Repairing & maintaining our homes and the various items in it is a continuous and on-going activity. Our homes experience wear and tear either due to continuous daily usage or exposure to weather. For this, we do preventive maintenance. Preventive maintenance includes activities like cleaning, dusting, looking for cracks, breaks or minor flaws, changing consumables like oil, bulbs, filters and such. Sudden leakage or equipment breakdowns also call for maintenance and repair work.
Roughly all equipment in our house came with manuals. We would sometimes also collect different pamphlets to compare products or find out what their features are. Manuals of mechanical and electrical items like electric fans, exhaust fans, electric irons, sewing machines, heating and ventilating equipment normally contain the basic operation instructions. Manuals also include the parts involved in the appliance, the safety precautions to be taken and considered while touching or opening them, and instructions on how to properly clean and maintain items. While you are repairing or doing maintenance on these items or their related parts (air ducts, water pipes, etc.), you should invariably make sure that you read and understand the instructions in the pamphlets and manuals first. This way, you will be able to tell whether something that happens to or on a piece of equipment is really a problem or simply part of its normal function. Manuals also contain warranty-related information that might be important if you have to take a mechanical or electrical item back to the store for replacement or repair.
Keep all your manuals and information kits in one location. Organize them by putting them in an envelope or folder. This way, you save yourself the trouble of having to rummage through your things trying to find that manual for your new DVD player. For small items, some people keep the receipts and manuals along with the packaging material. This is a good idea because some stores insist on original packing material in case of replacements. If there is no need to keep packaging material, collect all of your manuals and pamphlets in one common folder or bag. Anytime you need to check a manual for a piece of equipment's model or for troubleshooting, you can easily check the manual and find the information you need.