It’s that time of year again. Daylight Savings Time is arriving and it’s time to “Fall Back”. Setting the clocks back is really the only things that’s actually required, and let’s me honest. Most clocks these days reset themselves with only a few exceptions. However, this is also the time when we check a few things around the house. That’s right, we use Daylight Savings Time as a marker for a few semi-annual things on our to-do lists.
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5 Things To Do When Daylight Savings Time Ends
Check your medicine cabinet to see what has expired. This is something that I learned the hard way. My kids are rarely sick, which means medicine can hang out in our cabinets for some time. When they do wake up feeling under the weather I like having supplies on hand. Last winter I had one wake up not feeling well, only to find that several medicines in the cabinet had expired. This year, I’ve added this to my list of things to check.
Replace or clean the filters around the house. This is something that we do annually at this time. We usually pull out the filters in the heating unit to clean it really well. We do this in the spring and fall, so daylight savings is a good marker for us to remember to do this.
Change the batteries in your smoke detectors. I know it can be a pain to climb up there and most of us put this off until the smoke detector starts beeping at us, but it really is worth the extra time to make sure that all the smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors are working properly.
Flip and turn your mattress. This is a quick and easy step to make sure your mattress wears evenly. It’s recommended doing this every 6 months. Obviously you can’t clip a pillowtop mattress, but you can rotate it instead of flipping it over.
Check your first aid and emergency kits. With two boys, it’s safe to say that our first aid kits that we have in the house and vehicle are used quit often. This is the time to check those and replenish what the stock and also check to make sure nothing has expired. This is also the time that we pull out our emergency kids that we keep on hand and check to make sure that the batteries to put in the flashlights are still in great shape and also check the expiration dates on the items we keep in there.
Bonus:
Clean the oven. Seriously I can’t believe that just came out of my mouth. This is the one chore that I hate doing, which is why it’s on my semi-annual list of things to do, unless something made an absolutely mess in the oven. It gets wiped down in between, but twice a year we make sure it’s in tip-top shape. We have a self-cleaning function now, but before that I was getting on my hands and knees and doing it the old-fashion way.
