Home maintenance checklist by month (short version)

Put each deadline job in the month it belongs to. Drain outdoor faucets and irrigation before the first hard freeze, usually October or November in cold states. Book furnace service in September and air conditioning service in April. Clear gutters after the leaves fall and again in spring. Everything else runs on an interval, not a month.

This is for a house in the United States, northern hemisphere. Freeze dates and storm seasons shift with your climate, and your appliance manuals win over any list, this one included.

The year, month by month

Only jobs that have a season. Some months have nothing on them, and that is correct.

1. January

   Nothing has to happen this month. Keep the monthly alarm test and the filter check, and stop there.

2. February

   Look for tree limbs over the roof or near power lines. Book any pruning now, before spring growth.

3. March

   Walk the outside once the snow is gone. Check that downspouts drain away from the house and that the soil hasn't sunk toward the foundation.

4. April

   Look at the roof from the ground for lifted or missing shingles. Clear the gutters. Book air conditioning service. Switch ceiling fans to summer direction and dust the blades.

5. May

   Have the AC serviced if you haven't. Reconnect hoses and turn outdoor water back on, then look for drips at the faucet.

6. June

   A light month. Touch up exterior paint or caulk while the weather is dry.

7. July and August

   Nothing seasonal. A good month.

8. September

   Book the furnace tune-up now, before the first cold week. Seal gaps where mice can get in. Look for drafts around doors and windows.

9. October

   The busy one. Disconnect hoses and drain outdoor faucets, blow out irrigation lines, bleed radiators if you have them, swap the humidifier pad, service the snow blower, and take window air conditioners out.

10. November

    Clear the gutters once the leaves are down. Finish any freeze job you skipped in October.

11. December

    Nothing seasonal. If a hard freeze is forecast and the outdoor faucets are still connected, do it today.

An example: one October weekend

Say you live somewhere the first hard freeze usually lands in early November, and it's the first Saturday of October. Two hours covers the freeze jobs. Nothing here is urgent yet, which is the point of doing it now.

The order we'd do them in

1. Unscrew every garden hose, drain it and coil it in the garage. A hose left on a faucet can hold water against the pipe.
2. Open the outdoor faucets to drain them. If a faucet has its own shutoff valve inside the house, close that first.
3. Blow out the irrigation lines, or book the company that does it. Water left in the lines can split them.
4. Bleed the radiators and swap the humidifier pad if you have either.
5. Take window air conditioners out and store them.
6. Write the date next to each job. Next October you'll know it was done, not just planned.

Jobs that look seasonal and aren't

These go on an interval. Tie them to the date you last did them, not to a month.

The intervals for the rest of the house are in how often things need servicing. The furnace filter has its own page, because the size and the schedule are where most people guess.

Where a month-based list goes wrong

It goes wrong first on climate. October is the freeze month in Minnesota and an ordinary month in Phoenix. Set your dates from your own first-frost date, and treat the months above as the default for the northern states.

It goes wrong second on length. Forty-item lists get abandoned around item twelve, so we'd keep only jobs with a real failure attached: a burst pipe, a leak behind a wall, a fire, a dead furnace in the first cold week. Reorganizing the garage is fine, but it isn't maintenance.

And gutters depend on the trees, not the calendar. Clearing them in September, before the leaves drop, achieves very little. Wait for the leaves.

For the freeze deadline in detail, see the winterize checklist. For the whole of autumn in order, see the fall checklist.

Questions people ask

Where Home Base fits

This list is the same for every house, and your house isn't. Home Base keeps the months for you: its Seasons page shows spring, summer, fall and winter, each with the jobs that belong to those months for the things you told it you have. A house with no irrigation never sees the irrigation line. It reads from the same care jobs as the main screen, so the two can't disagree.

It assumes the northern hemisphere and has no region setting, so a warm-climate house should read the dates as a guide. Reminders are off until you turn them on. And you still type in what you have, since it doesn't scan or detect anything. If you want a place to write the dates down first, the home log works on paper.