How to extend life of your home appliances tips, Property microwave, House products lifespan

How to Extend the Life of Your Home Appliances

28 March 2022

According to a recent survey revealing the average lifespan of common household appliances, the humble microwave is estimated to live for nearly seven years, or just shy of 1,500 uses. This is a respectable lifespan for such a well-used appliance, but as money gets tighter for the average household the prospect of replacing appliances becomes less easy to stomach.

How to Extend the Life of Your Home Appliances Advice

In today’s more wasteful consumer society, there is a growing movement amongst younger folks to ‘fix it yourself’, in the hopes of extending the natural life of common products. Are there any lessons the average household could learn from this movement? How might you lengthen the lifespan of your own appliances?

Central Heating

Central heating is something you should hope to be able to leave well alone; your boiler handily heats water for washing and bathing, and works in tandem with radiators to keep your home warm. But occasional maintenance can keep the boiler-man at bay, and keep your home warm when you need it. Bleeding your radiators regularly can prevent inefficient heating, while re-pressurising your boiler before winter can ensure optimal continued operation.

Smaller Electrical Appliances

In the modern age of convenience, many of us would sooner replace an electrical item than attempt to repair it – especially when they are abundant in supermarket homeware sections or easily purchased online. But for the spendthrifts, a more considered approach to handheld items like food processors, blenders and irons can make a big impact on expenditure over time.

For starters, cleaning and properly putting away items between uses can extend their shelf-life. Blender blades can dull if food is left to dry on them, while irons can clog up with difficult-to-remove limescale if water is left in them for long periods of time.

Often, though, the fault can be electrical in nature. While you should not attempt to repair anything electrical without basic understanding of electronics and a supremely cautious approach, some faults are easy to diagnose and easier to repair. More often than not, a device not powering on is down to a blown fuse in the plug; however, someone handy with a soldering iron might be able to identify and replace an internal component that has failed.

Oven and Microwave

In what is becoming something of a theme for extending the life of home conveniences, keeping your convection and microwave ovens clean can be the most effective way to keep them running happily. Not only can the presence of baked-in grime hamper the efforts of your ovens, but also encourage bad habits in terms of cleaning.

This is especially true with regard to conventional oven systems with a ‘self-clean’ mode. While self-cleaning might sound like a godsend, what it actually amounts to is an oven stress-test, heating it to its highest possible temperature and decreasing its lifespan in the process. Regular cleaning of both appliances keeps surfaces pristine, and keeps them working at their best.

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