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10 Jobs That You Need To Do Once A Year

  • November 2016
10 Jobs That You Need To Do Once A Year

The Good Housekeeping Institute calls them the “10 things you only have to clean once a year”. “Yes,” it says of its latest findings, “there are jobs that only need doing every 365 days!” This would be welcome news only if you had seriously considered performing any of the listed chores more often than once a year, or indeed ever. But how easy would it be get then all done at once? I took the list round my house for a look.

1. Wipe down window frames
The glass in my office window was cleaned last weekend, but I do see the frame is a bit grey and grubby. Using a damp cloth and a washing-up liquid solution, I rubbed away at it until the grime came off, along with much of the flaking paint, and some of the actual wood. In retrospect, an enormous mistake.

2. Clean out the man drawer
I resent the term “man drawer”, which makes it sound as if the current state of the drawer in question is all my doing. It is a simple, if dispiriting, task: just tip out the contents and sort through everything – takeaway menus, dead batteries, dracula fangs, wasabi packets, the handle from another drawer, the jack of clubs, two keys stuck together with gum – purging the useless and out of place. Once I came to the painful conclusion that every single item from the drawer needed to go right back in there, it got easier.

3. Wipe down lightbulbs
I’ve never even heard of this. I accept in principle that lightbulbs can get sticky and dusty – “it’s amazing how much light this cuts out,” says the GHI’s website. But surely natural turnover takes care of the problem – bulbs don’t generally last long enough to collect a year’s worth of dirt. Against my better judgment, I removed and wiped the main kitchen bulb – it was filthy. Afterwards I felt stupid.

4. Get your chimney swept
I couldn’t arrange this on such short notice, so I settled for Googling: “Do I need to have my chimney swept if it’s only a gas-effect fire?” Apparently, I do. I wish I hadn’t looked now.

5, 6, 7. Wash your curtains, deep-clean your carpets and upholstered furniture
No.

8. Empty your gutters
This is the only chore on the list that is also on my actual list of chores, where it comes right after: “Buy a ladder long enough to reach the gutters.” Now, faced with all these weird chores I didn’t know about, I’m obliged to put both off.

9. Wipe down garden furniture
Are they kidding? It’s garden furniture. It lives outside. I don’t know about you, but I refuse to clean anything that gets rained on as a matter of course.

10. Purge your garage and basement
I don’t have either, which seems, in hindsight, like foresight. Job done.

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