Sometimes it feels like life is so chaotic and we just cannot seem to get our arms around the details within our life. When it comes to our homes and overall home management, we get bogged down with all the details necessary to keep our home running smoothly. Wouldn’t it be nice to get the management of our homes organized so that life can run a little bit easier? These three tips are sure to make it easier for you.

Create a Home Maintenance Schedule

Instead of waiting for your equipment and appliances to break or not function, get in the habit of creating a schedule of the tasks you need to take care of around your home. Changing your air filters every 3 to 4 months helps keep your air quality clean and your heating and air conditioning units functioning. Cleaning your stove hoods also keeps your home safe because the grease build up has been washed away and the risk of fire no longer exists. These are just a few of the types of maintenance that are good practices to maintain a healthy and efficient home.

Creating a home maintenance schedule can also help you manage your cash and the time necessary to take care of these tasks. Our homes are one of the biggest expenses we have. Knowing exactly when you will need cash to pay for your window or carpet cleaning helps manage your cash flow throughout the year, against other financial needs. A home maintenance schedule can also help you manage the costs associated with hiring contractors to perform jobs that you may not feel comfortable performing, like climbing a ladder to clean out gutters. Some tasks do not cost dollars but they do require your time and understanding when you can take care of these tasks is important to managing your family time.

Keep Household Documents in a Central Location

Many of us have our household documents spread out all over our home. Real estate documents in one file cabinet, receipts in another, business cards of contractors in a junk drawer, ripped out magazine pages in a file for all the potential design projects we dream about, and any bills or contractor documents that show all that has been done to our homes for tax purposes when we are ready to sell our homes. So, finding all that we need, when we need it, is harder than we thought because our papers are spread all over the place.

Keeping documents in one central location makes life so much easier. If you choose a physical location in your home, pick one spot and move all the documents to this spot for easy access. This will also help if anyone else in the family, like a spouse, needs to access the documents when you are not around. If you choose an online solution, look for password protected sites that can house documents for everything in your home, like owner’s manuals, photos, warranty cards, contractor business cards, receipts, mortgage documents, appraisals, and more. An online solution can also help you manage documents for family members that may not live near you but you need to be aware of the details should something happen to those family members.

Managing the Items at Home

Have you ever been to the store and you could not remember if you had a specific item in your home? Like that new cheese grater that you just had to have but you realize when you get home that you have four other cheese graters. Yikes! This is wasted money and wasted time if you have run back to the store and return it to avoid too many redundant items in your home.

If you take the time to document all the items in your home by taking photos and tracking the details of all these things, you can avoid over-spending on things you already own. You can also understand the details of the items if you happen to be at work and away from your home but you need to make that call to fix the faucet because it broke. Details of the contents of your home can help in case an emergency presents itself like a burglary or flooding from a broken toilet. These itemized details will be ready when you need to make a claim to your insurance company. There is nothing worse than forgetting all the items you had in the home after a theft because those thieves just needed everything more than you did.

Whether you perform your own home inventory or hire for the job, documenting the things you own can really help you in those cases you never thought of.

These simple tips can make life a whole lot easier and help you get organized now.