10 Ways You’re Ruining Your Home Without Even Realizing It
Maintaining a home is expensive, and many financial advisors recommend that you put aside about 2% of its purchase price each year for its upkeep. This expense is worth it because it prevents small problems from becoming larger ones and keeps your home in good condition so you can actually enjoy living there.
It’s reasonable to assume that if you perform at least minimal home maintenance tasks, you’ll be able to rest easier. But even if you repair things as needed and perform all the recommended annual inspections and maintenance, you can still cause damage to your home in a variety of ways. This is because homeowners without thinking about it can cause damage to the home in the long run.
Doing these 10 things every now and then probably doesn’t make a big difference, but over time and with repetition they can cause serious headaches.
Using too many bath bombs
If you’re relieving the stress of owning your own home by taking a nice, hot bath flavored with a sizzling, colorful bath bomb , you may be slowly destroying your home’s plumbing. Bath bombs typically contain things like citric acid, cream of tartar, Epsom salts and baking soda, not to mention fragrance oils, glitter or other decorations designed to give your bath a whimsical or romantic atmosphere. Over time, all of these substances can easily freeze in your pipes or get stuck in existing clogs, making them worse. A bath bomb every now and then won’t cause much trouble, but if you have a regular habit, you risk paying the plumber a large sum of money sooner or later.
Using Chemical Drain Cleaners
If you have a clogged drain and turn to a chemical drain cleaner to clear it out, you probably won’t destroy your home in the process. But if you have frequently clogged drains that you use a drain cleaner to clear, you’re not only putting a band-aid on a larger problem (why are your drains always clogged?), but you’re also likely damaging your pipes. Most drain cleaners you buy at the store are either caustic or oxidizing, and both produce heat in the process of turning clogged material into something that is easier to dissolve and clean. This heat can, over time, soften PVC pipes and warp metal pipes. If your drain is constantly clogged and running slowly, it’s probably best to call a plumber and perform some basic drain maintenance .
Placing household appliances in the wrong place
Almost every appliance in your home, from your refrigerator to your television, produces heat as a byproduct. If you place an appliance or two next to your home’s thermostat, it can have a major negative impact on two things: your heating or cooling bills and the lifespan of your HVAC. This is because the heat from the appliance will trick the thermostat into thinking your home is hotter than it actually is, causing the air conditioning to work harder in the summer and the heating to work less in the winter. In the first case, your HVAC system will be subject to more wear and tear, resulting in a shorter lifespan, higher repair bills, and more frequent replacement costs. In the latter case, you will have to increase the heat to compensate, which will lead to a similar situation.
Brick painting
If there’s brick inside your home that you’ve painted, congratulations: You may have just lit the fuse on an expensive home renovation bomb. Brick is a porous material, and it needs to “breathe” properly. Paint can insulate brick by trapping moisture inside, which can lead to brick deterioration, mold growth, paint peeling, and cracking . The problem is worse when it is an external brick wall, but even a completely internal wall can slowly deteriorate if it is not painted correctly.
If you must paint a wall, prepare the surface thoroughly and use paint designed for masonry work . Then keep an eye on this. Check it regularly for bubbles, flaking and brick dust, all of which are signs that moisture is contaminating your walls.
Painting over rot
When talking about paint, it’s important to note that it’s not magic. If you notice that the wood inside or outside your home is a little rotten, cleaning it and painting it will absolutely not stop the progress. In fact, this will only make things worse as the paint will trap moisture, which will likely speed up the rotting process that’s eating your home alive—plus, that trapped moisture will cause the paint to bubble and peel anyway. Even if the rot you find is minor, you’ll need to figure out where the moisture is coming from and eliminate it, then repair or replace the wood as needed before painting.
Flushing wipes down the toilet
It’s a strange fact of late capitalism that items clearly marked “flushable” on the packaging often don’t flush at all . Nor is there a long list of things that seem like they should be flushed, like food (which can linger in your pipes for a long time, causing cement blockages) or cat litter, including clumping ones. If you’ve flushed “flushable” wipes down the toilet, you’re on the countdown to a plumbing disaster.
Using the wrong cleaning products
Cleaning your home takes time, effort, and the right cleaning products, which is more important than you think. Vinegar can be an effective cleaning agent, so much so that it can be used for almost any cleaning job. But vinegar is a weak acid and can therefore damage surfaces such as natural stone, TV and monitor screens, hardwood floors and wooden furniture. It can also cause serious damage to washing machines and dishwashers if you throw it in to freshen things up, because vinegar will weaken the rubber seals inside these appliances over time. Likewise, bleach is a powerful cleaning agent, but it can actually corrode metal surfaces (like kitchen appliances) and natural stone. If you regularly clean your home with vinegar and bleach, you are essentially slowly dissolving most of it over time.
And if you use a steam cleaner on wood or laminate floors, you’re probably slowly damaging them, too. Unlike a liquid spill, pressurized steam penetrates tiny seams in the floor, penetrating the wood and causing it to swell, causing permanent and permanent damage.
It’s not enough to sweep
Even if you don’t steam your floors, you can ruin them if you don’t sweep (or vacuum) regularly. That is, every day. Even if your floors appear clean at first glance, unseen dirt is actively destroying your floors. It gets into tiny cracks and seams, dulling the surface and discoloring the floor. Tiny particles of dirt and debris act like sandpaper, and as you walk, you rub them into the floor, creating scratches. When you sweep , notice how many things you remove from the floor that don’t appear dirty to the naked eye, and realize that you are scraping these things across the floor all the time.
Planting climbing vines
If you think the vines enveloping your home are charming, think again: creepers and climbers that grow over houses are slowly eating away at those houses . They trap moisture and open cracks in the exterior of your home that allow that moisture to penetrate, their weight can damage siding and other exterior cladding, they provide a haven for harmful insects and small animals—they can even tear things away from your home, like gutters and downspouts.
Misuse of garbage disposal
A garbage disposal is garbage (if you ask me, anyway), but if you have one, you’ll probably use it. And if you use it, you could be faced with big repair bills in the future because people seem to believe that garbage disposals are magical storage bags that just make everything disappear. The list of substances that can clog your pipes and/or septic system includes most fats, oils and fats (including things like peanut butter or heavy cream), eggshells (or any shells, really), vegetable peels and corn husks. The list is so long that you might wonder what the point of trash removal is, and you wouldn’t be wrong.