Any homeowner will tell you that maintaining that household is probably one of the more time-consuming elements of their lives. From changing HVAC air filters to draining your hot water heater, there really is no ship like ownership. Upkept is a new app that hopes to help you keep those items that need love in the forefront.
What is it?
Upkept is a mobile-first app from Consumer Reports. Yes, the age-old non-profit for home products reviews and reporting now has a mobile app. The idea is that Upkept uses the historical data of it’s 80+ year existence to help you easily maintain and manage at-home tasks.
This includes things like general maintenance of items like your fridge, oven, or heating systems. It can also help offer utilities and how-to tutorials on both maintenances as well as DIY projects like flooring, electrical, or plumbing.
How does it work?
The hardest part of home upkeep is simply remembering. Upkept allows you to add tasks to the app and it helps manage that muscle memory for you. From weekly tasks like taking out the trash or longer tasks like quarterly air filters, Upkept makes it simple.
You select a task or appliance from the UI and Upkept takes over. If a DIY task, it will walk you through tutorials on how to accomplish your goal. You will get step-by-step guidance via the app with estimated time to completion and tools you may need.
For instance, I selected the refrigerator as my first addition to Upkept. It then asked a few questions about make and model. You will then get a list of maintenance checklists you may want to complete. Our example listed one Important task and one Extra Credit option.
My Important task on Upkept was to clean the condenser coil in the back of the fridge. The app told me this was a basic task with just a brush or cordless vacuum to complete. It also warns that depending on if your unit is on rollers, you may need a partner to move the fridge away from the wall.
Gets the job done
Our task was now ready to complete. The Upkept app is well laid out with detailed and numbered lines to accomplish our maintenance options. In our fridge example, the app listed finding the coils as our first itinerary. This is followed by common places to find said coils.
Second, we are reminded that safety is never an option to be ignored. Step two was to make sure the appliance is unplugged. This is a quick task according to Upkept of under 20 minutes, so I unplugged my refrigerator.
Our last step is pretty self-explanatory. Clean the coils with a brush. Once we did this and checked the box, you get the option to mark the Upkept task complete. You also get a nice tip that Consumer Report’s data shows that a condenser-coil brush can be the best tool for the job and the estimated cost to own one is around $10 in the United States.
Create shopping lists with Goals
Upkept is great for knocking out tasks around the house, but it can also be used to build a shopping list for that next project as well. You can create Goals in the app that are essentially a wish list of items you may need to create a more efficient home environment.
Whether it’s adding a garbage disposal to cut out the waste in the kitchen, or cleaning supplies, you can easily do that from the Upkept app. You can even add new projects like Gutter cleanings and it will try to auto-populate a shopping list for you.
Give your home the Upkept boost
I’ve been thoroughly surprised by the value of the Upkept app. While it’s not revolutionary by any means, it does make a compelling argument to live on the phones of folks that stay active in home maintenance. If you’ve ever used sites like Instructables, then Upkept is a great mobile alternative to have in your tool bag.
The app is available via the Google Play Store. The service is free of charge for three months and then has a monthly subscription of $5. If you are an avid DIY or home handyman, I think it’s well worth giving Upketp a shot.
