August 24, 2025 • 30 mins
Dean shares practical tips to help you avoid the high cost of deferred maintenance. From flushing your water heater to cleaning the dryer vent to prevent fires, he covers the small tasks that make a big difference. Dean also talks about adjusting door shoes, checking riser sprinklers regularly, lubricating sliding doors, and keeping an eye on your roof and chimney. It’s all about catching the little things before they turn into big problems.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp the
house Whisper on demand on the iHeart Radio app. We
are taking the dog days of summer here and talking
about home maintenance, the stuff you should be taking care
of and addressing more often than you do in order
(00:21):
to defer the costs or bigger to avoid the bigger
costs if of deferring that maintenance for a later date.
You know, procrastination as a price, and when it comes
to our home sometimes it can be pretty significant. So
we're moving through this list, and I want to get
back to it. This is my list of stuff that
I want you to pay attention to. It's not huge, okay,
(00:44):
because I know we all live in the real world.
I just want to address a few things as we
go along here to make sure that you are keeping
up on these things so that they don't cost you
big bucks.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
So we've talked.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
We've talked about carpets, gutters, patio, furniture, paint on the
outside of your house. We've talked about HVAC systems. Now
I want to address the plumbing just a little bit.
Water heater. That's what I'm talking about. Your water heater
is supposed to get flushed every year. I know you've
(01:17):
never done it. I know you've never done it to
any water heater ever that you've ever owned. I get it,
I get it. And if you've been fortunate enough to
get many, many years of service out of it without
doing that, then good on you. But I'm just saying,
I'm just saying, you know, half an hour of your time,
forty five minutes of your time once a year not
(01:40):
the worst thing in the world to extend the life
of your water heater. The problem with your water heater,
just so you know what's going on inside it. It's
not moving parts.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Your water heater is a tank, and there is a
heating element, and the heating element heats up. Now it's
a gas powered water heater, tipal tanked gas powered water heater.
Then the gas fires on at the bottom. There is
a boiler plate at the bottom of the tank that
gets super hot and as a result, heats up the
(02:12):
water inside the tank. So what's going on in the tank, Dean,
that needs so much attention. There aren't any moving parts.
You already said that. Just like my oven, Yeah, you
turn on the gas or at my stovetop the gas
is on, the gases off, the water gets hot. The end,
what's going on in the tank is corrosive minerals scale. Okay,
just like the issue that you have maybe elsewhere in
(02:33):
the house, got hard water. The harder your water coming
into your home, in other words, the more mineral content,
then the faster it ages your appliances, your pipes, and
your water heater.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
And the way it.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Does that is that it clings to the sides of
the steel tank and then holds things like iron oxide,
which is rust okay, up against the tank and ends
up prematurely causing the tank to leak and fail, and
or you hear popping and like stuff like stuff rattling
around inside the water heater. That's built up mineralization inside
(03:12):
your water heater down on the actual boiler plate itself.
Water gets under there, gets superheated, turns into a gas
and it bubbles and pops out and other things move around.
So that's what we're talking about. So there are two
things that can be done to a water heater to
keep it from building up excess scale. The first thing
is flushing it out. At the bottom of your water heater,
(03:34):
there's that big knob that big white plastic knob. Okay,
and it looks like there's a hose thread attached to
that knob. Guess what goes there? A hose, A garden hose.
So what happens is you turn off the water up top,
you get all the water from flowing, you know, no
(03:54):
more water flowing into it, and then you bring a
garden hose in and you hook it up nice and
clean right there to that knob, and run that garden
hose outside and you turn that knob and it opens
a valve and it allows the water heater to drain out.
So any loose sediment mineralization that hasn't bonded to the
tank gets flushed out. After you've drained it, you can
(04:16):
fill it up with water again, drain it again. You
can even drain it with a little bit of pressure
on in the system. But flush the water heater every
once in a while. If you flushed your water heater
every three years, that's better than every zero years. Okay,
that's all I'm saying. Right, You know what they say,
the best exercise, what's the best exercise for me getting
(04:38):
in shape? The best exercise for you getting in shape
is the one that you actually do. Okay, that's the
best one. Find one you do. So when it comes
to your water heater, you know, please remember and give
it a flush every year. That'd be fantastic. Every two
or three years. Yeah, better than nothing. Okay, the other
(05:00):
thing every they say two to three years. That you
could either have a plumber come by and just take
a quick look at or if you're feeling diysh you
look on top of your tanked water Oh by the way,
what I said about flushing applies to tankless water heaters
as well. It's a little bit different process, but they
also would like to get fleshed out. Now back to
your tanked water heater. Your tanked water heater up on
(05:23):
the top, there's a little recess on the flat area
there and what looks like a big old nut sitting there,
you know, a big old you know, square thing with
a threaded insert. And you've stared at it for years,
you've seen it up there. This is your access to
the sacrificial anode.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
You know what that is.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
It's a rod that's attached to that nut. That that
insert right there. That rod is made out of magnesium
or aluminum and it sticks down into the water, and
its job is to buy an electrochemical process that we
call a galvanic reaction attract those men rolls to itself
and they cling to it and they dissolve it. They
(06:05):
corrode it. That's why we call it the sacrificial anode
instead of clinging to the steel of your water heater tank.
So the sacrificial anode again, after two or three years,
in heavy, heavy hard water conditions, it might be gone.
It might have corroded away, and it's not there anymore,
protecting the rest of the water heater tank. So the
(06:26):
point is very simple. You could have it check. You
can check it yourself. You can have it checked and
if you want a diyat yourself. You can find these
sitting on the shelf. People don't even know they had one,
but you can find them sitting on the shelf at
the local hardware store, at the big box store, Low's
in home depot. They're sitting on the shelf. And we're
talking about a depending on the brand of the water heater,
(06:48):
a twenty to forty dollars part.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
That's it, and you change it out, screw it back
in there, start up the water heater again.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
You're golden. There you go, all right?
Speaker 1 (06:59):
More when we return your Home with Dean Sharp the
house Whisper.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
By the way, if if you are thinking to yourself, gosh,
we would love to get Dean and Tina staring at
the problem in our home that can actually happen more
often than not, just go to house Whisper dot Design.
You can set yourself up for a in home design
consultation by me and t No, not somebody you've never
(07:32):
met before. Us Ussen's ussens. The two of us is
happy to get into it with you and help cast
some vision and solve some problems. Along the way house
Whisper dot Design there's where you go and for more
information and it'll tell you what to do next. Okay,
(07:54):
back to our list on the the things we can
do that we often avoid doing maintenance wise around our
home that if you defer them, end up precosting yourself
more trouble and more money than you need to along
the way. So this is my list. This is not
some list off the inter web. This is my list
(08:18):
of stuff, so you can trust it. These are things
worth looking at all. Right, let's die back in real
simple one. Just something that people forget, you know, the
filter over your range hood, right, that vent? Get those
things cleaned you can probably most of the time. These
are things that you can pull out and drop in
the dishwasher, just with a load of dishes. Again, my
(08:39):
concern is this. The motors that drive the fans. They
want to breathe, and when too much grease and stuff
collects up there, they can't do their job right. They
can't exit the smoke properly. They put too much strain
on themselves, which means you're going to prematurely wear out
the motor and get enough grease collected up there. Who
(08:59):
knows grease? None of us want that. So just remember
look up every once in a while while you're cooking
at the cook top and say to yourself, you know,
don't don't wait for the grease to start dripping down
onto the cooktop because there's so much of it up
there that you haven't cleaned it. That's all I'm saying
along those lines. Every once in a while, it's not
(09:20):
a bad idea to clean out the dryer vent. Now,
remember I told you when it comes to your HVAC
vents in the house. Don't worry about those. It's clean
air blowing through them. It's cool, it's hot. This is
just the opposite the dryer vent. Literally, yes, it has
forced air coming through it, but it's not rapidly forced air. Secondly,
(09:42):
it's moist air and it's got loads o lint with it.
Even though the lint filter on the front of the
dryer handles most of it, you know, there's still stuff
coming through, and so cleaning that out. So number one,
it doesn't catch fire. Number two, it doesn't again prohibit
your dryer from breathing. These are the things that make
(10:04):
major appliances last longer. They're just very, very simple. So
every once in a while clean the dryer vent. There
are brushes that are specifically designed to do that, and
you can usually do it from the outside instead of
having to move the dryer and detach and all of
that stuff. So look into it, and every once in
a while clean the dryer, like once a year. Once
(10:25):
a year clean the dryer vent. Okay, here's one that
you're not gonna hear on anybody else's list. Door shoe
weather stripping. Okay, I see this all the time. I
hear it all the time from people either either the
door the front door is now rubbing or the back
door is rubbing every time they open it, or it
makes a weird squeal, or more likely, we can see
(10:47):
light underneath the door coming through. If you can see light,
then you know bugs can make their way in. And
most importantly, when it comes to energy efficiency in the house,
air is leaking out of the house. We're not holding
on to the cool we're not holding on to the heat.
Now most of the time with an exterior door, all
this is about is adjusting the door shoe. That is
(11:10):
the piece of the weather stripping that has one of
the little bulb gaskets that's flung to the bottom of
the door, and it's attached there's a drip age off
the front, and it's attached with a series of screws,
very small screws. If those screws are removed, okay, with
a screwdriver, then the door strip shoe can be adjusted
(11:31):
down so that it's touching the threshold down below again
without it rubbing heavy. It can be adjusted and the
screws reinserted again. Okay, that's something worth just looking at.
Every couple of years. Just look under your doors. If
you see light coming through, put it on your list.
Must adjust the door shoe.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
It will save you heating and air conditioning worries and
also keeps the bugs out of the house. Okay, irrigation outside.
Now we're jumping to the outside. Every once in a
blue moon. Okay, once a year at least. I want
you to be present when the irrigation system turns on.
(12:12):
Turn it on, manually. Check the sprinklers, Check the drip lines,
make sure the drips are still dripping. Make sure the sprinklers,
most importantly, are pointed in the right direction. You've seen
this before, but you know, as time goes by, heat cold,
the risers that sprinklers are sitting on, they tend to
expand and contract, and the sprinkler head itself can spin
(12:37):
a little bit. Okay, some of them actually can spin
a lot bit. So every few months, just turn on
the sprinkler system.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Be there.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
See if oh that's I had no idea that sprinkler
is totally missing the plants and completely saturating the side
of the house. Yeah, that's the kind of stuff we
just want to catch. Or you've got a sprinkler head
set up to handle this area of the lawn or
that large shrub, and now it's pointed in the opposite direction.
So we're just gonna take a look at those things
to make sure we're not wasting water, that we're not
(13:08):
over watering, that we're not pointing it at something structural
like the house, which doesn't need to be watered by
the way, you're not gonna get the house to grow
by watering it too much. Just that kind of stuff.
Check for leaks, make sure everything is good to go.
What's next on my list here?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Aha?
Speaker 1 (13:27):
If you have natural stone countertops, I'm talking like, you know,
the granite countertops in the kitchen, or you've got a
natural stone countertop in the bathroom, sealing them is imperative.
Do you know that you can't actually have granite countertops
installed in commercial kitchens? The Health Department won't allow it
(13:51):
because they're so poors. Now, granted it's very hard. That's
how they get sold. They're like, oh, this is so
durable and so hard. Yeah, but it's also incredibly porous,
and so we don't want the opportunity for stuff to
get down inside those granules below the surface of the
countertop where nothing can get to it to get it cleaned,
(14:14):
and because the surface gets worn, stuff is slit on
it all the time. We need to keep it sealed.
And honestly, this is probably the thing that you should
keep sealed. You should reseal it like every six months
if it's being heavily used, like a countertop in a kitchen.
And it's not a big deal, okay. Stone ceiler is
just about getting it clean. Let it try and then
(14:37):
pour out a little stone seiler on a sponge or
wet rag and you can just rag it on. It's
not like a highly it's not, you know, an intense
painting process. We're just talking about keeping that countertop sealed.
If it's natural stone, you don't have to seal the
quartz countertops. In other words, the synthetic man made countertops,
(14:58):
you don't have to seal those. Same way we're talking
about open granite countertops that so many of you have.
Keep them sealed. All right, I got so much more.
We're going to dive back into this list after we
take a quick break. Go nowhere your Home with Dean Sharp,
the house whisper.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp, on demand from
KFI AM six.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Forty every week, layer by layer, step by step. This week,
we're just talking about the kind of maintenance that you
should be doing around your house that if you defer it,
you procrastinate, could turn into bigger, more expensive things. So
I'm just to you know, I don't want to bug you.
I'm just nudging you along. Plus, I'm giving you my
(15:42):
list of the things that are actually really things that
you should address and take care of, as opposed to
the kind of the generic whatever, free for all lists
that you can find online. And believe me, you can
search right now, I'm not hiding this from you. You
can search for regular annual home maintenance and you're gonna
get a thousand lists online. A lot of them are
going to be very very similar, because a lot of
(16:03):
them literally just copy each other, and some of them
are going to have some weird, weird stuff that not
in one hundred million years would I recommend, and others
miss some exclusively important things. So if you trust me
and my perspective on your home, then here's my list
and we'll keep on rolling here.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Now.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Before the break, I talked to you about ceiling natural
stone countertops, that's something that honestly should happen, especially in
your kitchen. If you've got a granite countertop or anything
like it, you should wipe on that ceiler every six
months or so, because if you don't, you're asking for
trouble when it comes to potential stains, spills, and just
(16:44):
the cleanliness of that stone. I know it's incredibly hard.
It is incredibly hard stone like a granite countertop, but
it's also very very porous, and that's where the seiler
comes into play to keep those pores sealed up so
that stuff all only stays on the surface where you
can actually get to it to clean it. Along those lines,
(17:06):
one of the things we hear about constantly people complaining
about grout in between tile grout. Well, I know you
clean it, I know you clean it. Good on you
for doing that, but you still complain about it getting dirty.
And that's because even though people clean their grout, clean
their tile, people will quite often forget to seal the grout.
(17:26):
And again, in high traffic areas, showers areas like that,
countertops tile countertops with grout exposed floors same way, these
high traffic areas, the grout should get sealed every six
months or so. And again it's not hard to do, okay,
because the seiler is penetrating and it doesn't have to
(17:48):
be carefully brushed into place. You can just be wiped on,
let it absorb, wipe off the residue, and you're done.
Let it dry, get back to life. But natural stone
and cementious materials like grout should be sealed regularly in
order to keep them from turning on you and having
to clean them and scrub them so heavily all the time.
(18:10):
It only helps you in your time. Here's another one.
Sliding doors. You got sliding doors into the backyard, you
got slide you know, wherever that may be. Sliding doors
are notorious for, after a certain amount of use, to
start rubbing, like on the bottom, like they're not sliding easily,
and people quite often mistakenly think, oh, I got to
(18:30):
loop them up so that you get out the WD
forty or whatever. You spray the track down and you
temporarily get it to flow a little bit more. But
if it's dragon, I mean, if it's really not easy
to slide anymore, doesn't mean it's at the end of
its life. It simply means this the wheels at the
bottom of a sliding glass door have a height adjustment
(18:52):
setting to them, an optimal height and angular adjustment.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
There's usually two.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
They're usually filled by a little peg or a cappecial
on a white vinyl door. If you pop that cap off,
that little peg cap you know, talking about like a
little half inch cap, it leaves a hole. It exposes
and if you look inside you'll see that there's a
little fitting there for a screwdriver, sometimes a flathead, sometimes
a Phillips head screwdriver to slide in there.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
And if you.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Turn it lo and behold the height of the door
and the wheel adjust I just did this myself a
couple of weeks ago now because it's on my maintenance schedule.
This is not something you schedule. This is something that
I just want you to be aware of. The backslider
was dragging along. People were like, hey, what's up with
the slider. I'm like, all right, they thought. I got
(19:41):
a couple comments like maybe it's just going bad, Maybe
we got to replace this thing. No, no, no, no,
no no no. Those wheels because they're on a screw mechanism,
the vibration of opening them and closing them lets the
screw slip a little bit over time, So in goes
the screwdriver, up goes the door, and the next thing,
you know, just slide and free and clear. Once again,
(20:02):
this is something it only takes a couple of minutes
to do. So changing the height and readjusting the rollers
on your exterior sliding glass door. Now, if you do
that and there's still all sorts of problems, then that's
another thing. But just no, nine out of ten times,
without adding a bunch of grease to the track or
anything like that, it just means they need to be
(20:24):
raised up again, and they will settle back down and
you'll have to do this again at some point. But
for now, this couldn't last you know, years, months, Yeah,
at least once we're outside again trimming your trees. Now
you're like Dean, duh, no, no, no, I mean really
(20:46):
keeping them artistically attention based trimmed trimming trees is something
that not enough homeowners put enough effort into, and so
what they get is they get crazy overgrowth. The tree
gets out of control, it gets ignored for long periods
of time, years, and then you call in some tree
(21:09):
service who's priority is just cutting stuff and getting out
of there as quickly as possible, as opposed to an
arborist who's going to shape and save and sculpt a tree.
But after years of malgrowth, it's not easy to re
sculpt a tree exactly how you want, better to guide
it along the way. So every year, if you've got trees,
(21:32):
and I know you focus on your flowers in your
garden and your lawns and stuff like that, but look up,
look at the canopys of your trees, then the mount
then out the internal of the canopy, expose the beautiful
branch structure of the tree. Clip things back. Be aware
so that you don't have to pay the big money
(21:53):
for a tree trimming service to come along. And also
you don't have to have a service like that come
and just galp back and really screw up a tree
long term. Okay, so a very simple thought. Trim the trees.
One more simple thought before we go to break. If
you've got rodents in the attic enough with all the
(22:14):
traps up there, okay, that is just addressing a superficial symptom.
And it's gross and it's nasty, and you know that
as well as I do. All right, this is when
if you can't figure this out on your own. You
call in a company that specializes in rodent exclusion for addics.
(22:34):
They're out there. In fact, Eco La does this kind
of thing. They will get in there and find the holes.
The way to deal with pasts, especially rodents in your
home is not to go to war with them. It's
just to exclude them so that they don't make your
home the battleground that it could be. So it takes
(22:57):
a little bit of time. Got to get conscientious. But
an enough with Here's something. I don't want you to
maintain rat traps in the attic. I want you to
lose them. If it takes clearing out the insulation temporarily
to find the holes and plug them, do it. Sanitize
the attic, lay it down in there, and stop thinking
about it, and stop worrying about rats in your attic.
(23:17):
They shouldn't be there. And the way to keep them
out is not to trap them or kill them or
bait them or poison them. It's to exclude them from
the attic. So you take the time and you make
it a priority. All right, We got more when we
return your home with Dean Shark, the house.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Whispering you're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand
from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And here we are at the end of another three
hours together to warm, beautiful sunny day here in southern California.
I hope wherever you are, the weather is treating you
well and that you've got plans, plans other than hanging
out here with me, because we're about out of here,
but I still have a couple of items left on
our list of ways to attack the maintenance around your house.
(24:06):
Not defer it, don't procrastinate so that these things don't
end up costing you big bucks in the end. Two
or three other little items before we're out of here.
This is not This is on a lot of maintenance
lists that you'll find, and it's not really on mine.
And that is the roof. Okay. I don't want you
up on the roof every few months checking flashings and things.
(24:29):
Just that's not necessary. I don't know why people even
include that on their list, but I will tell you this,
You look at your roof. Just look at your roof
every once in a while. If you see a tile
slipping or something looking weird, like you've got a asphalt
composite roof and you've got shingles that are starting to
curl up, or something's been knocked loose or out of place,
(24:51):
then yeah, address it, okay, but just look, don't. I
don't want you on a ladder getting up there walking
all over your roof all the time if somehow every
few months something's going to go wrong. Roofs are pretty
durable once they're in place. They're in place, but you know,
keep your eye out for something that doesn't look right.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Okay, if you use your fireplace, and this is not
only if you burn wood, but if you you know,
if you've got a gas logs that if you use
your fireplace period for fire, okay, gas or wood, then
you should have a chimney sweep come and sweep it
out and scope it every year before the season that
you use your fireplace starts.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Okay, it's just a good idea.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
You don't want a bunch of kreosoap build up inside
your fireplace. It's a danger. It doesn't help it draw well.
And also it's because the masonry fireplaces, especially if it's
a masonry fireplace, you just get a camera while they're
there cleaning it. You know, it's not a Dick van
Dyke thing anymore. Okay, Chimney sweeps very high tech. They're
(25:53):
going to run a camera up there just to make
sure we don't have any cracks on the inside fire bricks,
and we keep your home safe from the fire that
you're lighting down below.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
That's it, Okay, no big deal.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Here's one. Keep the oven clean now. I don't normally
have to say this to those of you who bake
regularly because you keep your tools clean. But for the
rest of you, keep the oven clean.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
A lot of modern ovens come with a small cleaning
cycle that uses steam.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Use it.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Keep the oven clean. I'll tell you why. The self
cleaning cycle that every oven has right where you lock
it down and you walk away and you come four
hours later, it works. I mean it works really, really well.
But self cleaning cycles put a lot of stress on
an oven, a lot. That oven gets hotter than it
normally ever, gets by a couple one hundred degrees. And
(26:40):
what they don't tell you is every time you use
the self cleaning cycle on your oven, you are prematurely
aging the oven. Yeah, it's real. The struggle is real, Okay, lastly,
clean the carbage disposal or get rid of it. I'm
happy if you got rid of your garbage disposal, because
it wouldn't surprise me. In the next few years, a lot,
a lot of municipalities are going to ban them in
(27:02):
the US because too much sludge is building up in
our sewer system. That's a whole other thing that I
don't want to get into. But here's a simple way
to keep your garbage disposal clean. Grab some ice cubes,
a little baking soda, Throw the ice cubes down in
the garbage disposal with the baking soda, maybe a lemon
slice or two, and turn it on. Let it just
(27:23):
chew up that ice. It's going to clean it. It's
like getting its teeth brushed. Okay, it's going to freshen it.
It's gonna sterilize it, and so on and so forth.
So well, maybe not sterilized, but it's going to clean
up the garbage disposal. That's it. That's it. That's all
I got for you, all right. So I've been getting
some feedback. People are like, uh, you know, it's been
a while since you've given one of your closing thoughts
(27:44):
at the end of the show. Dean, And it's true,
it's been a very busy year, a lot of things
going on. But all right, I hear you, and I'll
give you one today. How about that?
Speaker 2 (27:54):
All right?
Speaker 1 (27:55):
The number one most important item in need of regular
maintenance by you and by me, your relationships. They're built
like your home, a few moments at a time, one
small opportunity at a time, with intentionality and design, one
display of respect and affection and friendship at a time,
(28:17):
and just like your house, they deteriorate the same way.
One neglected moment, one missed opportunity, one being taken for
granted and phoning it in moment at a time. That's
what destroys a relationship. So on the maintenance side of things,
love Love is a word we throw around a lot
a lot of time. It gets used very loosely, in
(28:38):
my opinion, to describe how we're feeling at the moment,
or because we think it's what we're supposed to say.
But as a matter of maintenance, as a litmus test
or true love, I suggest that you regularly grab the
word love before it slips out of your mouth and
replace it with one or two other words. So instead
of I love you, see how it feels to say
(29:01):
I like you, or I value you do those things
ring True love, after all, at its best, is a
quantum of value. But be careful you say something like
I value you out loud, and it implies that somehow
you've been demonstrating just that, and I hope that's true.
(29:22):
A home is the most important place on earth because
it's where you take care of yourself and the ones
that you love. I read recently a theory that happiness
is not found outside of us, or solely inside of us,
but between us, between you and yourself, between you and
your work, between you and those who are closest to you. Happiness, truly,
(29:47):
for a human being, can only be found in between.
And here's the thing, the in between it needs maintenance,
regular maintenance, small things, not heroic things, small things that
make all the difference. And on that note, I'm now
going to stop standing in between you and the rest
of your day so that you can get busy building
(30:08):
your maintenance list and get busy building yourself a beautiful life.
I hope you all have a great afternoon. We'll see
you right back here next weekend. This has been Home
with Dean Sharp. The house Whisper. Tune into the live
broadcast on KFI AM six forty every Saturday morning from
(30:31):
six to eight Pacific time, and every Sunday morning from
nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on demand on
the iHeartRadio app
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp the
house Whisper on demand on the iHeart Radio app. We
are taking the dog days of summer here and talking
about home maintenance, the stuff you should be taking care
of and addressing more often than you do in order
(00:21):
to defer the costs or bigger to avoid the bigger
costs if of deferring that maintenance for a later date.
You know, procrastination as a price, and when it comes
to our home sometimes it can be pretty significant. So
we're moving through this list, and I want to get
back to it. This is my list of stuff that
I want you to pay attention to. It's not huge, okay,
(00:44):
because I know we all live in the real world.
I just want to address a few things as we
go along here to make sure that you are keeping
up on these things so that they don't cost you
big bucks.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
So we've talked.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
We've talked about carpets, gutters, patio, furniture, paint on the
outside of your house. We've talked about HVAC systems. Now
I want to address the plumbing just a little bit.
Water heater. That's what I'm talking about. Your water heater
is supposed to get flushed every year. I know you've
(01:17):
never done it. I know you've never done it to
any water heater ever that you've ever owned. I get it,
I get it. And if you've been fortunate enough to
get many, many years of service out of it without
doing that, then good on you. But I'm just saying,
I'm just saying, you know, half an hour of your time,
forty five minutes of your time once a year not
(01:40):
the worst thing in the world to extend the life
of your water heater. The problem with your water heater,
just so you know what's going on inside it. It's
not moving parts.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Your water heater is a tank, and there is a
heating element, and the heating element heats up. Now it's
a gas powered water heater, tipal tanked gas powered water heater.
Then the gas fires on at the bottom. There is
a boiler plate at the bottom of the tank that
gets super hot and as a result, heats up the
(02:12):
water inside the tank. So what's going on in the tank, Dean,
that needs so much attention. There aren't any moving parts.
You already said that. Just like my oven, Yeah, you
turn on the gas or at my stovetop the gas
is on, the gases off, the water gets hot. The end,
what's going on in the tank is corrosive minerals scale. Okay,
just like the issue that you have maybe elsewhere in
(02:33):
the house, got hard water. The harder your water coming
into your home, in other words, the more mineral content,
then the faster it ages your appliances, your pipes, and
your water heater.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
And the way it.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Does that is that it clings to the sides of
the steel tank and then holds things like iron oxide,
which is rust okay, up against the tank and ends
up prematurely causing the tank to leak and fail, and
or you hear popping and like stuff like stuff rattling
around inside the water heater. That's built up mineralization inside
(03:12):
your water heater down on the actual boiler plate itself.
Water gets under there, gets superheated, turns into a gas
and it bubbles and pops out and other things move around.
So that's what we're talking about. So there are two
things that can be done to a water heater to
keep it from building up excess scale. The first thing
is flushing it out. At the bottom of your water heater,
(03:34):
there's that big knob that big white plastic knob. Okay,
and it looks like there's a hose thread attached to
that knob. Guess what goes there? A hose, A garden hose.
So what happens is you turn off the water up top,
you get all the water from flowing, you know, no
(03:54):
more water flowing into it, and then you bring a
garden hose in and you hook it up nice and
clean right there to that knob, and run that garden
hose outside and you turn that knob and it opens
a valve and it allows the water heater to drain out.
So any loose sediment mineralization that hasn't bonded to the
tank gets flushed out. After you've drained it, you can
(04:16):
fill it up with water again, drain it again. You
can even drain it with a little bit of pressure
on in the system. But flush the water heater every
once in a while. If you flushed your water heater
every three years, that's better than every zero years. Okay,
that's all I'm saying. Right, You know what they say,
the best exercise, what's the best exercise for me getting
(04:38):
in shape? The best exercise for you getting in shape
is the one that you actually do. Okay, that's the
best one. Find one you do. So when it comes
to your water heater, you know, please remember and give
it a flush every year. That'd be fantastic. Every two
or three years. Yeah, better than nothing. Okay, the other
(05:00):
thing every they say two to three years. That you
could either have a plumber come by and just take
a quick look at or if you're feeling diysh you
look on top of your tanked water Oh by the way,
what I said about flushing applies to tankless water heaters
as well. It's a little bit different process, but they
also would like to get fleshed out. Now back to
your tanked water heater. Your tanked water heater up on
(05:23):
the top, there's a little recess on the flat area
there and what looks like a big old nut sitting there,
you know, a big old you know, square thing with
a threaded insert. And you've stared at it for years,
you've seen it up there. This is your access to
the sacrificial anode.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
You know what that is.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
It's a rod that's attached to that nut. That that
insert right there. That rod is made out of magnesium
or aluminum and it sticks down into the water, and
its job is to buy an electrochemical process that we
call a galvanic reaction attract those men rolls to itself
and they cling to it and they dissolve it. They
(06:05):
corrode it. That's why we call it the sacrificial anode
instead of clinging to the steel of your water heater tank.
So the sacrificial anode again, after two or three years,
in heavy, heavy hard water conditions, it might be gone.
It might have corroded away, and it's not there anymore,
protecting the rest of the water heater tank. So the
(06:26):
point is very simple. You could have it check. You
can check it yourself. You can have it checked and
if you want a diyat yourself. You can find these
sitting on the shelf. People don't even know they had one,
but you can find them sitting on the shelf at
the local hardware store, at the big box store, Low's
in home depot. They're sitting on the shelf. And we're
talking about a depending on the brand of the water heater,
(06:48):
a twenty to forty dollars part.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
That's it, and you change it out, screw it back
in there, start up the water heater again.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
You're golden. There you go, all right?
Speaker 1 (06:59):
More when we return your Home with Dean Sharp the
house Whisper.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
By the way, if if you are thinking to yourself, gosh,
we would love to get Dean and Tina staring at
the problem in our home that can actually happen more
often than not, just go to house Whisper dot Design.
You can set yourself up for a in home design
consultation by me and t No, not somebody you've never
(07:32):
met before. Us Ussen's ussens. The two of us is
happy to get into it with you and help cast
some vision and solve some problems. Along the way house
Whisper dot Design there's where you go and for more
information and it'll tell you what to do next. Okay,
(07:54):
back to our list on the the things we can
do that we often avoid doing maintenance wise around our
home that if you defer them, end up precosting yourself
more trouble and more money than you need to along
the way. So this is my list. This is not
some list off the inter web. This is my list
(08:18):
of stuff, so you can trust it. These are things
worth looking at all. Right, let's die back in real
simple one. Just something that people forget, you know, the
filter over your range hood, right, that vent? Get those
things cleaned you can probably most of the time. These
are things that you can pull out and drop in
the dishwasher, just with a load of dishes. Again, my
(08:39):
concern is this. The motors that drive the fans. They
want to breathe, and when too much grease and stuff
collects up there, they can't do their job right. They
can't exit the smoke properly. They put too much strain
on themselves, which means you're going to prematurely wear out
the motor and get enough grease collected up there. Who
(08:59):
knows grease? None of us want that. So just remember
look up every once in a while while you're cooking
at the cook top and say to yourself, you know,
don't don't wait for the grease to start dripping down
onto the cooktop because there's so much of it up
there that you haven't cleaned it. That's all I'm saying
along those lines. Every once in a while, it's not
(09:20):
a bad idea to clean out the dryer vent. Now,
remember I told you when it comes to your HVAC
vents in the house. Don't worry about those. It's clean
air blowing through them. It's cool, it's hot. This is
just the opposite the dryer vent. Literally, yes, it has
forced air coming through it, but it's not rapidly forced air. Secondly,
(09:42):
it's moist air and it's got loads o lint with it.
Even though the lint filter on the front of the
dryer handles most of it, you know, there's still stuff
coming through, and so cleaning that out. So number one,
it doesn't catch fire. Number two, it doesn't again prohibit
your dryer from breathing. These are the things that make
(10:04):
major appliances last longer. They're just very, very simple. So
every once in a while clean the dryer vent. There
are brushes that are specifically designed to do that, and
you can usually do it from the outside instead of
having to move the dryer and detach and all of
that stuff. So look into it, and every once in
a while clean the dryer, like once a year. Once
(10:25):
a year clean the dryer vent. Okay, here's one that
you're not gonna hear on anybody else's list. Door shoe
weather stripping. Okay, I see this all the time. I
hear it all the time from people either either the
door the front door is now rubbing or the back
door is rubbing every time they open it, or it
makes a weird squeal, or more likely, we can see
(10:47):
light underneath the door coming through. If you can see light,
then you know bugs can make their way in. And
most importantly, when it comes to energy efficiency in the house,
air is leaking out of the house. We're not holding
on to the cool we're not holding on to the heat.
Now most of the time with an exterior door, all
this is about is adjusting the door shoe. That is
(11:10):
the piece of the weather stripping that has one of
the little bulb gaskets that's flung to the bottom of
the door, and it's attached there's a drip age off
the front, and it's attached with a series of screws,
very small screws. If those screws are removed, okay, with
a screwdriver, then the door strip shoe can be adjusted
(11:31):
down so that it's touching the threshold down below again
without it rubbing heavy. It can be adjusted and the
screws reinserted again. Okay, that's something worth just looking at.
Every couple of years. Just look under your doors. If
you see light coming through, put it on your list.
Must adjust the door shoe.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
It will save you heating and air conditioning worries and
also keeps the bugs out of the house. Okay, irrigation outside.
Now we're jumping to the outside. Every once in a
blue moon. Okay, once a year at least. I want
you to be present when the irrigation system turns on.
(12:12):
Turn it on, manually. Check the sprinklers, Check the drip lines,
make sure the drips are still dripping. Make sure the sprinklers,
most importantly, are pointed in the right direction. You've seen
this before, but you know, as time goes by, heat cold,
the risers that sprinklers are sitting on, they tend to
expand and contract, and the sprinkler head itself can spin
(12:37):
a little bit. Okay, some of them actually can spin
a lot bit. So every few months, just turn on
the sprinkler system.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Be there.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
See if oh that's I had no idea that sprinkler
is totally missing the plants and completely saturating the side
of the house. Yeah, that's the kind of stuff we
just want to catch. Or you've got a sprinkler head
set up to handle this area of the lawn or
that large shrub, and now it's pointed in the opposite direction.
So we're just gonna take a look at those things
to make sure we're not wasting water, that we're not
(13:08):
over watering, that we're not pointing it at something structural
like the house, which doesn't need to be watered by
the way, you're not gonna get the house to grow
by watering it too much. Just that kind of stuff.
Check for leaks, make sure everything is good to go.
What's next on my list here?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Aha?
Speaker 1 (13:27):
If you have natural stone countertops, I'm talking like, you know,
the granite countertops in the kitchen, or you've got a
natural stone countertop in the bathroom, sealing them is imperative.
Do you know that you can't actually have granite countertops
installed in commercial kitchens? The Health Department won't allow it
(13:51):
because they're so poors. Now, granted it's very hard. That's
how they get sold. They're like, oh, this is so
durable and so hard. Yeah, but it's also incredibly porous,
and so we don't want the opportunity for stuff to
get down inside those granules below the surface of the
countertop where nothing can get to it to get it cleaned,
(14:14):
and because the surface gets worn, stuff is slit on
it all the time. We need to keep it sealed.
And honestly, this is probably the thing that you should
keep sealed. You should reseal it like every six months
if it's being heavily used, like a countertop in a kitchen.
And it's not a big deal, okay. Stone ceiler is
just about getting it clean. Let it try and then
(14:37):
pour out a little stone seiler on a sponge or
wet rag and you can just rag it on. It's
not like a highly it's not, you know, an intense
painting process. We're just talking about keeping that countertop sealed.
If it's natural stone, you don't have to seal the
quartz countertops. In other words, the synthetic man made countertops,
(14:58):
you don't have to seal those. Same way we're talking
about open granite countertops that so many of you have.
Keep them sealed. All right, I got so much more.
We're going to dive back into this list after we
take a quick break. Go nowhere your Home with Dean Sharp,
the house whisper.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp, on demand from
KFI AM six.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Forty every week, layer by layer, step by step. This week,
we're just talking about the kind of maintenance that you
should be doing around your house that if you defer it,
you procrastinate, could turn into bigger, more expensive things. So
I'm just to you know, I don't want to bug you.
I'm just nudging you along. Plus, I'm giving you my
(15:42):
list of the things that are actually really things that
you should address and take care of, as opposed to
the kind of the generic whatever, free for all lists
that you can find online. And believe me, you can
search right now, I'm not hiding this from you. You
can search for regular annual home maintenance and you're gonna
get a thousand lists online. A lot of them are
going to be very very similar, because a lot of
(16:03):
them literally just copy each other, and some of them
are going to have some weird, weird stuff that not
in one hundred million years would I recommend, and others
miss some exclusively important things. So if you trust me
and my perspective on your home, then here's my list
and we'll keep on rolling here.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Now.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Before the break, I talked to you about ceiling natural
stone countertops, that's something that honestly should happen, especially in
your kitchen. If you've got a granite countertop or anything
like it, you should wipe on that ceiler every six
months or so, because if you don't, you're asking for
trouble when it comes to potential stains, spills, and just
(16:44):
the cleanliness of that stone. I know it's incredibly hard.
It is incredibly hard stone like a granite countertop, but
it's also very very porous, and that's where the seiler
comes into play to keep those pores sealed up so
that stuff all only stays on the surface where you
can actually get to it to clean it. Along those lines,
(17:06):
one of the things we hear about constantly people complaining
about grout in between tile grout. Well, I know you
clean it, I know you clean it. Good on you
for doing that, but you still complain about it getting dirty.
And that's because even though people clean their grout, clean
their tile, people will quite often forget to seal the grout.
(17:26):
And again, in high traffic areas, showers areas like that,
countertops tile countertops with grout exposed floors same way, these
high traffic areas, the grout should get sealed every six
months or so. And again it's not hard to do, okay,
because the seiler is penetrating and it doesn't have to
(17:48):
be carefully brushed into place. You can just be wiped on,
let it absorb, wipe off the residue, and you're done.
Let it dry, get back to life. But natural stone
and cementious materials like grout should be sealed regularly in
order to keep them from turning on you and having
to clean them and scrub them so heavily all the time.
(18:10):
It only helps you in your time. Here's another one.
Sliding doors. You got sliding doors into the backyard, you
got slide you know, wherever that may be. Sliding doors
are notorious for, after a certain amount of use, to
start rubbing, like on the bottom, like they're not sliding easily,
and people quite often mistakenly think, oh, I got to
(18:30):
loop them up so that you get out the WD
forty or whatever. You spray the track down and you
temporarily get it to flow a little bit more. But
if it's dragon, I mean, if it's really not easy
to slide anymore, doesn't mean it's at the end of
its life. It simply means this the wheels at the
bottom of a sliding glass door have a height adjustment
(18:52):
setting to them, an optimal height and angular adjustment.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
There's usually two.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
They're usually filled by a little peg or a cappecial
on a white vinyl door. If you pop that cap off,
that little peg cap you know, talking about like a
little half inch cap, it leaves a hole. It exposes
and if you look inside you'll see that there's a
little fitting there for a screwdriver, sometimes a flathead, sometimes
a Phillips head screwdriver to slide in there.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
And if you.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Turn it lo and behold the height of the door
and the wheel adjust I just did this myself a
couple of weeks ago now because it's on my maintenance schedule.
This is not something you schedule. This is something that
I just want you to be aware of. The backslider
was dragging along. People were like, hey, what's up with
the slider. I'm like, all right, they thought. I got
(19:41):
a couple comments like maybe it's just going bad, Maybe
we got to replace this thing. No, no, no, no,
no no no. Those wheels because they're on a screw mechanism,
the vibration of opening them and closing them lets the
screw slip a little bit over time, So in goes
the screwdriver, up goes the door, and the next thing,
you know, just slide and free and clear. Once again,
(20:02):
this is something it only takes a couple of minutes
to do. So changing the height and readjusting the rollers
on your exterior sliding glass door. Now, if you do
that and there's still all sorts of problems, then that's
another thing. But just no, nine out of ten times,
without adding a bunch of grease to the track or
anything like that, it just means they need to be
(20:24):
raised up again, and they will settle back down and
you'll have to do this again at some point. But
for now, this couldn't last you know, years, months, Yeah,
at least once we're outside again trimming your trees. Now
you're like Dean, duh, no, no, no, I mean really
(20:46):
keeping them artistically attention based trimmed trimming trees is something
that not enough homeowners put enough effort into, and so
what they get is they get crazy overgrowth. The tree
gets out of control, it gets ignored for long periods
of time, years, and then you call in some tree
(21:09):
service who's priority is just cutting stuff and getting out
of there as quickly as possible, as opposed to an
arborist who's going to shape and save and sculpt a tree.
But after years of malgrowth, it's not easy to re
sculpt a tree exactly how you want, better to guide
it along the way. So every year, if you've got trees,
(21:32):
and I know you focus on your flowers in your
garden and your lawns and stuff like that, but look up,
look at the canopys of your trees, then the mount
then out the internal of the canopy, expose the beautiful
branch structure of the tree. Clip things back. Be aware
so that you don't have to pay the big money
(21:53):
for a tree trimming service to come along. And also
you don't have to have a service like that come
and just galp back and really screw up a tree
long term. Okay, so a very simple thought. Trim the trees.
One more simple thought before we go to break. If
you've got rodents in the attic enough with all the
(22:14):
traps up there, okay, that is just addressing a superficial symptom.
And it's gross and it's nasty, and you know that
as well as I do. All right, this is when
if you can't figure this out on your own. You
call in a company that specializes in rodent exclusion for addics.
(22:34):
They're out there. In fact, Eco La does this kind
of thing. They will get in there and find the holes.
The way to deal with pasts, especially rodents in your
home is not to go to war with them. It's
just to exclude them so that they don't make your
home the battleground that it could be. So it takes
(22:57):
a little bit of time. Got to get conscientious. But
an enough with Here's something. I don't want you to
maintain rat traps in the attic. I want you to
lose them. If it takes clearing out the insulation temporarily
to find the holes and plug them, do it. Sanitize
the attic, lay it down in there, and stop thinking
about it, and stop worrying about rats in your attic.
(23:17):
They shouldn't be there. And the way to keep them
out is not to trap them or kill them or
bait them or poison them. It's to exclude them from
the attic. So you take the time and you make
it a priority. All right, We got more when we
return your home with Dean Shark, the house.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Whispering you're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand
from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And here we are at the end of another three
hours together to warm, beautiful sunny day here in southern California.
I hope wherever you are, the weather is treating you
well and that you've got plans, plans other than hanging
out here with me, because we're about out of here,
but I still have a couple of items left on
our list of ways to attack the maintenance around your house.
(24:06):
Not defer it, don't procrastinate so that these things don't
end up costing you big bucks in the end. Two
or three other little items before we're out of here.
This is not This is on a lot of maintenance
lists that you'll find, and it's not really on mine.
And that is the roof. Okay. I don't want you
up on the roof every few months checking flashings and things.
(24:29):
Just that's not necessary. I don't know why people even
include that on their list, but I will tell you this,
You look at your roof. Just look at your roof
every once in a while. If you see a tile
slipping or something looking weird, like you've got a asphalt
composite roof and you've got shingles that are starting to
curl up, or something's been knocked loose or out of place,
(24:51):
then yeah, address it, okay, but just look, don't. I
don't want you on a ladder getting up there walking
all over your roof all the time if somehow every
few months something's going to go wrong. Roofs are pretty
durable once they're in place. They're in place, but you know,
keep your eye out for something that doesn't look right.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Okay, if you use your fireplace, and this is not
only if you burn wood, but if you you know,
if you've got a gas logs that if you use
your fireplace period for fire, okay, gas or wood, then
you should have a chimney sweep come and sweep it
out and scope it every year before the season that
you use your fireplace starts.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Okay, it's just a good idea.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
You don't want a bunch of kreosoap build up inside
your fireplace. It's a danger. It doesn't help it draw well.
And also it's because the masonry fireplaces, especially if it's
a masonry fireplace, you just get a camera while they're
there cleaning it. You know, it's not a Dick van
Dyke thing anymore. Okay, Chimney sweeps very high tech. They're
(25:53):
going to run a camera up there just to make
sure we don't have any cracks on the inside fire bricks,
and we keep your home safe from the fire that
you're lighting down below.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
That's it, Okay, no big deal.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Here's one. Keep the oven clean now. I don't normally
have to say this to those of you who bake
regularly because you keep your tools clean. But for the
rest of you, keep the oven clean.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
A lot of modern ovens come with a small cleaning
cycle that uses steam.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Use it.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Keep the oven clean. I'll tell you why. The self
cleaning cycle that every oven has right where you lock
it down and you walk away and you come four
hours later, it works. I mean it works really, really well.
But self cleaning cycles put a lot of stress on
an oven, a lot. That oven gets hotter than it
normally ever, gets by a couple one hundred degrees. And
(26:40):
what they don't tell you is every time you use
the self cleaning cycle on your oven, you are prematurely
aging the oven. Yeah, it's real. The struggle is real, Okay, lastly,
clean the carbage disposal or get rid of it. I'm
happy if you got rid of your garbage disposal, because
it wouldn't surprise me. In the next few years, a lot,
a lot of municipalities are going to ban them in
(27:02):
the US because too much sludge is building up in
our sewer system. That's a whole other thing that I
don't want to get into. But here's a simple way
to keep your garbage disposal clean. Grab some ice cubes,
a little baking soda, Throw the ice cubes down in
the garbage disposal with the baking soda, maybe a lemon
slice or two, and turn it on. Let it just
(27:23):
chew up that ice. It's going to clean it. It's
like getting its teeth brushed. Okay, it's going to freshen it.
It's gonna sterilize it, and so on and so forth.
So well, maybe not sterilized, but it's going to clean
up the garbage disposal. That's it. That's it. That's all
I got for you, all right. So I've been getting
some feedback. People are like, uh, you know, it's been
a while since you've given one of your closing thoughts
(27:44):
at the end of the show. Dean, And it's true,
it's been a very busy year, a lot of things
going on. But all right, I hear you, and I'll
give you one today. How about that?
Speaker 2 (27:54):
All right?
Speaker 1 (27:55):
The number one most important item in need of regular
maintenance by you and by me, your relationships. They're built
like your home, a few moments at a time, one
small opportunity at a time, with intentionality and design, one
display of respect and affection and friendship at a time,
(28:17):
and just like your house, they deteriorate the same way.
One neglected moment, one missed opportunity, one being taken for
granted and phoning it in moment at a time. That's
what destroys a relationship. So on the maintenance side of things,
love Love is a word we throw around a lot
a lot of time. It gets used very loosely, in
(28:38):
my opinion, to describe how we're feeling at the moment,
or because we think it's what we're supposed to say.
But as a matter of maintenance, as a litmus test
or true love, I suggest that you regularly grab the
word love before it slips out of your mouth and
replace it with one or two other words. So instead
of I love you, see how it feels to say
(29:01):
I like you, or I value you do those things
ring True love, after all, at its best, is a
quantum of value. But be careful you say something like
I value you out loud, and it implies that somehow
you've been demonstrating just that, and I hope that's true.
(29:22):
A home is the most important place on earth because
it's where you take care of yourself and the ones
that you love. I read recently a theory that happiness
is not found outside of us, or solely inside of us,
but between us, between you and yourself, between you and
your work, between you and those who are closest to you. Happiness, truly,
(29:47):
for a human being, can only be found in between.
And here's the thing, the in between it needs maintenance,
regular maintenance, small things, not heroic things, small things that
make all the difference. And on that note, I'm now
going to stop standing in between you and the rest
of your day so that you can get busy building
(30:08):
your maintenance list and get busy building yourself a beautiful life.
I hope you all have a great afternoon. We'll see
you right back here next weekend. This has been Home
with Dean Sharp. The house Whisper. Tune into the live
broadcast on KFI AM six forty every Saturday morning from
(30:31):
six to eight Pacific time, and every Sunday morning from
nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on demand on
the iHeartRadio app
Home with Dean Sharp News
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