As the middle month of autumn, October is a great time to attend to both indoor and outdoor home maintenance tasks. Daylight saving time doesn’t end until a week into November, so there is enough light for an outdoor chore or two after work, especially on a day when clouds don’t darken the sky prematurely.
And if the weather’s bad, there are plenty of things to do indoors. After all, as the increasingly shorter days remind us, we’ll all be spending a lot more time there soon.
Here is a home maintenance task you should tackle in October: Touch up your home’s paint (exterior and/or interior).
As days grow shorter and the sun angle gets lower, eventually there isn’t enough time each day with the right temperature and humidity for exterior paint to dry properly. In much of the country, the first half of October is usually the last call for outdoor painting projects, such as touching up scraped patches of siding or repainting a porch.
Once you’re done, bring leftover water-based paint into a heated space for the winter. The paint can survive a few freeze-thaw cycles, but too many can give it a clumpy consistency that you can’t stir out. It’s also a good time to check labels for other products that require frost protection, such as wood glues, and move them to a warmer.
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