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Life is full of tasks to be done: There’s work to perform, cleaning and maintaining our homes, getting medical checkups, feeding ourselves and our families—the list of chores is endless. And your reward for checking something off that list? Probably more chores. Keeping up with all that (and even knowing what needs to be done) can be exhausting, as well, so we’re often happy to pay someone to take care of certain things for us. But just because you can pay someone to perform a service for you doesn’t mean it’s always worth it. While everyone's DIY skills (and specific needs) obviously vary, you can often save yourself a little money and wasted effort by doing stuff yourself—or not at all.
If you have forced air heat or central air conditioning in your home, you’ve probably been approached by someone about cleaning your ducts. The usual argument is that it will make your HVAC systems more efficient and make your home’s air healthier by removing all that gross dust and other contaminants.
But there’s no evidence that duct cleaning actually prevents health problems, according to the EPA, and unless your ducts are absolutely jammed with dust, infested with vermin (or visibly filled with mold) there’s likely little impact on cooling or heating. If you’ll sleep better at night knowing you could eat dinner off your duct’s interior, they’re easy to clean DIY, so don’t bother paying someone up to $1,000 for the service.
The town I live in has six framing stores. And this is not a large city, so I have to assume at least some of these stores are just fronts for organized crime. I mean, I’ve needed to frame maybe a half dozen pictures in my entire life, so I can’t imagine this is a high volume business.
And if you do need something framed, you’re better off just buying a frame from Target or someplace. There’s simply not that much difference in how the final product will look once it’s on your wall, so the only time going to a frame store to pay for the service makes sense is if you have something with unique dimensions or really want a bespoke frame and presentation.
Your roof requires regular maintenance if you want it to last a long time, and that includes periodically cleaning off leaves, branches, and snow from the roof itself and keeping the gutters clear. Not everyone is comfortable or capable of getting up on their roof, so a lot of folks just hire someone to do these maintenance chores (or just skip them altogether, which is a bad idea).
But you don’t need to get on the roof to clean it. Many homeowners can invest in a roof rake and a gutter rake and in just a few minutes, clear most debris or snow off your roof and out of your gutters, with minimal physical effort and zero time spent on a ladder regretting your recent life decisions.
When you buy a piece of upholstered furniture or new carpeting, you’re often urged to pay for a fabric protection plan in case of a stain or accidental damage. This is essentially overpriced insurance that you don’t really need, even if you’re bringing the furniture or carpet into a house filled with children who resemble wild animals. For one thing, you can apply your own fabric protection spray pretty cheaply and easily, and it will work just as well. For another, you can get most stains out of carpet or fabric with a little effort.
If your basement or crawl space is damp or has standing water in it every time it rains, there are certain steps you should take—a sump pump can help drain away standing water, for example. But hiring a waterproofing contractor is probably not worth it for one simple reason: It’s addressing a symptom, not a cause. Waterproofing the interior of your basement is probably not going to work, because as every homeowner knows, water is a wily demon that will always find a way into your house—often mysteriously. If you want a dry basement, you need to address exterior forces: The grading of the ground around your home, the state of your gutters (adding gutter extenders can ensure they aren’t just dumping water on your foundation), and planting a rain garden. There may be scenarios where paying for interior waterproofing is the right move, but they come only after addressing the relatively easy and cheap stuff outside the house.
There are arguments in favor of paying for a home warranty, but they all stem from desperation: You don’t have the enormous amount of money it would take to pay for certain repairs, so you opt to pay a small monthly fee just in case the worst happens. The average cost is $1,049 annually, which isn’t nothing, and most warranties are crammed with maximum payouts and other exceptions, so the coverage you receive is typically a lot less than you might expect. Plus, home warranties typically require you to use specific contractors and to replace stuff with approved brands and models, which are rarely going to be the top-quality stuff. You’re better off saving that $1,000 every year to build up an emergency maintenance fund.
Having a home security system of some sort is not a bad idea—there’s evidence that they are pretty decent deterrents, as professional thieves want to avoid the potential extra work involved. But police response can be slow, and they often have a high false alarm rate. Smart doorbells with cameras offer a similar deterrent to potential thieves as traditional home security systems, and offer a range of other features, like being able to see who's at your door (and what they're doing), and even speak to them. If you want a whole-house system, there are robust free options that offer the main deterrence benefit without the service fee.
