And where's the list? Like if I could just find a list of like, "Congratulations on being a homeowner, do all this shit because if you don't the repairs will eat you alive" it would be handy.
Just follow Martha Stewart's website, you'll find there are several thousand hours worth of chores you should be doing weekly!
It took us years to compile the list and it’s paid for itself many times over.
But to jump start the list in a future place, especially a traditional house, I’ve considered hiring a housing inspector or general contractor to give us a walkthrough of key maintenance timelines. Many things could be decades away but easy to forget until it’s a much bigger job. Notes from that interaction would essentially be the bones of “the list.”
That's a rough one. I know a good place to start is anything large you buy, make sure you read the maintenance portion of the manual and make a couple notes.
Then I start asking myself about important things like "how do I make sure the plumbing doesn't get fucked? " or "how do I make sure the furnace doesn't die?" and I start googling.
Not a great answer but it helps. I recently realized I didn't give much of a thought to well pump maintenance and I've been down a massive rabbit hole on that one. I feel like you just pick one thing at a time and work on it and you learn as you go.
I just moved to a place with a well last year. I'm generally pretty handy but the whole well system is basically a black box to me at this point.
I'd ask you questions but frankly I'm not ready to absorb the information, but I know I'm gonna need to sooner or later. Probably sooner, it's still the original pump from 1977.
Honestly that sounds like an excellent post in a handyman type of community for compiling a list!
This might have made a good category of thing for me to post back when I made r/ArtisanVideos! Can't believe I didn't think of it in the 11 years before Reddit banned me.
Almost everything in your house has a manual. The furnace, the ac, the water heater, the water softener, the coffee maker, the fridge... they all have manuals. If the people before you weren't responsible and you don't have a packet of manuals somewhere, go through everything and download them. They all say exactly how to do maintenance for each thing, and how often.
Other than that it's mostly looking around and making sure nothing is actively being eaten. Take a flashlight and look around in the attic and basement or crawl space or whatever your can't normally see and make sure things aren't moldy or rotting. If you catch things earlier it's always cheaper and easier.
When you learn minimalists weren't actually about the looks but about keeping stupid adult responsibilities on the low.
Yep, I mentioned to my mum a few times that I'm 'baking' in my microwave, which I know is terrible for this task. So, she'll tell me I should be getting an oven, I should be getting an air fryer etc. etc.. I always tell her, I don't have the space for it, but really, I don't want to be cleaning yet another appliance.
Yes!
Wife was saying big, far away houses are getting cheaper and we should buy and retire there. Nope, the more space the bigger the mess she'll do. Can't literally take 2 steps further to drop whatever it's in her hand. I have a dozen reading glasses spread through the house, usually accumulating at a few preferred places.
Clean your dishwasher filter.
Wipe the gasket on your laundry machines
This one got us the other day. My wife was panicking that the washer was leaking. Turns out never wiping the dog hair off the gasket cloggs the weeps holes and it starts to drip onto the floor
You're not my mom, you can't tell me what to do.
Well I am a mom, so I've learned it's a lot less disgusting if you do it every month, but you don't have to listen to me.
Editing to add: if any of the rest of you are also women, it's a good idea to pick a day for the recurring calendar reminder that doesn't align with the part of your monthly cycle when you're already miserable and grossed out by the whole world, you'll be crying into the kitchen sink. If it happens, because cycles are irregular, reschedule for one week ahead, when it won't bother you at all. I guess the same goes for guys except the wild swings of your emotional cycles are less predictable.
Clean your dryer vent
Relatively lucky in this respect. The apartment where I live has a company do this twice a year so at most all I have to do is every month or so disconnect it from the vent hose and suck it out with a vacuum.
More importantly, clean your dishwasher vent.
If you didn’t know it had a vent, enjoy cleaning out that mold.
Change your furnace air filter
Being a functional adult is essentially self parenting. It’s cheaper to clean and maintain than to constantly buy new or neglect issues until they snowball. Easier said than done, it’s definitely not always easy but worth the time.
Yeah, the only problem is, only now I'm starting to realize some things. I'm 53 - but hey, it's never too late...
While I completely agree, maintaining your items will make them last much longer, I feel the degradation of quality over the years works so much against us. Many items are made these days to not be able to be fixed. Sometimes a digital display or button breaking can brick a well taken care of item. No matter how well you take care of clothes and furniture like your grandparents did, that particle board will fail and that fast fashion shirt will pill. Even high end brands have gone down in quality significantly, so investing more in something you think you trust can still be frustrating. It's so much energy to figure out what you should invest in vs buy cheaper.
You'll love thinking back to the coffee machine as a problem when you have to handle your parents estate. I won't sugar coat it: Adulting is hard.
When building his house, my father took many shortcuts and often picked the cheaper option, even if it would be more costly in the long term. And even when a cheap piece of crap breaks becuse it's a cheap piece of crap, he goes and buys another cheap piece of crap to replace it.
For example, he refuses to connect to the city water supply, instead he built a well. This can be a good way to save on water costs, as long as your regularly replace filters and test the water to make sure it's safe, and descale it if too hard.
However, he rarely replaces the filters and refuses to install a water softening system. We got sick a few times because of the water (now we just buy bottled when visiting), and all appliances, faucets, water heater are clogged with limescale that cause low water pressure. Fixing or replacing all of them is going to be super expensive.
Similarly, he bought the cheapest doors, and we got stuck because the door handle broke. The house is full of improvised electric stuff. The fridge is so bad it regularly breaks, and even when it's working sometimes food spoils after just 1-2 days because it doesn't cool evenly. He is also a bit of a hoarder, and has a terrible taste in furniture and decorations.
I am the most likely to inherit the estate, and I'm honestly not looking forward to having to deal with all that crap.
Oh man. Oooooh maaannn that is going to suck HARD. Questionable taste in furniture is one thing, but a house that needs massive repairs and is potentially not up to code (the electrical stuff) is a huge liability. Depending on where you live, you may not even be allowed to sell it unless you bring it up to code... which could mean a full-on gut job.
Some localities may not even allow the sale of that house until it is connected to municipal water.
It is entirely possible it is more cost effective to remove the small amount of belongings you want to keep (a huge task in itself if he's a hoarder), and raze the structure and sell the land cleared.
If you do go that route of destroying the house, contact your local fire department. They may be interested in burning your house down as part of firefighter training. They do this for free. It could mean significantly less costs of clearing the land if the house is burned down.
I need to descale my coffee machine. How do I do that?
Read the manual. It might have a descale mode that pushes some descaling chemical through the pipes without heating it.
Source: I did it like a month ago. The water that came out was quite pulpy.
I usually just run vinegar through it every once in a while and then run a few pots of just water to get rid of any residual vinegar. Beware, it'll make the house smell like vinegar for the rest of the day.
Might want to try citric or lactic acid instead at a proper dilution.
White vinegar works, or you can pick up "sour salt" in the Kosher section, which is citric acid and since you don't need much the rest is handy as a substitute for lemon juice. Dilute with plenty of water, run the machine, it removes calcium deposits.
You gotta use a tougher kind of scale like a dragon scale to scrape it off!
I used this stuff called Durgol to descale my CNC spindle and it worked wonderfully.
I can live with all the petty little details of day to day life. Even the medical ones as you age.
Pro Tip: when you hit 50, you really need to start looking for that doctor you intend to die on. That doctor will have all those little details documented saving you a whole bunch of time.
The one thing I absolutely hate as someone who has been faking the whole adult thing for decades now, is having to figure out what's for supper every damn day.......
The saddest I’ve seen is a 70 yr old “from a different era” who had to now learn how to make macaroni with cheese for the first time in his life because his partner passed away.
That’s where I think shit has gone really wrong for way too long when trying to adult. Like prepare that you may have to live alone for at least a portion of your life and be the type of person you can stand to be around alone.
As a person is less than a handful of years away from being 70 myself, that person's problem wasn't in "being from a different era." But rather deciding, whether conscious or not, to be passive in life and refusing to learn new things. A a vast number of all of you out there suffer from the same problem. Like expecting someone else to make the macaroni and cheese for you rather than learning how to do it yourself. Many people expect someone else to solve all their problems for them. And then are shocked and surprised when that doesn't happen as they get older. I learned from my elders on how to solve my own problems. Sometimes by teaching, sometimes by letting me fail and then learning from fixing the problem I had created for myself.
They taught me everything from how to forage the forest, hunt, fish, raise livestock and butcher it, grow a garden, make soap from scratch, repair large and complex machines and many other skills that few can do these days. Most important of all, they taught me that learning never ends. And the day it does, you are dead.
Being alone with myself is dangerous for me because I prefer being alone these days. After a lifetime of being the cavalry coming over the hill to save the day, I'm burnt out and tired of it. I just want to spend my remaining time alone to heal from all the stupid I had to try and fix.
The one thing I absolutely hate as someone who has been faking the whole adult thing for decades now, is having to figure out what’s for supper every damn day…
Something that seems to work for us is to always have 2-3 oven-ready frozen meals (i.e. lasagna, shepherd's pie, pizza) in the freezer for the days when we just can't come up with something, 3-4 semi-planned meals (pick a protein, pick a veg, pick a starch and go), and maybe 1 or 2 specifically planned meals that require us to buy specific ingredients we wouldn't normally have on hand, and usually those would be made either on the shopping day or the day after.
But the oven-ready meals are really the key part, it's the emergency meal for when we just don't have the mental energy to figure something out.
While I do have frozen meals ready to nuke at times, (soups and chili). It still requires malice aforethought to prepare and freeze such things. I really wish I didn't need to be bothered.
This is where lasting relationships and divorce enter the building. Can you, will you deal with the coffee pot? Or do you pray, with every task, that they take care of it first? Is your other half taking care of it while you feel relief, far too often? Are you sick of taking care of it while your other half is checks other room watching YouTube and scrolling Lemmy?
Is it balanced? Or is it a question of how long until imbalance breaks things?
Adulting is tiring. Adulting is also a key to relationship maintenance.
We take the opposite approach: never assume your spouse is going to deal with it; see a problem, deal with it yourself.
Our marriage is still a mess, but it's a mess that's not breaking up any time soon. Mostly we both need to stop drinking.
Holy shit, that hits close to home.
For me it's Checks room and partner is stuck on Instagram/Facebook/Tiktok.
Or partner takes 45m to do a 5min task because they take 10m standing breaks every minute to doomscroll.
Then complain that they don't have any time to do their normal shared workload. Or play with the kid with me, or walk the dogs....etc
I am still struggling with laundry, fr
Pro-tip - newer HE detergents are very concentrated. Use less than you think you need. A half cap is for highly stained items, we're talking grass stains, blood, turmeric, etc. You only need a little for most loads. Maybe a quarter cap or less, or a quarter cup if using real measurements.
Also, if you're using a newer HE washer, also be sure to enable the "extra rinse" on the cycle. They really, really suck at rinsing off detergent by default (especially if you use too much) and will bleach/fade your clothes in the dryer if not fully rinsed.
I thought everybody just sent into the trashcan every item that needed cleaning, and bought new ones weekly
French press, yo.
Why am I in this picture and why does it hurt so much. ALso it's bEen 1 monTh and 12 DAys siNCe I DEscaLEd mY coFFee maChiNE.
Wait til you hit 40-50.
You get a new responsibility: taking care of your fossilizing body.
Moisturizing after your shower to prevent dry itchy skin Gel in your mouth to prevent it from drying out during your sleep. Must go to bed at regular times or else you sleep like shitThat sweet spot when your kids start getting independent and your parents start getting dependent.
I think the gel thing is a portion of humanity (especially those who need a cpap) and if you don’t have one and you are getting dry mouth you should really look into a sleep test to make sure you’re not on the brink of death every hour as you sleep
Either that or get your nose checked as maybe there’s an issue there that is causing mouth breathing.
The 20 dollar coffee machine that holds 12 cups doesn't need descaling
it still does if you have hard enough water
About a month ago…
This adult doesn't do coffee. Caffeine capsules washed down with grape flavored carbonated water. My adult issues are the expectations others seem to have of me, like visiting or calling/texting. I usually don't unless I have business to work out.
Uh-oh...
My choice to go with instant coffee is paying dividends!
Instant coffee with a fancy creamer is underrated
By Darwin, so much this. If somebody could actually convey the insane amount of work and responsibility that is heaped upon your shoulders when you start having children and running a home, you’d never grow up.
Whatever load you think you’re carrying as a teen - it’s not as much as you think.
The most adult part of that sentence is the admittance you can’t just go out and buy coffee everyday either.
Technically quite a few months but the stupid button that is needed for descaling does not work anymore so...
just pour acid in there, it'll dissolve everything
No kettle. No dishwasher. No coffee machine.
Yeah. Adulting is hard :)
if you can't find empathy compassion is another option.
;)
See all the maintenance and tracking of physical portions of my adult life are fine. I have plenty of space to remember what devices need what servicing or care, to pay attention to changes in performance or observe wear.
But the cultural and societal stuff is like voodoo magic to me. Surplus cash in escrow, down deposits, and HELOCs, heck even cultural gossip as a standard of conversation. Nah doesn't do anything for me.
Ask me to manage my physical existence and I can do so indefinitely without complaints. It's the imaginary adult stuff that is beyond me.
Unfortunately, my fucking coffee machine tells me, very insistently that it’s time to descale. I usually hold out against its demands for a good couple months though.
The real reason we have disposable products.
Best thing not to have a coffee machine then.
Fuck, I gotta descale my espresso machine too. Thanks for the reminder
Screw that, I'll descale it when it refuses to work due to he built in descale timer! Not anytime before!
I completely agree. If you make thoughtful decisions and stay dedicated, you can reach a point in life where you can start to slow down and enjoy the fruits of your labor. My plan, for example, is to reduce to a four-day workweek once my house is paid off, so I can spend more quality time with the people I care about most. Life requires both hard work and a bit of luck to truly succeed, but with persistence and determination, it’s possible to shape the life you want.
Slowly increasing responsibilities?
Wow imagine having the privilege of a childhood
I do descale my coffee machine regularly... But lately I've just been looking at the blinking orange light and developing mind blindness to it day by day...
Get a french press or clever dripper. Much better coffee, and with the clever, much less mess.
I use a French press. It really is super nice because all the coffee can mix with water then you press it down to filter it. No need for a funnel and wasteful filter paper.
I use the French press and the clever alternating. Recently I’ve used the clever more often though, as I’ve had to cut cholesterol wherever I can, and that includes filtering my coffee.
