The valve you forget until you need it
Most people in Republic don't think about their shutoff valves until a supply line splits under the kitchen sink or a toilet won't stop running at midnight. That's the moment you reach down, turn the little oval handle, and find out it hasn't moved in ten years. Sometimes it turns. Sometimes it snaps off in your hand, or just weeps around the stem because the washer inside gave up long ago. Either way, you're now standing in water trying to solve two problems instead of one.
Why this matters more here than it might elsewhere
Southwest Missouri gives shutoff valves a harder life than people realize. We get hot, humid summers that swell wood and corrode metal fittings, then winters with real cold snaps where temperatures can drop fast enough to catch homes off guard. Houses around Republic span a wide range, from older farmhouses and postwar homes near downtown with original galvanized or early copper plumbing, to newer builds out toward the edges of town with PEX and modern fixtures. Older valves, especially the multi-turn gate style common in houses built before the 1990s, are the ones most likely to seize up from mineral deposits in our hard well and municipal water. If a valve hasn't turned in years, it's not a question of if it will fail, it's when, and winter is when plumbing problems like to show up.
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What to actually check once a year
Pick a weekend, maybe right before the first hard freeze hits, and walk the house. Find the shutoff under every sink, behind every toilet, at the washing machine hoses, at the water heater, and the main shutoff where the line enters the house, often in the garage, a utility closet, or a crawlspace access point. Turn each valve closed, then back open. You're feeling for smooth resistance, not grinding or a handle that won't budge. Look at the fitting while you do it. A little dampness or a greenish crust on copper means it's been slowly leaking for a while.
Check the main shutoff last, because if something goes wrong here, you want to know before you're relying on it in an emergency. In a lot of Republic homes, especially ones on a crawlspace foundation, that valve sits low and can get stiff from disuse or corrosion. If you can shut it off and fully stop water flow to a fixture when you test one somewhere in the house, that's a good sign the main works too.
Outdoor hose bib shutoffs matter here as well. We get enough freeze events most winters that an un-drained, un-shut hose bib can crack and you won't know until spring thaw, when water starts showing up inside a wall.
What a seized or weeping valve is telling you
A valve that won't turn at all is not something to force with pliers. Gate valves especially will shear off at the stem under pressure, and now you've turned a slow drip into a geyser with no way to stop it except at the street. A valve that turns but keeps dripping afterward usually has a worn washer or packing, which is a small repair on its own but often a sign the whole valve is old enough that its neighbors are in the same shape.
If you find more than one or two valves in this condition, that's usually the point to stop testing and start replacing. Trying to force every stubborn valve in the house in one afternoon is how a simple check turns into an emergency repair call on a Saturday.
Where this becomes a job for someone else
Testing valves is homeowner work. Replacing a stuck or leaking valve, especially the main shutoff or anything tied into galvanized pipe, usually isn't, not because it's complicated in theory, but because old pipe threads can crack or strip the moment you put a wrench to them, and then you've got a bigger repair than you started with. A plumbing inspection once a year, timed for fall before the cold weather sets in, catches this kind of thing while it's still a five minute fix rather than a flooded cabinet or a frozen, burst line discovered after a hard freeze. It's a short visit, and it means that when you actually need a shutoff to work, in the middle of the night, with water running somewhere it shouldn't, it does.