The maintenance checklist

After spending a bomb on home interiors, it’s appalling to see things starting to fall apart even before the home celebrates its second birthday. Be it the chipping paint or the rusting hinges, your home starts to crumble from within. But hey, you can avoid all hassles by following some simple maintenance tips, you can keep your interiors in top shape for a long time.

Here are the essentials:

Yearly carpenter visit

Like how we need an annual health check up, your home’s woodwork needs one too. The hardware that’s used nowadays (zero crank hinges, hydraulic lift ups, sliding systems etc) tends to gather dust and dirt with regular use. You would have noticed the space between the shutters either becoming bigger or smaller with use — sometimes the shutters may clash, rub against the adjoining panel, wall or slab or bend and get damaged if the issue is not arrested in time. The carpenter will tighten things back and it will take him no longer than a few of hours to do it.

The over-enthusiastic scrubber

The maid under guidance from the super clean madam sometimes, in her enthusiasm, scrubs away the grouting along with the dirt. Grouting is the filler that’s put in between tiles or granite slab or between the slab and the sink to fill the gap. The purpose is to fill the gap aesthetically and to prevent water leakage in wet places. A scrubbed-off grouting is the single biggest kitchen killer known to us as it leads to water seepage from the sink into the woodwork underneath. Also, the ‘artificial rain’ in your bathroom due to the seeping ceiling is probably because of the over-enthusiastic scrubber upstairs.

As you may have guessed already, a scrubbed grouting has a simple solution —  check for its absence on the floors (especially bathroom floors), between the kitchen slab and sink and where the slab meets the walls and put the grouting back. You can in fact do it on your own using white cement for the floor and silicone gel for the kitchen.

The ‘stuffed’ drain pipe

Imagine yourself in the kitchen drain pipe’s shoes…no, throat, and you will feel its bane. A monthly ‘drainex’ down the drain (literally) will help avoid the quarterly choke, providing respite to the woodwork around it. Sometimes, even something as simple as hot water would work.

Formal pest control

So many of us come under the spell of the humane (to the cockroaches) herbal pest control guy or are busy lining our homes with numerous lakshman rekhas. Trust me, nothing works better than a formal pest control treatment. Depending on the size of your place, it costs anywhere between Rs 3,000-10,000 annually and is worth every rupee. The ‘black sand’ that the cockroaches leave behind in your cabinets and drawers are their droppings — not only does it look messy, it also find its way into your utensils, cooking etc. Fix it before it fixes you.

Sparkly clean fixtures

With constant use, you will find a frosty white film settling on your bathroom fittings. It’s a pretty stubborn piece of flab which when attacked with regular cleaners, leads to the chrome itself getting damaged. The solution — a tiny yellow lemon. A scrub with lemon juice or with vinegar will melt away the film and bring the shine back. If you are out of lemon, then use Coke; yes, Coca Cola is a suitable alternative for this.

Now that you know maintaining your home isn’t that strenuous, what are you waiting for? Time to scrub and clean.

(The author is an interior designer and  founder of The Studio, Bengaluru)