it from my parents and in the military, it promotes discipline and you start your day by accomplishing a task (gives a positive mindset).
- So, let me get this right, you don’t fold your clothes? Rather you just crumple them up and put them in the drawer?
  I never thought of this as a viable solution but I am going to try it out! Folding laundry is my #1 chore left undone. I end up “living out of the basket” and nothing is ever done.
  
  You’re absolutely right. I don’t fold shit. If I need to wear a proper shirt then I’ll iron it when I need it, but usually just wear T-Shirts & polo shirts, so it doesn’t matter.
  Yep, just give yourself permission to live out of the basket and put the basket on a shelf. It’s tidier and you don’t feel as bad about it.
- When this asklemmy question pops up the next time again, asking What are your saved posts and comments here on lemmy, this one is the one I'm sharing then
- You are my brother for life.
  
  Thank you, but beware, as your new brother for life has some crazy hot takes and likes to argue a lot on the internet even though he probably shouldn’t. Lots of sibling responsibility! Although I don’t know which of us is the big brother / little brother.
- Late to this, but except for folding (or hanging up) clothes, this is my laundry strategy. Don't own an iron. Travel steamer for emergencies, more often used to refresh my hair.
  I used to tell my kids to stand in the laundry basket to undress, because they couldn't get the clothes into the basket.
- Laundry: I use "laundry bags", they cost about the same as hampers. I keep them in my bathroom and office (work from home) because I have to start work much earlier than my family so get dressed there in the morning. They are portable, don't look that messy (just a black bag) and easy to tote around when full.
  Edit - forgot to mention (of course) that a big bonus for having one of these in my office which is near our kitchen and living area is I throw all the socks people take off and hoodies, dish cloths, etc into it which keeps the dog from stealing them and keeps the main area tidier.

Wash their sheets and pillow cases. Also vacuum. Dust mites are not healthy to have around.
- Roomba is a lifesaver.
  
  Agree. I thought they were overrated until we got one. They are like pets that clean. Ours has a cute punny name.
  
  Mine is super unreliable, plus what takes him 2 hours, I can get done in 30 minutes.
  
  Agreed. Apparently some people have issues with it but ours has been running pretty steadily every morning for the last 1.5 year or so. At some point the charging contacts were a bit dull and it started giving errors but otherwise the maintenance is minimal.
  Oh but I can heavily recommend buy extra filters and when doing a bit more thorough clean of the dustbin just vacuum out the filter with another strong vacuum, or slap it on the floor a couple times to really get the dust out. Doing this and the suckpower increases tremendously and it also seems to more efficiently pack the dust in the bin by just having stronger suction, i guess
  
  Robot vacuums are great, but my Roomba is incredibly unreliable. I’m buying Roborock next time.
- My robot vacuum gets triggered any time I leave the house. Go out for dinner? Go to work? Grab coffee? Come back to a vacuumed house.
  
  I know it's better than nothing, but the reason I haven't bothered to get one is that the vacuum guy on Reddit made me a solid believer in German bagged vacuums like Sebo. Almost everything else is exhausting dust everywhere it goes.

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.

Wash the sheets

Clean the filter in your dishwasher once every month or two, depending on how often you use it.
- I clean ours every 1-2 weeks

Going over the counter with a swab and some random household spray soap. I think some people have the great habit to always keep the kitching clean, but we don't, and I've noticed that when you really try to keep it clean it not only looks so much fucking more calm and not like a mind-pulling warzone of stuff to do, but I also noticed less (fruit)flies, which, now that i'm writing it, makes our kitchen sound fucking disgusting.

Check the air pressure in your tires. Seems like nobody does this these days.
- Don't most cars do that for you now? Mine does.
  
  Wanted to make a joke about fancy young cars, but apparently automatic tire pressure systems have been around since the 80's, and apparently it's mandatory in the EU since 2014?
  Never saw it in a car myself, but the youngest car I ever drove is I think my dad's from 2010 or something.
  
  You should still check, as the tpms may only warn you when it gets too low but generally driving even just a couple psi off can have a big effect on fuel economy and tire life.
  
  I think most newer cars do. However for mine I think the tires should be at 35psi and the alert goes off at 30, so you're a ways away from ideal pressure.
  I try to check my tire pressure whenever you have drastic temperature changes (summer -> fall and winter -> spring) and that seems to work for me.
- My car has an alarm if they drop 0.1 psi

Clean the microwave and oven. People have some filthy microwaves(mine included).
- There's an easy(ish) way to clean one. Put about 1-1.5 cups of water into a microwave safe bowl or glass (I use Pyrex measuring cup) and microwave it for about 10+ minutes. Let the water boil really good and the hot steam will soften all the crap on the inside of the microwave. Get the cup out carefully, wipe the inside with a wet cloth, maybe spray some cleaner if oily and you're done.
  
  You really want to let that water sit still for a bit before you take it out. It could have superheated (meaning a portion under the surface tension has converted to gas) and explode when disturbed.
  
  Oh that's smart. I'm gonna try this on my microwave

Not technically a chore, but a chore preventer: Close the lid before flushing the toilet.
I run an Airbnb hosting in a room on my house for like 3 years and I’m still amazed by how little people actually did it. Even after we sat a signal asking for it just above the flush button. Having feces particles all around your brushes, toothbrushes, towels, etc is an image nobody has but myself it seems.
- This was disproved on mysthbusters
  
  The mythbusters I saw proved it true. Odd.
- Read a paper on this at some point, and this has become standard practise at home. Notice that visitting friends don't do this, so I thought about looking framing the paper and/or some figures showing those plumes after flushing (can't remember what paper it was but I guess searching pubmed for "toilet flushing" will easily give some appropriate results).
  edit: OK "toilet flushing plume" did the trick and showed this marvel (see figure 2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9732293/
  
  I read it, and the big take away is that if you are out of the room in three seconds, no poop plume gets on you, personally.
  J/K that's true but I've always closed the lid anyway, 'cause it's just polite.
- Damn Myth Busters!!!
  
  the cat made me start closing the lid, mythbusters kept me going

Clean the touchable surfaces on your devices and device keyboards.
- Popping off all the keys on my keyboard, cleaning the base and washing the keys is so cathartic.

Blow out the dryer duct.
- Clean the lint trap on your dryer.
  I know it sounds like something everyone already does, but when I moved into my house I found the lint buildup astronomical. The previous owners had hung a clothesline in there because I'm guessing the dryer didn't work well.
- Is it DIY? This sounds like one of the things I'd rather hire a professional for.
  
  Depends how long it’s been. If it’s not too bad, it takes 5 minutes if you have a leaf blower.
  But if it’s been 20 years… https://youtu.be/-ukqhzvljvI?si=Bso65IJtZhlRKvbJ

Change your air filters regularly
- and don't forget those extra air handler things like if you have a HRV. i swear the previous owners of mine never cleaned it and the OEM filters basically disintegrated when i did it the first time after moving in. luckily all i had to do to replace them was cutting down to size those cheap-o washable filters from the hardware store, good enough to keep the large chunks out.
  
  Even if they don’t carry the proper size at the hardware store, you can usually ask them to order one or find the correct size online for order. Often, they’re even cheaper online!
- Death to America

As someone with a German shepherd, vacuum the carpets. You can never get that pet hair out enough, and just when you think you're done there's more! I can feel it pleasing my sinuses every time I vacuum
- I often think that anyone who has ever had to remove carpet would never choose carpet as a floor covering. Vacuuming just isn't really that effective. You always end up with heaps of this really fine "dust" (pet dander? dead skin?), it's just gross. Hard floors are the only way.
  
  I agree! Can't wait to be able to have hardwood floors and put down a rug or two. But all this is so expensive so I'll take the gross off white carpet for now

Flush your water heater once a year.
I know that I'm guilty of not doing this regularly, my dad, a former pipeftter and practically a living parody of the responsible homeowner dad who drove us all crazy with preventative maintenance routines doesn't even do it regularly.
But it's really not hard, I'm not going to write a guide here because if you just punch "how to flush a water heater" into your search engine of choice you'll get plenty of good results.
It'll improve the lifespan and efficiency of your water heater and decrease how much sediment and such you have in your hot water.
Also when you get a new water heater, replace the shitty plastic valve they all seem to ship with these days with a proper brass valve, it's like a $10 part from home Depot and takes about a minute to swap them out. They probably use them because they know no one actually flushes their water heater anyway, but if you're one of the few of us who do, you know how sketchy the plastic ones are, if you touch them more than about 2 or 3 times you feel like you're going to break them.
How truly necessary it is will depend a lot on the quality of your water, if you have good, clean, soft water, it may not make a noticeable difference, if you have harder, dirtier water it might buy you a couple extra years with your water heater, and if your water quality is especially bad you may want to do it a couple of times a year. It takes a little bit for the tank to drain, fill back up and get to temperature, but it's less than 10 minutes of actual hands-on work, and you can go do whatever the hell you want in the meantime as long as it doesn't involve hot water.
You should also check and may need to replace the anode rod every few years, that can also increase the lifespan of your water heater. You're probably going to need a beefy impact wrench though, they often really don't like to come free.
- I bought a house that was used as an office before getting remodeled and sold to to me. When I drained the hot water tank brown slime came out, it looked like a ribbon of brown mushroom. Gotta assume this was bacteria byproduct built up while the tank ran at low heat and saw little water use. I added bleach to sanitize while refilling it and drained.
- This is probably something I should do ... the hot water tank predates my water softener. Truth be told though, I'll probably go tankless when it dies... my parents have one, it's such a nice small thing, particularly if your usage varies and your power is reliable.
  
  Yeah, if it makes sense for your situation absolutely go tankless if you can, for a lot of situations they're going to be more efficient and save you money in the long run even though they're more expensiveup front
  I believe it's still recommended that you flush a tankless unit once in a while, I don't have any firsthand experience with them though, so of course do your research , read the manuals, etc.

Clean under/behind appliances.
- Ugh even that big ass fridge and stove?
  
  Especially the fridge, mine was so clogged with dust under it I think improved it's efficiency by 50% in 2 minutes with the vacuum cleaner

Don't know for other people but I should definitely clean my windows more often. I think I'll do that today.

Yes, power drills can clean bathtubs and toilets. Just use different brushes.
- Instructions unclear. Used forstner bits. Bathtub now has extra drainage.
- Drill brush!

Checking on your neighbors.
- I think that's a really good point. Of course it's easier said than done, and any particular neighborhood environment could make it difficult to accomplish. I live in suburban Southern California. Our neighborhood is near the beach, about 150 years old. We have condo boxes, old post-WWII flats, ranch style houses, apartments, AirBnBs. I'm retired, loquacious, and I keep an eye out. I've met most of my neighbors, know them by name, and I try to stay out of their hair. I even say hello to the AirBnB peeps. We have an older lady next door, kind of a shut in. Never saw her outside. One day I left a note in her mailbox, introducing myself and my wife. Told her we were always around, and if she needed a hand once in a while (as we all do), we'd be able to help. She got back to me and was very grateful and happy I dropped the note. You never know, you might make someone's day or even save their life.

Clean the shower drain. You can also get little nets for catching hair under the grate, at least for the ones usually found in my country. It's surprising how much hair ends up there.
- It's also a good idea to pour a bit of something like green goblin down the drains once a month or so. I find it helps to prevent the otherwise inevitable buildup from soap scum and whatever fats n junk that make it down there.
  Also, always wipe greasy kitchen stuff with a napkin or paper towel and toss it in the trash. Soap pans n things to make sure fatty water isn't going down. Cleaning out the kitchen pipes after year's of neglect sucks!

Cleaning out the billionaires from behind the curtains
- If they are behind my curtains I should be charging them rent.

Basically all of them, ugh.

not relevant to every household, but regularly clean/rinse the effluent filter on your septic system (i do mine at least 2x a year)... and realize you may have more than one. it ain't a pretty job, but you're going to save yourself from a massive repair bill and/or damage from a backup by spending the 15 minutes to git er done.

Dusting, apparently

Sharpen your knives. Replace your furnace filter. Clean your gutters.

149 comments