When my boyfriend and I decided to move in together, we wanted everything to be perfectly discussed and understood before we entered the same household.We both love each other so much and really wanted things to work out, so we did our best to talk about things openly before they could cause any drama.
That’s why we sat down and went over bank accounts, budgets, utility expenditures, and even split up the household chores before ever looking for a place together.
We decided it was fair if I handled all the cooking and he did the cleaning. I would vacuumed all the floors if he would do the dusting. And I would wash the sinks and mirrors if he would handle the toilets. Unfortunately, the one thing that we never discussed was of the heating and cooling equipment. Neither one of us had been a homeowner before, so we were uneducated when it came to indoor air temperature control. As far as I knew, the HVAC system started and ended with the central thermostat. If I needed warmer or cooler air, I knew what to do. Outside of that, I had no idea what it meant to be the owner of a forced air furnace or central air conditioning unit. It was about a year into living together when our forced air furnace broke down one morning. We both panicked and immediately called a heating and cooling specialist to come and fix the mysterious air handling device. When he arrives at the house, he started asking questions about our routine HVAC maintenance. Our blank stares must have said it. He sat us down and gave us a lecture on proper HVAC servicing. Now, our chore list are a little bit longer, but our energy bills are much lower.
