March 30th, 2023 by Sarah Miles

Jobs around the home can easily mount up and it’s all too easy to put them off. A good trick for motivating yourself is to tackle jobs that can be done within an hour, so they’re not too daunting and won’t take up much of your day. They’re also really satisfying to tick off the list!

Blitz all the little jobs

Little tasks like a dripping tap or wobbly chair are all too easy to ignore and we often stop noticing them eventually. However, they won’t fix themselves and can lead to much bigger issues if left too long (did you know that a dripping tap can waste around 5,500 litres of water a year which could be a big problem if you’re on a water meter).

Make a list of all the jobs: the leaky shower, the wobbly toilet seat, the sagging shelf, the sink that’s not draining properly etc, get your tools out and just go around for an hour dealing with them all. You will probably find that each one is much quicker and easier to fix than you had anticipated and you’ll wonder why you ever left them so long.

Decorate – but only in small areas

Decorating a whole room takes a lot of work but you can create some really interesting effects in hardly any time at all by simply picking out small, defined areas. The backboards of bookcases, the recesses on windows, a fire surround, or even a random shape on the wall can all be painted or covered in wallpaper or decoupage. Because they’re such small areas, they won’t take long but they can look really interesting and create a high-end interior design feature.

Create an easy-to-change picture gallery

Pictures on the walls really personalise your home, whether they are prints of your favourite artwork, photos of the family, or artworks you have created yourself. Being unable to decide what to display, plus hanging everything straight or choosing how to arrange it can put you off doing it and you can end up with empty walls.

A picture shelf allows you to display whatever you want in an easy way that you can change as often as you like. They are very shallow shelves that just give you enough space to stand your frames and canvases on. Because your pictures are not fixed to the wall, you can move them around or alternate them with other items very easily. Plus, as long as you mount the shelf itself straight, you never have to worry about them being wonky!

Clean up outdoor hard surfaces

Because drives, patios, and pathways are always exposed to the elements, they can become very grubby looking over time, plus more serious blights such as black lichen, mould, or algae can take hold, which can spoil the look of the whole garden.

Cleaning them up is actually much easier than you might think if you use the right product. A specialist patio cleaner or black spot remover (for black lichen) can just be sprayed on and then left to work. Some require rinsing after a few hours and others can simply be left so this is a job that can be done in significantly less than an hour but will make a huge difference to your outdoor space.

Bleed the radiators

Our central heating systems are generally pretty reliable, but they do depend on a certain amount of upkeep and it’s only by doing a few simple things that they remain truly efficient. Now, obviously, you need to be Gas Safe registered to tinker with the boiler but one thing you can do is to bleed the radiators at least once a year.

When the air gets trapped in the system, radiators can’t warm up properly (cold spots or only heating up at the bottom and not the top are signs that this is a problem) yet they will often consume the same amount of energy, making them very inefficient. Bleeding the radiators to release the trapped air should only take less than a minute per radiator, so well worth your time.