We switch our clocks forward and back every year for Daylight Saving Time, but perhaps you’ve wondered why we do this? The origins of daylight savings time goes 
back to over 100 years ago, first adopted by Germany in 1916 in order to conserve electricity during wartime.
The U.S. didn’t adopt daylight savings until 1918 for similar reasons. This is contrary to the popular belief that daylight savings was adopted to provide more time for farmers to work in the field.
The agriculture industry actually opposed daylight savings, as their schedule was dictated by the sun, not the clock. This threw off farmers’ entire production schedule. Urban retail businesses have been its biggest proponent over the years.
Make The Most of Daylight Saving Time
While some may not think that daylight saving time is useful (only 25% of the world uses it), that doesn’t mean that we still can’t make the most out of it. For example, let’s use it as an important reminder to clean our appliances!
Periodic appliance cleaning is important to maintain your appliance’s best performance and ensure the safety of your home. Here are some examples:
- Replacing refrigerator filters. To keep your refrigerator’s water and ice at optimum quality, it’s best to change your water filters at least every six months. A worn-out filter won’t properly filter out chlorine, bacteria, and other contaminants. You certainly don’t want that!
- Refrigerator coils/gaskets. Wanna save some money? Cleaning your refrigerator coils is one way to do it. When dirty, your refrigerator’s coils have to work harder, which makes your refrigerator less efficient. This also goes for cleaning and repairing the gaskets, if necessary. Properly maintained gaskets help prevent any cold air from being leaked out.
- Deep Clean Washer and Dishwasher. While ideally this should be done more often than once or twice a year, this is a good a time as any to start. Especially if you’ve noticed a mildew smell in the appliances. Using cleaner tablets like Affresh for your dishwasher and washer not only kills bacteria but also removes the residue that causes the bacteria to grow in the first place!
- Cleaning dryer vents. Have you noticed that your dryer is taking longer to dry your clothes than before? Your dryer vents probably need to be cleaned. It’s also a matter of safety, as the lint build-up in dryers is one of the leading causes of home fires. We recommend this cleaning at least once a year.
If you’re not up for cleaning your dryer vents yourself, we’ll be happy to take care of it for you! Read more about our dryer vent cleaning service here.
To learn more about the history of daylight saving time, follow this link.
