Maintenance Hacks 101: Tips For Fixing Up Your Place Off Campus

By Francine Fluetsch on July 4, 2014

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Moving off campus means more freedom, but it also means more responsibility. Landlords know how to rake in some extra cash, especially when they rent to college students. How? Well, you know that deposit fee you had to pay at the beginning? They know it won’t be hard to dock you for every little thing that they see wrong with the place when you are through with it. They also can charge you for when things need to be fixed/replaced while you are living there.

To help save you some cash and the headaches to follow, here are some DIY maintenance quick fixes that you can handle on your own without having to call in for backup. You will look like a super star tenant, and your wallet (or your parents) will thank you for it.

Clogged drain:

Alrighty girls (and guys for that matter), we all know our hair can come out in wads in the shower. TMI I know, but it’s the truth. To prevent this, invest in a hair catcher that goes over the drain. It will make cleaning your hair out after you shower quick and painless.

For those times where you forgot to put the hair catcher over the drain, it slipped out of place, or you were too lazy to buy it and the drain got clogged, here’s what you do:

1)   Take a metal coat hanger and pull it apart. Make a hook-like apparatus on one end and start digging around in the drain. Hopefully you will be able to grab out the clump of hair/soap/whatever is clogging that up.

2)   If that doesn’t work, invest in some Draino. Depending on how bad your clog is–like standing in three feet of water after your shower clogged–you may want to buy the two for one pack and just pour both of those babies down there.

These tactics helped my roommate and I survive almost the whole year without having to call a plumber.

Removing stains from the carpet:

Uh oh, you had a little oopsie. Seeing as you can’t hide the carpet stain from your landlord simply by shoving the couch over it, your best form of attack is to address the stain ASAP.

The sooner you try and get it out, the better chance you have of getting the carpet looking stain free. Here’s a very helpful article from Wikihow that will show you how to get multiple stains out of the carpet.

Removing stains from the bathtub:

If you’ve scrubbed and scrubbed with all your might with cleaners and still couldn’t get that pesky stain out of your tub, here’s what you do. According to Real Simple, to get a stain out you have to “combine equal amounts of cream of tartar and baking soda with enough lemon juice to make a paste.” Once you’ve made this goo, apply it to the stain and let it sit for about half an hour. After that, make sure to rinse it well with water.

Changing a light bulb:

Now, you may be thinking this is a no brainer, but changing a bulb might be trickier than you think.

1)   Make sure to have someone hold the ladder for you if the job requires one. Falling off of that would definitely not be fun.

2)   Make sure the switch is off. Wouldn’t want to go and electrocute yourself now would you?

3)   Make sure to have the right bulb! If you try and put a bulb in with more watts than the socket can handle, you are going to have a mini explosion on your hands. And that would be very counterproductive, since that would mean paying more money for fixing the place up.

Leaky faucet:

Ugh, well isn’t that a drag? If you notice you have a leaky faucet, make sure to put a bucket under to catch everything while you fix it and make sure you wipe everything dry so nothing gets moldy. According to this article by Michael Freeze, it might be easier to fix your faucet than you think.

Dry wall fiasco:

So you know those things you bought from Staples or wherever to hang things up, where they say “Easy peel away, perfect even on dry wall”? Yeah, well, those and dry wall are a big no-no.

Of course if you’re like me, you figure this out the hard way, by ripping off a huge chunk of the wall when you want to move around some decorations. If this happens, go to the store and buy some Spackle. As carefully as you can, attempt to spread it over the blemish and hope that it blends in. You might even want to buy a small thing of white paint to blend it fully.

Spackle is also what you should use for nail holes, not the old toothpaste trick. The thing with filling the hole with toothpaste is, yes for that moment it “looks” fixed, but landlords are ruthless and will find out rather quickly about your little scam. Spackling up nail holes will be a lot easier than fixing the dry wall, so you might as well do it.

Well, there you have it: a couple of ways to fix the place up yourself without paying through your nose. You’ll be feeling like a pro at the end, and having these simple fixer-upper skills in your pocket will definitely benefit you throughout your whole life.

Who needs to endure plumber butt crack or nasty landlord fines when you can get it fixed up all by yourself?

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