The home safety checks worth doing on a schedule

The checks and their intervals

Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms

The test button is the whole of the monthly check, and it takes a minute for a whole house.

Press the button on each alarm and listen for it to sound. One that won't sound needs attention rather than a note to look at it later. While you're there, three things are worth knowing:

• The date on the back. Most manufacturers rate alarms for around ten years from the date of manufacture, not from the day you put it up. Past that, the sensor is at the end of its rated life and the alarm gets replaced rather than tested. The date is printed on the body, where you can't see it once it's mounted.
• Which type you have. Sealed ten year units have no battery to change; the rest want new batteries twice a year, and the daylight saving weekends are the easiest anchor anyone has found.
• What the chirps mean. Every model has a different pattern for low battery, end of life and actual alarm, and three in the morning isn't when you want to learn yours.

Carbon monoxide alarms deserve a specific mention because CO has no smell and the alarm is the only warning there is. Anything in the house that burns fuel is a reason to have them. The button on one of these is worth understanding: it checks that the circuitry works, not that the sensor still reads accurately, which is why the replacement age printed on the alarm matters more here than anywhere else in the house.

Two things are worth knowing when you replace one. Smoke alarms come in two sensing types, and they're better at different fires: one responds sooner to fast flaming fires, the other to slow smoldering ones, and units that do both exist. And alarms that talk to each other so all of them sound at once are the meaningful upgrade in a house with more than one floor, because the one that detects the fire is often not the one you can hear from bed.

The fire extinguisher

Quarterly, and it's a look rather than a test.

• Gauge in the green. A needle in the red or in the overcharged zone means it isn't going to do what you expect.
• Pin and seal intact. A broken seal means it has been discharged, even briefly, and a partly discharged extinguisher doesn't hold its pressure.
• No rust, dents or corrosion, particularly around the base and the neck.
• Still where it should be, which isn't behind the recycling.

Worth knowing what you have as well as whether it works. Extinguishers are labeled by the fire types they suit, and the common household one is rated for all three of ordinary combustibles, flammable liquids and live electrical equipment. A unit rated for only one of those, sitting in a kitchen, is the wrong tool for the fire most likely to happen there.

Anything that looks wrong is a question for the manufacturer or your local fire service rather than something to work out yourself, and many services will tell you where to have one recharged.

GFCI outlets

The outlets with the test and reset buttons, in kitchens, bathrooms, garages, basements and outdoors. Monthly is the standard guidance, and the test is two button presses.

Press test; something plugged into it should lose power and the reset button should pop. Press reset; power should come back. An outlet that won't trip when tested, or that won't reset afterwards, isn't doing its job and is an electrician's call. So is one that trips repeatedly on its own, which usually means it's detecting something real.

The garage door auto reverse

Monthly, and this is the one most people have never tested.

The door should reverse as soon as it meets an obstruction on the way down. A door that doesn't is a serious hazard, and it's a large powered object that closes on a path children and pets use.

Your opener's manual explains the test for your model, because the mechanism varies. If it fails, that's a technician's job rather than an adjustment to attempt.

Making them one habit rather than five

Three of these are monthly and none takes more than a minute. That's exactly why they get skipped: no particular moment ever feels like the moment.

The trick is to attach them to something that already happens on its own schedule rather than to a date. Patina keeps each one on its own interval and reminds you on the day it's due.