All the Ways Your Smartphone Can Be a Crucial Home Maintenance Tool

It’s difficult to imagine modern life without a smartphone in your pocket. We no longer need to wrestle with impossibly folded paper maps when we’re driving; we no longer need a pocket stuffed with cash to buy things—we don’t even need stereos or televisions, really. Everything we could ever need to keep ourselves informed, entertained, and not lost is right there in our pocket.

But we’re still surprisingly physical about certain aspects of our lives, resisting the drive towards abstraction and digitization. Sometimes that’s simply practical—you still can’t hammer a nail using your smartphone, so most home maintenance tasks leave the smartphone in our pockets. But that doesn’t mean your smartphone isn’t very, very useful when doing projects around the house. In fact, these days it’s an essential part of any toolbox when you’re doing work around the house.

Documenting

The most useful and obvious way you can use your smartphone in your efforts to stop your house from collapsing into rubble is by using it to document things:

Physical defects. Is there a worrying crack in your basement wall? A stain on the ceiling that may or may not pre-date your ownership? Take a photo of anything that might indicate a bigger problem or might just be a harmless blemish. Then set a reminder and take another photo a few weeks or months later, and compare the two. Is the crack getting bigger? Is the stain spreading? Documenting these things can keep the problem top of mind and give you more data to work with. Serials et al. Every time you install something in the house, take a photo of the serial number or the little info tag that tells you the model and other information. This will make it a lot easier to look up information about it without having to remove it or bend yourself into unpleasant shapes years from now to retrieve that info. Painting? Snap pics of the mixing labels on your paint cans. Opening a wall or ceiling to do some work? Snap photos of the area for future reference after you close everything up again. Reminders. The calendar on your phone is a powerful tool. Every time you perform home maintenance, set a reminder there for the next time. Change the batteries in your smoke detectors? Set a reminder for a year from now. Then set a reminder to replace the smoke detectors completely in a few years.

Investigating

Your smartphone camera is a sophisticated tool. These days smartphone cameras will automatically adjust for low light, decide whether a flash is needed, and have a plethora of settings you probably never dig into. For home maintenance, they’re a godsend, because the smartphone’s thin profile means you can snap photos of a lot of stuff that you can’t squeeze your enormous head into. If you’re not sure what’s behind or under something and you can’t get a good look, try snapping some photos to reveal what’s hiding back there.

This is doubly useful when you’re trying to DIY a project and you’re not sure what materials or tools you’re going to need. Snapping some photos and showing them to the friendly folks at your local hardware store while gesturing the universal “what in heck is this?” gesture will save you a lot of time and trouble.

Organizing

The calendar app on your phone is useful for reminders, as mentioned—but your smartphone can be so much more in terms of keeping your home maintenance efforts organized. Apps like Househappy gather information about your home and help track maintenance schedules and suggest professionals for repair work. Having that info at your fingertips in an emergency repair situation is priceless. Other useful apps include:

Centriq. With this app, take a photo of any appliance (or its nameplate) and it will load all the relevant manuals and other information automatically. It also provides links to repair information and tracks replacement parts for you. HomeSavvy. This app takes home maintenance a bit further. After you enter the basic data about your home, it will keep track of maintenance needs based on your location’s climate and other factors—ideal for new homeowners who had no idea you have to clean the gutters every fall.

Tools

There are so many apps for your smartphone, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. Some of these apps are incredibly useful when doing work around the house because they can replace physical tools, leaving you with less stuff to haul around.

Color matching. Apps like Benjamin Moore’s ColorReader can quickly and accurately identify paint colors, and most will also offer suggestions for color palettes and design ideas. Most paint manufacturers offer their own, as do the big-box hardware stores, so if you have brand loyalty to a certain paint or store, start there. Bubble Level and tape measure apps. Apps like Bubble Level and AR Ruler allow you to check level and perform basic measurements without having to carry around two separate tools. While you might want to go back to a physical tool for anything mission-critical, for quick checks while you’re working, these apps are a godsend. Design assistance. Apps like HomeStyler can help you figure out the design aspects of your renovation plans. Using 3D modeling, you can see a render of your space with different colors and design choices, which can make planning a remodel much easier than if you’re relying solely on your mind palace. iFixit. If you’re a DIYer who wants to save money by fixing stuff around the house yourself, this app will help by providing thousands of free tutorials covering a wide range of common (and not so common) repair jobs. Flashlight. It’s dumb, it’s simple, and it wears down your battery like nothing else. But having a flashlight built into your phone is terrific when you’re trying to carry fewer things with you as you work around the house.