Build a home maintenance calendar for your house

Get a month-by-month checklist for your specific house and add the reminders to your calendar.

The problem

Small maintenance tasks (HVAC filters, gutters, water heater flushing, smoke detector batteries, dryer vent cleaning) are easy to forget until something breaks. Skipped maintenance is how a $20 job becomes a $2,000 repair.

Step by step

1. 1Write down the basics about your house: age, heating and cooling type, water heater type (tank, tankless, gas, electric), roof type, septic or sewer, well or city water, pool, fireplace, and your climate or state.
2. 2Open ChatGPT or Claude and paste the prompt below with those details.
3. 3Paste the checklist into Google Sheets so you can check items off and note what you did and when.
4. 4Add recurring reminders in Google Calendar: click a date → "More options" → set "Does not repeat" to the right schedule (monthly, every 3 months, yearly).
5. 5Look up your appliances' manuals (see the appliance manual use case) for their exact maintenance schedules, and adjust the calendar to match.

Copy-paste prompt

Make a home maintenance calendar for my house. Details: [age, HVAC type, water heater type, roof type, septic/sewer, well/city water, pool, fireplace, other]. I live in [state/climate]. Give: (1) a month-by-month checklist with each task, how long it takes, and whether it is DIY or usually a pro; (2) a list of recurring reminders (monthly, quarterly, yearly) I can put in my calendar; (3) safety tasks I should never skip (smoke and CO detectors, dryer vent, etc.). Keep tasks practical for a regular homeowner and mark anything that depends on my specific equipment.

Tips and watch-outs

• Your appliance and HVAC manuals override general advice; follow their schedules.
• Test smoke and carbon monoxide detectors monthly and replace them by the date printed on them.
• Gas appliance, furnace and roof inspections are jobs for licensed pros.

Review AI output before using it. Don’t paste confidential, customer or patient data into tools your company hasn’t approved.