Start the year strong with this simple, beginner-friendly January home maintenance checklist. From cleaning garage clutter to prepping bathroom fans, here’s how to make your home a haven in 2024.
Welcome, Honey Badgers 🦡
Whether you’ve just moved in or have called your place home for years, you’re in the right spot. MainTenacious is here to help you simplify homeownership—without the overwhelm.
We believe that a well-maintained home is more than just tidy—it’s a source of peace, comfort, and calm. And what better time to reset your relationship with your home than the beginning of a brand-new year?
Gateways and Transitions
Ah, January, where we bid adieu to the holiday break and welcome the embrace of routine. Yet, it’s also the time for new beginnings and setting intentions for the upcoming year. If you’re like me, you struggle to balance the comfort of the old and the excitement of the new.
For many, this tension becomes motivational—a chance to declutter, clean, and make room for the new. It allows one to bid farewell to the clutter and dust of the past while welcoming in fresh energies and opportunities.
Consider Janus, the Roman god of doorways and beginnings, depicted with two faces—one facing the future, the other the past. Janus embodies the idea that an end often brings about a beginning, the past flows into the present.
Just as Janus symbolizes this duality, cleaning and refreshing your home for the new year can have the same effect. You can take care of the home that you’ve made memories in the past year and cherish those connections while clearing the way for new opportunities in 2024.
I invite you to make home maintenance part of your new routine for 2024—a fundamental aspect of tending to your household.
Why?? I hear you say. This is boring, and I am too busy with life, too busy putting out fires. I have no more time! I am drowning in to-do lists!
Home Maintenance: Proactive vs. Reactive
Look, no matter how much you argue, you WILL spend time on home maintenance. How that time goes, well, that choice is yours.
Things can be frantic, expensive, and inconvenient
~OR~
Things can be calm, empowering, and budget-friendly.
Let’s embrace this change and take charge of our surroundings. Just as Janus is associated with beginnings and endings, make this month your chance to refresh your relationship with your home. January, or Janus-ary as we’d humorously call it, marks our chance to refresh our relationship with our homes.
Join us as we embark on this home maintenance journey together. Stay tuned for tips, hacks, and inspiration to make this endeavor not just a chore, but a transformative and fulfilling experience.
Main + Tenacious is your one-stop resource to streamline your home maintenance. Find everything from shopping lists to instructions, tips, tricks, moral support, and professional advice—all in one place to help you save time, effort, and money.
If you’re craving calm, clarity, and fewer surprise breakdowns in 2024, January is your perfect jumping-off point.
✅ January Home Maintenance Checklist
Let’s keep it simple, focused, and doable.
🔁 Reoccurring Tasks
Y’all up north have an extra chore, but don’t worry, you get to laugh at us in the south all summer long.
- Check water softener salt levels (if you have one)
- Change HVAC filter (add a reminder to your calendar!)
- Look for ice dams or icicles (for those in colder climates)
🛠️ Maintain
This month is easy enough since putting up Christmas is a large task itself.
- Tidy and clean the garage Tidy and clean the garage. You are in there putting Christmas up, might as well spend a few minutes cleaning and tidying it up too (unless its super cold….then I give you a free pass). Keep reading for hints organzing the garage.
- Inspect and clean your bathroom fans For real, these things can cause fires… and fall on you….or lead to major mold and structural problems. It’s well worth an afternoon to prevent $$$ issues down the road.
🧰 Prep
Haven’t been keeping up with home maintenance? Keep it simple and just do these tasks to start. These tasks are the one and done tasks you can do that will make future maintenance and DIY task so much easier.
- Create a basic home maintenance budget.
- Check your fire extinguisher placement and charge level.
- Make a plastic bag dispenser and stash some disposable buckets. Super handy for messy cleanups.
- Clear obstacles from key maintenance spots (attic access, breaker boxes, etc.). No body wants to do two big chores at once! See the Prep course for more on this.
Getting Organized: Garage Projects for Beginners
You might want to hang up some hooks or other things to help you organize. If so, here are some videos to help you along your way. If you are a beginner, get your drill, some screws, and a spare piece of wood or drywall and practice along the videos.
A pro tip – as annoying as it can be, we highly recommend that you put hooks and shelves in the garage into a stud. Why? you may think it will hold something light forever, but some stuff in the garage is HEAVY. If you forget that it’s just a drywall anchor, and hang something heavy on it, you will make yourself a project later on down the road.
Beginner Video Guides:
- How to use a drill
- Pick the right drill bit
- Find a wall stud
- Hang shelves
- Build simple garage shelves
- Garage organization ideas
Let 2024 Be the Year You Transform Your Home
You don’t need to do everything. You just need to start.
Tending to your home is tending to yourself. It’s an act of care, a reclaiming of agency, and a way to create the kind of calm that helps you show up fully in other parts of life.
If this resonates with you, you’re in the right place. Main + Tenacious is here with instructions, shopping lists, cheerleading, and support—whether you’re organizing the garage or figuring out how to flush a water heater.
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