The Green Home Coach

BY MARLA ESSER CLOOS

MARLA ESSER CLOOS, NAHB Master Certified Green Professional, Wellness Within Your Walls Certified Professional and LEED AP, is the principal of Green Home Coach where she uses her "superpowers" to help home professionals and inhabitants to discover and create better homes for healthier, more comfortable lives. Making simple swaps to green and sustainable choices helps create better homes – a bit at a time in existing homes or all at once for new and remodeled homes. Find more at GreenHomeCoach.com and @greenhomecoach on FB and IG

Prepping for Winter, yep Winter

ENJOY FALL FIRST

With fall upon us, cooler weather offers ample opportunities to get outside, enjoy festivals, farmers markets and our own outdoor oases we’ve created around our homes. The remainder of fall is a good time to plant new trees and shrubs and to seed new lawns or overseed existing lawns. Personally, we are creating more garden space and less lawn space for more color, edibles and less work maintaining the lawn. Fall is also a good time to declutter. Unneeded items can be sold at a garage sale or consider hiring one of the local companies to pick up your give-away items and take them to thrift shops and recyclers. One person’s trash is another’s treasure, and it gives additional life to many products. Fall is also the time to get your home, especially the outdoors, ready for winter.

WHY MAINTENANCE MATTERS

It seems like sometimes maintenance gets a bad rap, yet maintaining your home is one of the most sustainable things that you can do. Maintenance preserves the life of things, so the more routine maintenance you do around the home, the fewer repairs will be needed, and the longer things will last. And the longer things last, the fewer things end up in the trash or the recycling bin. Use a maintenance checklist to make sure that you do everything that needs to be done. A checklist will help you figure out what you can do yourself, and what you will need professional help with. My friend Tina with Home Tips for Women has a unique, three-tiered approach to her home maintenance checklists. She explains that as a homeowner, your priority is to make sure that everything gets taken care of. And you don’t have to do that personally. 1. Inspect your home each season, inside and out, to find out what needs to be taken care of. 2.Maintain the things that require maintenance. (Or have a handy person do it.) 3. Update the things that require updating. When you have little time available, inspect. When you have more time, maintain. And when you’re ready to dive into something, update. It’s a good idea to set some money aside, in a separate account, for the ongoing costs of maintaining your home. Don’t forget to reward yourself after completing your home maintenance, to motivate yourself to keep doing it, going forward.

WINTER WILL BE HERE BEFORE WE KNOW IT

Winter is a time for indoors for most, so the winter home maintenance checklist focuses on your interior home systems and keeping the people living in your home dry, warm, and comfortable. This is also a great time to find and repair all the minor, annoying things we ignore the rest of the year. With winter weather, many hard-to-see hazards become a chance for injury around your home. Be sure entrances are well lit, handrails (where present) are secure, and walkways and steps are in good shape. A place inside for people to take off and put on boots is also helpful. Winter is the time to be sure all your home systems are working well. These systems support your home and lifestyle, yet we often forget about them as they are out of sight in basements, attics, or closets. Your home systems are your heating, cooling (air conditioning) and ventilation systems, hot water, plumbing and electrical. Learn about these systems, where they are, and the maintenance required to keep them running smoothly. Schedule a tune-up with a heating professional for an inspected, cleaned, and readyto-use heating system that will perform better. And if there are any repairs necessary, tending to them now means you’ll have lower bills and fewer surprises later.

THE VALUE OF YOUR HOME

Your home is a big investment, as well as a place of nurturing and refuge. Preventative maintenance of your home protects your investment while improving the living experience in it. If you take care of your home, it will help take care of you. In my book, Living Green Effortlessly, Simple Choices for a Better Home, Chapter 6 is dedicated to home maintenance. Tina of Home Tips for Women collaborated on this chapter with me, and it includes her great seasonal checklists. You can get a copy of the book at many libraries, on my website or on Amazon.

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