Creating a 12-month maintenance calendar

Q: I have a hard time keeping up with maintenance tasks — there are so many to do, and so little time. I also want to do some home-improvement stuff, but the repairs and maintenance take up all my time. Got any shortcuts? — Leo M., Providence, R.I.

A: Unfortunately, home repair doesn’t have as many shortcuts as one would like — patience and hard work tend to create the best-quality results. However, you can get control of the maintenance and repair tasks around your home by analyzing the overall situation and scheduling work ahead of time. It’s also important to consider hiring a contractor for some tasks, depending on your skill level, available time and the scope of the job.

January is a great time of year to do most of this planning. The cold weather means you’re in downtime where most repair work is concerned, so you’ll be able to sit back and start creating the all-important 12-month maintenance calendar.

Making a maintenance calendar allows you to put all your needs and wants for your home down on paper in an organized fashion. You can use a small notebook, a spare wall calendar that has room to write, or an actual maintenance calendar (available at home-improvement and book stores).

But before scheduling all your work at once, sit down and brainstorm for a while with a spare piece of paper. List everything that needs to be done around the house this year. Then, list everything you want to do around the house. Next, rank both lists in order of importance (for example, a leaking roof will take precedence over a running toilet). This will be your starting point for the calendar.

If possible, place the maintenance calendar next to your personal or work schedule for the year, so that you can schedule tasks around other commitments. When making the schedule, keep the seasons and potential weather in mind — you don’t want to schedule roof repairs in December, for example.

A maintenance calendar allows you to get a handle on the huge number of chores every homeowner faces throughout the year. You’ll be able to budget your time and money better, and decide which tasks really need to be addressed, which can wait, and which should be handled by a professional.

You still may not complete everything on your list, but I guarantee that by making and following an annual maintenance schedule, you’ll get much more accomplished this year than last.

HOME TIP: Today’s stressful lifestyle requires do-it-yourselfers to budget their time, as much as they budget their money, to get home-improvement tasks done.