How do you keep your apartment is top condition while making sure you don’t expose yourself to this virus? Here are five ideas:

  1. Send in a picture. What you don’t want is maintenance staff coming to your apartment to do nothing more than to assess the problem. That’s potentially more people in your apartment more often for longer.
  2. Trouble-shoot over the phone. For the same reasons. Again, the better you can describe the problem, the less time and number of times maintenance staff will be in your apartment.
  3. Close off rooms that maintenance staff do not need to enter.
  4. Request that maintenance staff wear masks and gloves. This is standard at Decker Properties. Elsewhere, you may have to ask.
  5. Arrange to not be at home when maintenance staff arrives. For individuals working from home, this may be difficult. But the maintenance appointment could be a good time for a break or to run errands. Either way, it’s better that you not be there. It appears that the virus can only live four hours on a surface. Therefore, perhaps the safest procedure would be to be gone all day working and schedule maintenance first thing in the morning after you leave.

    Often, residents prefer to be home when maintenance is servicing their apartment. This is understandable under ordinary circumstance, but Covid is not an ordinary circumstance. It’s better that you not be there. If you are working from home or for whatever reasons can’t be gone when maintenance services your apartment, then you need to wear a mask too.