If you check around the web, you can find a list of the things most homeowners need to do on a regular basis to keep their castles gleaming. From testing your ground fault circuit interrupter(s) to ensuring your windows and skylights close tightly, checking and cleaning (or replacing) furnace filters, to checking your faucets for signs of dripping, the list of what you have to do to keep your home humming along smoothly can be hugely intimidating, especially if you’re not sure how things work. But ignoring the little things can only go on so long, and then they turn into really big things that cost a lot of money to fix.

A few weeks after moving into my home, it suddenly struck me that as a single woman who hates to climb ladders, I was going to have to figure out how to cope with things like changing furnace filters and replacing light-bulbs in high-up fixtures. I panicked. I hate balancing on a ladder in a stairwell. I just can’t do it. So I put out a call to friends for a rent-a-husband. Annie was the first to respond, offering up her husband as my Sub Hub (substitute husband). He’ll be happy to strap on his tool belt and head on over to Casa Gail whenever I need him.

It might be easier to just let him do everything, but I feel I’ll be failing to provide Alexandra with an appropriate role model if I abdicate my home maintenance to any guy who is willing to strap on tools for me. So I’m making a commitment to DIY. Which means I have to figure out what to do and when … and eventually how.

You can create (or print from the web) a seasonal home maintenance list or you can create a custom monthly maintenance schedule for your home. I like the monthly schedule more since:

a) you can create one that is specific to the home you’re living in, and

b) you can schedule the tasks to be done in an efficient way.

In my last home, I lived on a septic system, had a well and had to cut 3 acres of grass every two weeks. In my present house, I’m on town water, town sewage, and have a postage-stamp lot. The off-the-rack seasonal checklists don’t do a really good job of covering what I need for either properties; my new monthly, customized list will.

Once you’ve listed all the stuff you need to do every month, you should incorporate the biggies into your plan. If your dishwasher will need to be replaced in two years, figure out the approximate cost of the replacement, divide it by 24 (the number of months) and make sure you allocate that portion of your maintenance budget to the dishwasher. If you’re planning on painting the kids’ rooms, installing a new counter-top in the kitchen, or redoing the main floor bathroom, estimate your costs and divide by the number of months remaining until you execute your plan. Now you’re working proactively to keep things in tip shape, and create the environment you want, as opposed to flying by the seat of your pants and hoping you’ll magically come up with the money.

When I moved into my new home, I knew I would need a roof almost immediately. I negotiated the cost of the new roof off the purchase price of the house and then slapped that money into a high interest savings account so that come spring I can have the roof replaced AND pay for it. I could just ignore my sad roof until it starts to leak, but then not only will I have to replace the roof, I’d have to replace insulation, re-drywall ceilings and paint… again!

Now I have to start planning for new carpeting/flooring. Man, it’s always something.

The excitement of moving into your first home, or a new home, is something that just can’t be described. There’s a flutter in your tummy, a sense of OMG that just wraps itself around you. And when you finally get the boxes unpacked and you walk around your castle, you’re often pinching yourself that you’ve done it. More OMG moments.

I distinctly remember looking out my kitchen window and wondering how I’d managed to make the life I had. I was living in the city at the time, the weeping mulberry was shooting pollen into the air, and the kids were romping, laughing and shouting. I did pinch myself.

The warm fuzzy feelings of owning your own digs eventually give way to the what-the-hell realization that when you own a home, there is always something that needs doing. Each time I’ve bought, I’ve had a home inspection that identified what was good and what was not-so-good about the home I was buying. And each time I’ve been told that there was stuff that would have to be done to fix or keep the house in good shape.

The rule of thumb for budgeting home maintenance costs is that you can expect to spend between three and five percent of the value of your home holding the sucker together. Older homes require more financial investment. Brand new homes require almost nothing initially, often lulling home-owners into a false sense of what things really cost.

People screech when I tell ‘em they need to budget for home maintenance. “What!?” they bellow at me when I tell them that on a $350,000 home, they need to set aside between $875 and $1,460 a month, depending on the condition they got the sucker in. Are you kidding me? That’s the equivalent of rent!

Home ownership is a big responsibility. And it can be very expensive. Let’s take a new roof as an example. A new roof on an average sized house costs between $6,000 and $8,000 if you go with a reputable roofer and use good quality materials. If you buy a home that’s brand new, you can expect to get 10 to 15 years out of your roof. Let’s be optimistic and say you’ll get 15 years; that translates into socking away just $39 a month to have what you’ll need when the time comes. But if your home is already 12 years old, you only have three years to come up with the money, so it’ll cost $194 a month. And that’s just for the roof.

There are furnaces to be replaced (a good gas furnace should last 15 to 20 years), windows and doors to be updated (window glass usually has a 10-year life span), and appliances to be fixed or replaced (anywhere from 6 years to 15 depending on the appliance). You have to paint inside and outside, repair asphalt or interlocking brick, and lay new carpet or other flooring periodically. And then there’s the stuff you must do seasonally – like clean the chimney, open and close the pool, maintain the garden, clean the eave troughs, – to keep the place in working order. Never mind the stuff you choose to do: painting or wall-papering, changing window coverings, putting down new flooring, adding storage or living space in a basement, upgrading bathrooms and kitchens, planting a garden.

When we bought the house in the country five years ago, our home inspector was fabulous (get a reputable one so you can trust what he/she says, it’s worth every extra penny you spend) and gave us a list of what would have to be done, along with a timeline and an approximate cost. And he was dead on. The chimney liner had to be replaced the second year we were there, the appliances in the kitchen in year five, and the roof soon after.

You can skimp on your home maintenance, ignoring the cracking foundation, the rotting deck or the fence that’s falling down only so long. When it finally MUST be done, no doubt it’ll cost three to five times as much as it would have if you’d simply maintained it. Out of the U.S. comes the statistic that for every $1 spent on home maintenance, you’re likely saving $100 on repairs. Pay now or pay big-time later. It’s your call.