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My Weekly Real Estate E-letters
| These are my weekly email e-letters. You may click on the title of the e-letter to be carried directed to that e-letter. I will be archiving old copies of the e-letters on this page. Click on Weekly Real Estate Email E-letter to sign up to receive the e-letter directly in your email box. The e-letter will contain real estate tips and tips in general for around the home.
Due to technical difficulties I lost all of mail e-letters and I am having to start again. If there was any information you wanted I have email copies saved.
| Weekly Real Estate E-lettersWeekly Real Estate E-letter(10-6-08) General Household Tips I
Weekly Real Estate E-letter(10-13-08) General Household Tips 6-10
Weekly Real Estate E-letter(10-20-08) General Household Tips 11-15
Weekly Real Estate E-letter (10-27-08) General Household Tips 16-20 Click here for the November E-letters
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| • Switch incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescents.
• Install ceiling fans, which help lessen the load on air conditioners and keep heat at lower levels in winter.
• Clean off the filters and coils on air conditioners and refrigerators. They work more efficiently if free of dust and debris.
• If using a window air-conditioning unit, buy one appropriate for the room size.
• Weather-strip or caulk windows and doors to keep the cool in.
• Put a jacket on your water heater.
• Line-dry your clothes. Old women in Italy do it all the time!
• Get a push mower – just like on old TV shows.
• Choose reusable dishes – break out your best china? – instead of Styrofoam or paper plates.
• Adjust your thermostat by just 2 degrees – it saves 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per person.
• Install a programmable thermostat so the house isn’t cooled or warmed unnecessarily when you’re not home.
• Use the dishwasher – typically they use only 4 or 5 gallons, rather than 15 gallons washing by hand. No, seriously. It’s true.
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| 1. Hide a cluttered bookshelf with a spring-loaded curtain rod and a set of curtains.
2. Use filing cabinets for a TV stand.
3. Use clear plastic shoeboxes to store knick-knacks and other odds and ends.
4. Organize your house by task so that the things most relevant to each job are where you’re most likely to use them. This might be obvious for things like laundry and crafts, but what about a mail station, homework area, or just storing linens in the laundry room?
5. Figure out where things normally get dropped and set up an appropriate place for them as close as possible to that point. This will improve the chance that they’ll end up where they belong, and decrease the distance the things that don’t make it home have to go to be put back.
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| 6. Label it! Labeling is not just for file folders – get a label-maker (or several) and keep it handy all around the house. Kitchen shelves, storage containers, bookshelves, coat racks — there are millions of places where a smart label can forestall endless amounts of clutter.
7. Designate a “launchpad”. This is an area in your house, preferably near the door, where coats, jackets, shoes, backpacks, purses, keys, and everything else you need to find easily next time you leave the house stays. Think of it a transition-zone between outside and inside — almost like an airlock.
8. Set up a “bucket” at your launchpad (a milk crate, basket, or an actual bucket) for each person.
9. Use a 4-tier “Stadium Rack” for spices, allowing you to always see everything easily without taking up much space.
10. Set up “clutter bags” in every room. Keep a reusable shopping bag — there are plenty of attractive ones available for super-cheap these days — in every room; when stuff from elsewhere around the house starts building up, throw it into the clutter bag until you can sort it out.
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| 11. Store trashbags inside the trash can, under the current liner. That way, you (or whoever takes the trash out) have a fresh bag handy every single time.
12. Set up a shared online calendar between you and your partner, and allow access to your close family, child-care providers, and anyone else who might need to know where you are at any given moment — or what events are coming up that they might need to plan for.
13. Use behind-the-door shoe holders for storage of tiny or awkward stuff. The cloth kind have 20 or so pockets that are ideal for craft supplies, cleaning products, tools, and office materials.
14. Take care of dishes immediately after meals.
15. Run the dishwasher frequently. Large households often never get to that mythical state where the clean dishes are put away, the dirty ones are in the dishwasher, and nothing is stacked up in the sink. Modern dishwashers are designed to detect the size of the load, so there’s no reason to wait until the washer is full to run your dishes. If you have an old dishwasher wait until it is full.
| | | 16. Take pictures of sentimental objects before giving them away or throwing them out. Like that T-shirt from that concert you want to when you were 20 years younger, 3 sizes smaller, and quite a bit more stoned. You know you won’t ever wear it again, but hold onto it because of the memories.
17. Set up a library/rental box. Store your library books and rented videos in a box in your living room or other place near where you’ll use them, and keep your library cards and video rental cards there as well. That way, you’ll always be reminded if anything’s due when you go to collect your rental cards.
18. Color-code your family. Assign a color to everyone in the house, and buy everything for them in that color: towels, toothbrushes, cups, water bottles, lunch boxes, slippers, whatever. (OngoingDebacle)
19. Keep your “go bag” in the car. For example, all the stuff for family outings (aside from food) can be stored in the truck, freeing up space in the house and keeping it with you for spontaneous fun time.
20. Use an accordion organizer to sort kids’ project paper. Sort by color and/or type of paper. | | |
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