What Can Smart Switches and Light Plugs Do For Your Home?

“Siri, how much water did I drink today?”

“Alexa, what’s on TV tonight?”

“Google, turn off the lights!”

You know the drill. We’re all starting to talk to ourselves under the guise of speaking to our smart speakers and voice assistants. There’s nothing at all wrong with this, but it’s a future no one could have conceived even a decade ago. Smart speakers were cool for creating grocery lists, but that’s just a fraction of what they’re capable of now.

Your computer friends can control your lights and outlets from anywhere now. How cool is that?

The Power of Smart Switches and Plugs

Smart switches and plugs are among the most underrated components of a smart home. In fact, they’re a cheap way to get into the smart home world if your home wasn’t built with this type of equipment in mind.

They’re simple to install and essentially disappear after a few days. After all, they’re just boring plugs and switches, right?

Well… that’s one way to look at it. But, then again, how long do you go in a day without interacting with an outlet or a switch? Are you using either right now?

Behold the Handy, Hidden Household Helpers

If you really think about it, you use outlets and switches all the time for a wide range of reasons. Smart switches and smart plugs are no different, they’re a frequent touch item in your home. But they’re so much more than power regulators. Smart switches and plugs can do things for your household like:

• Making mornings tolerable. Most people have heard of the coffee pot that’s powered using a smart outlet. You fill it up at night, then your programmed smart outlet switches on in the morning and starts the coffee cycle. It’s a popular trope, but it’s also a real thing… so you have that to look forward to.
• Proving peace of mind. Whether you’re across town or across the state, it’s not a great idea to advertise that you’re not home at night. Your smart switches and plugs can be programmed to flip on and off at different times to make it appear that you’re just hanging around the house.
• Conserving resources. Believe it or not, a lot of homeowners find that they save a lot of energy with smart plugs. The better units have use reporting built in, all you have to do is check your app to see which ones are using up the most juice. Create a schedule for those plugs, then check your usage again in a few months. Adjust the whole thing as necessary.
• Creating a safer indoor environment. Are you the kind of person who doesn’t like to walk into a dark house, even when it’s yours? Then smart switches and outlets should definitely be on your shopping list. You can turn all the lights in the house on when you pull into your subdivision or driveway, making it clear that you’re home, in case any ghouls (or burglars) happen to be lurking.
• Assisting people with handicaps. You may not need the help now, but even a debilitating sports injury can be enough to make you want to scream when you forget to turn a light on or off and are already across the room. For people who are permanently disabled, that’s an every day event. Today with the help of Siri, Alexa and Google Home Assistant, all anyone needs to do is shout, “Siri, turn off the kitchen lights!” and it’s a done deal.

Those little almost-invisible switches and outlets are pretty busy, looks like. They’re also an inexpensive way to jumpstart your smart home transformation. For example, if you wanted a way to turn your bedroom’s ceiling fan light off at night, you would save a bundle to install a smart switch versus using smart light bulbs and the switch won’t burn out any time soon, so bonus!

Water Filters And You!

There’s something you should know about your water: it’s not as clean as you might think.

In fact, depending on where it comes from, you could be having that skinny half-caf latte with extra primordial soup. Lots of little living things are in your drinking water right now, right at this moment. There are also plenty of minerals and more complicated compounds floating around in it, maybe even agricultural waste, if you get the drift.

It’s a pretty unpleasant picture, there’s no doubt about it. But without water, we mere mortals won’t last long. Just how do you keep from drinking a slurry that would potentially give you superpowers if you were in a comic book?

Water Filters for the Masses

Anyone who has a well should understand the need for regular testing and heavy filtration to protect their families from the things that can concentrate in the water supply, but most people who are on municipal water don’t give it a second thought. And why should they? Water goes to a treatment plant and it comes back as pure and glistening as newly fallen snow.

Except that’s not really true. There are always contaminates that can’t be filtered out, no matter how hard you try. The technology is getting better all the time, but until it’s perfect, you may want to take some of the work of cleaning your drinking water into your own hands.

What Can a Water Filter Do?

There are plenty of water filters on the market today, mostly because many can only cover a portion of the contamination spectrum. It’s a lot to ask of one filter, though. The way you capture protozoa and eliminate them is completely different from how you’d get rid of excess calcium.

Unfortunately, this isn’t made very clear by those filter manufacturers. What ends up happening in many cases is that homeowners buy a single filter and are disappointed that their water is still kind of dirty.

For most whole-home filtration systems, using more than one type of filter will get you the best results possible. You will not get water that is perfectly free of anything but a couple of Hs and an O, but it will be much better overall.

Types of Filters

As mentioned above, there are several types of filters out there, most of which only cover a limited range of impurities. Some remove biological contamination from your water, but will not remove chemicals. These include:

• Ceramic
• Mechanical
• Ozone
• Ultraviolet

Others are really good at getting the chemicals but don’t do much for things like cysts and bacteria. A few popular filters and techniques on that list are:

• Activated Carbon
• Deionization
• Distillation
• Ion exchange

Then, you have reverse osmosis.

Reverse Osmosis for Household Water Filtration

This particular filter technology as it’s regularly deployed to homeowners is a multipart system that not only includes a semipermeable membrane that prevents water contaminants like arsenic, hexavalent chromium, nitrates and perchlorate from entering your faucets, a carbon filter comes along with most standard systems to catch chlorine and other materials.

Part of what makes a reverse osmosis system so effective at cleaning your water is the multiple filtration stages. Of course, the water’s going to be cleaner with several polishes rather than the single pass your Brita pitcher gets.

The typical reverse osmosis filtration system uses pre-filtration to eliminate sand, dirt, silt and other sediments, carbon filters to remove chlorine and organic compounds, as well as the reverse osmosis membrane. By installing a reverse osmosis system, you are really installing multiple water filters that work together to create very clean water.

The Flip Side of Reverse Osmosis

Mostly, reverse osmosis systems are really pretty amazing. They do a lot of work without complaining much and need minimal maintenance if they’re installed properly. However, nothing in this world is perfect and the reverse osmosis filtration systems do have a few drawbacks to consider:

• Not all systems are the same. Just because many reverse osmosis systems include multiple pre-filters, it should not be assumed that the one you're looking at on Amazon does. The quality of reverse osmosis systems varies dramatically, make sure you read the reviews and invest in a good system that will last.
• You need decent water pressure. Because the water has to be forced through what is essentially a super fine mesh, you need decent water pressure for a reverse osmosis system to work. If you’ve had water pressure issues in the shower, it’s a good bet you need a plumber out to take a look before you spend the money on a reverse osmosis filtration system.
• They use a lot of water. Many homeowners are surprised to see how much wastewater their reverse osmosis system produces. How much discharge water is collected will vary based on local water conditions and the number and types of filters you use, but you can expect something like three to five gallons of discharge water per gallon of reverse osmosis purified water. The wastewater, however, is totally useable for anything you’d use the purified water for, aside from consumption by humans or animals. Hook it up to your gray water discharge system and water your trees with it — it’s not wasted anymore!

Millennials forced to move to the suburbs for their dream home

A third of Canadian Millennials would rather live in the city than the ‘burbs but for two-thirds of those, they are willing to sacrifice that wish to buy the home they want.

A new TD survey finds that 81% of Millennials say they want to own their own home but with affordability (78%) and home size (60%) beating neighbourhood (58%) as the top factors informing homebuying decisions, a move to the suburbs is the right choice for many.

"We're now seeing Millennials looking beyond the city for their housing needs, particularly as they start thinking about their needs for the future, like having more space to raise a family," said Pat Giles, Vice President, Real Estate Secured Lending at TD. "As a result, many are choosing the suburbs to either make the move to a new home or upsize from their current one, a shift from just a few years ago when city living was this generation's preference."

Affordability and space, both inside and outside, are the main reasons for relocation from the city to the suburbs but this may clash with the desire of 45% to live close to work.

Cutting spending to buy a home
Millennials are willing to curb their day-to-day spending to further their homeownership dreams.

Most said they would limit eating out, shopping, and entertainment, to be able to afford a home.

"Although homes in today's housing market cost much more than they used to, the desire to own the right home hasn't wavered, especially for Millennials," said Giles

Source: https://www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca/market-update/millennials-forced-to-move-to-the-suburbs-for-their-dream-home-256560.aspx

Spring Cleaning… Your Air Conditioner?

Spring is a time of beginnings. You get a chance to start over, to try something new and to get your air conditioner ready for the hot summer to come. It might not be as romantic as the budding of trees and blooming of flowers, but having your air conditioner in tip-top shape is arguably far more useful.

When you start your spring clean, don’t forget your air conditioner. In just a few minutes, you can improve its efficiency while helping it continue to run well for years to come.

First, A Basic Explanation of Air Conditioning Technology

Your air conditioner isn’t magic, but it’s pretty close. These devices were actually invented in the early 1900s as a way to reduce indoor humidity in paper plants. It just so happened they have a side effect that we rely on even today.

Air conditioning systems depend on the expansion and contraction of gasses to pull moisture out of the air by cooling it down. This is basic physics at work — warm air holds more water, cool air holds less.

When air is pulled into your air handler (for many, this is a furnace) through your warm air return, it’s forced over a tent-shaped coil that uses refrigerant to cool the air as it passes. A blower then blows that cooled air back into the house.

So What Does the Outside Condenser Do?

The air conditioning condenser that most people consider to be “the air conditioner” is actually a giant heatsink. See, when the air is cooled inside your air handler, the refrigerant is what’s absorbing most of the heat. It then gets pumped to the condenser, where the heat collected inside your house is released to the environment.

It’s really a pretty simple idea that has made a huge change to how we live, play and work.

Your Air Conditioner Spring Cleaning Checklist

There’s no time like spring to do a little air conditioner tune-up. A lot of the heavy lifting will have to be performed by HVAC professionals, but there are things you can do to keep your system running longer as a homeowner. Generally, these items should be done at least once in the spring before you start using the A/C and again in the fall when you’re ready to put it away for the year.

Change your furnace filter. Whether it’s on the ceiling, on the floor or inside your furnace or air handler, a clean filter is a filter that can let the most air through for cooling. And the easier it is for the system to pull air in and cool it, the more comfortable you’ll be with the least amount of cost. Investing in an electrostatic filter that you can wash and reuse is a smart move for the long term.

Flush your condensation line. There’s a pipe or tube that comes out of your furnace or air handler and runs to a drain somewhere. This is the condensation line. All the moisture your system is pulling out of that warm air has to go somewhere, you know? That somewhere is a pan that empties via this tube. Just open it up from the top (which tube it is should be obvious, but if you can’t find it, ask your HVAC professional), slowly pour in about a cup of vinegar or bleach. If the liquid moves, you’re gold. If not, you may need to spend some time investigating the issue. More often than not, it’s algae growth in the tube or mineral deposits, both things you can flush out, but require some patience to remove.

Clean your a-coil. That tent shaped coil mentioned above is called the “evaporator coil” or the “a-coil.” It can get dirty, which makes it a lot less efficient at removing moisture and cooling the air. If you feel brave, and you’re careful, you can wipe the coils clean or use a shop vac. They’re very similar to the coils on the back of your refrigerator, treat them the exact same way.

Comb the fins on the condenser. If you look closely at your outside condenser, you’ll notice that the part that’s inside the cage is made up of a whole bunch of teeny fins. These little guys can get damaged by accident, causing them to be less efficient because they’re not really in an optimal configuration anymore. All you need to fix this is a fin comb. This simple device lets you straighten bent fins, restoring your unit to its former glory.

Spray the condenser down. Last, but far from least, you’ll want to spray your air conditioner’s condenser down with a hose. Start by wetting all the fins with a garden sprayer, then go back around and spend some time slowly flushing out the dirt, one section at a time, working top to bottom.

Ontario Realtors advise Ford government to end 'bully' offers

Ontario's Realtors say the province should ban "bully" offers that they say give some homebuyers an unfair advantage.

Ontario Real Estate Association president Karen Cox says the government should use its current review of the act that governs Realtors in the province to bar the practice.

So-called bully offers are submitted by a buyer ahead of a seller's established offer date, usually, at the asking price or above it and with a short window for acceptance — a move usually made to avoid competing with other buyers and pressure the seller into accepting the bid.

Cox says banning the practice will ensure all interested buyers are able to make a fair offer on a home and allow sellers to carefully consider all bids.

The recommendation is one of 28 submitted by the association — which represents 78,000 brokers and salespeople — to the government as it reviews the Real Estate and Business Brokers Act.

Last fall, Realtors asked the province to review the act, which was put in place in 2002, saying the legislation needed to be updated to allow for more transparency for buyers and sellers.

Cox says eager buyers have been using bully offers to crowd out other buyers in the market, and that should change.

"It creates unfairness in the home-buying process," she said. "It doesn't give all buyers a fair shot to make an offer and a seller a chance to consider all the offers."

The association is also asking the government to ban escalation clauses in offers, which are aimed at defeating any competing bid by automatically increasing a purchase price over the next highest offer.

The practice opens the door for sellers to fill in an offer that may not reflect the next highest bid and can expose the seller to litigation, the association says.

"This makes it a very uneven playing field," Cox says.

Realtors are also asking the government for education programs that require more in-class training to help raise professional standards.

"It would allow for more specialization so you can be recognized as an expert in that area," Cox said, adding that the sale of condominiums, industrial and rural or waterfront properties all require different expertise.

The recommendations also ask the government to give the body that regulates Realtors — the Real Estate Council of Ontario — greater powers to proactively investigate agents who break industry rules.

"Our regulator should have the authority to investigate and kick out of our profession the worst offenders, the people who are unethical," Cox said.

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/orea-urges-ontario-to-end-bully-offers-1.5088577

5 Things to Consider When Planning a Family Picture Wall

One of the best parts of owning your own home is that you can do pretty much whatever you want when it comes to hanging things on the wall. No landlord will charge you $5 per hole you poke through the sheetrock. It’s kind of nice. You can let your creative side have a heyday with a hammer and a bunch of nails.

For a lot of families, putting a family picture wall together is a high priority in their new homes. It can be a fun project that can be the very first of many happy memories in the new place.

Planning Your Picture Wall

If you hop on Pinterest and search for “family picture wall,” you’re going to find an overwhelming number of ways to put one of these together. There’s no one way to do a family picture wall, since every family is different. There are lots of things to consider while you’re planning your wall, though.

Don’t just start hanging pictures willy-nilly. Do some real prep work to ensure that your wall turns out as special as what you have envisioned rather than yet another #PinterestFail. These tips should help:

Pick a theme. You need something concrete to get you started in the planning stage. Choosing a theme can be a good place to start, since it’ll inform your image choices as you go through your Google Drive. A theme could be anything from “vacation photos” to “photos with the color blue in them.” The best photo walls have some kind of unifying theme, choose one before you get started.

Use technology to simulate your photo wall. Art.com’s iOS app gives you the capability to not just imagine what an image or set of images will look like on your wall, it actually can virtually add those photos to the wall using augmented reality. The same technology that powers Pokemon Go can help you get great results with your family picture wall.

Choosy kids choose cool frames. The frames you choose are just as important as the images. If you’re looking for something pretty unusual, scour flea markets and antique shops for old frames with unique designs. If you can’t find anything that tickles your fancy, your home improvement store’s trimwork aisle will have some really fancy trim that you can use to build your own frames!

Incorporate more than photos. Sure, it’s called a “family picture wall,” but who says you have to stop there? Memorabilia from favorite spots, items that reflect interests and hobbies, even accolades like medals have a place on a wall like this. Just make sure that you’re using sturdy materials and secure shelves tightly to the wall to avoid long term issues.

Sometimes, fewer is better. Family picture walls can get pretty overwhelming fast. Instead of hanging every photo you’ve ever taken of your kids, pick the two best from now and the two best from their early childhood. Capture those moments that really meant something and remember that sometimes less is way more. Besides, you’ll want to save some of those embarrassing pictures for leverage later.

Top Spring Cleaning Tips

It’s officially spring again, everybody and their great aunt Erma are abuzz with cleaning and organizing advice. We’re not sheep at HomeKeepr, but we figured it was important to throw our voice into the ether, just in case you needed a different perspective. After all, we’re a little less Good Housekeeping and a little more Family Handyman.

The Three Vital Goals of a Spring Cleaning

Before we get into the tips, it’s a good idea to set some goals for your spring cleaning. A lot of people get into trouble because they fail to actually establish what it is that they hope to accomplish with their cleaning efforts. They aren’t going to be able to clean their home top to bottom over the course of the next month, contrary to the claims of some magazine (no, not the Weekly World News).

What ends up happening is that one room gets really clean, the next one is pretty clean, and diminishing returns follow until they give up and take a nap. Establishing goals gives you a way to know you’ve achieved something and those goals can tell you pretty precisely how much further you have to go.

Your vital goals may be slightly different, but odds are that these are in the ballpark:

• Increase the feeling of openness in your home.
• Make it easier to find things that disappeared last year.
• Declutter. All. The. Things.

Before we proceed with these three goals, please understand that nothing in this article is meant as a judgement on you or anyone else. Everybody has their challenges and blind spots. Maybe you’re not very good at organizing, but you’re great at chess. We can’t all be great chess players.

Attacking Your Vital Spring Cleaning Goals

Whether you’re going to sort of just jump in the middle of your goals and attack them from all angles or you want a more organized approach, you need a plan of action that works for you. Don’t even start without one. If you have something working well for you, go with it, but if not, we’ve got a short attack plan for each goal above down below.

Keep in mind that some of these lists can be done simultaneously if you really want to be efficient. If not, that’s ok, too. This is your spring cleaning. Own it.

Goal: Increasing the Feeling of Openness In Your Home

Increasing the feeling of openness in your home comes down to one thing: light. The more light in your home, the bigger and more open it feels. Achieving this seemingly impossible goal is actually really easy and you can do it without replacing a single window or tearing down walls. See, it’s all about that glass. It’s about the paint on your walls, too, but for the amended spring cleaning, focus on the glass. That includes:

• Windows. Scrub these things like they’ve never been washed. They probably haven’t. Wash the insides and then go outside and wash the outside. Just washing the windows will brighten up your space enough that you may end up stopping at this point.
• Mirrors. Those mirrors are bouncing light around the room. Just because your windows are letting more light in doesn’t mean that it’s going to survive long once it hits that dirty mirror. Clean, clean away.
• Light fixtures. By light fixtures, we mean those light kits on your ceiling fan, the bulb enclosures on chandeliers and the shades on ceiling huggers. Anything glass, take it down and clean it. Most of these items can go into the dishwasher, but put anything thin or fragile in the top rack.
• Light bulbs. Oh, the lowly lightbulb. How we forget you all the time when doing almost anything. You’re just a magic tube that gives us light… unfortunately, bulbs also get dirty, so grab your Swiffer duster and give all your bulbs a good once-over.

Goal: Make It Easier to Find Things

This one has a single, simple solution: The Container Store. Or any other sort of place where you can get every kind of organizer you could dream up. The reason homes get cluttered too often is because there’s simply not any kind of proper storage to begin with. Of course, you’re going to struggle to find things when those things don’t have a permanent home!

You really don’t even need a list here. It’s all in the organization. Go room by room and take stock of what lays out a lot of the day. Do the kids throw their coats on the couch and wander off? Coat rack by the door should fix that. Does your closet look like it exploded? Check out some of the super impressive closet systems they make these days.

Sure, it’s going to take a little bit of an investment to make this goal manageable, but ultimately you’ll find that it’s worth it when you don’t end up buying three of the same top because you couldn’t find the one you needed the day you were going to give that big presentation.

Goal: Declutter

You can and should probably work on this while you’re working on organizing stuff. Decluttering has become a meme, you know what it’s all about. You take all the stuff that you own and then you subject it to your hardest judgement. Will you use that spork set again? Is that pair of duck shoes really necessary in the desert? So many questions and decisions to make.

Getting stuck trying to decide what gets to go? Ask these questions:

• Am I using it regularly?
• When I am using it, do I enjoy using it?
• Have I effectively replaced this item and simply keep it around for nostalgia?
• Am I really going to “fit back into these jeans?” Be honest. Cake is delicious.
• Do I really want to finish this project?
• Do I have too many of this item? (belts, shoes, microwave bacon cookers)
• Am I keeping this item out of some sense of guilt? (gifts, mainly)

Once you’ve done this, grab the boxes and bags. Sort the items you don’t need into “useable and worth donating” and “garbage, only good for trashing.” If any of the trash is recyclable, you know, a third recycle bin is probably warranted

Achieve Your Spring Cleaning Goals This Year or Go Down Fighting!

With defined goals and plans in place to tackle each one, spring cleaning should be so much easier this year than it was in the past. Doing some regular cleaning might not be a bad idea, either. 

Saying Goodbye to Your Family Home

It’s easy to tell yourself that your house is just a building made of walls and ceilings and light fixtures and flooring, but when it comes time to sell, you may start to feel the sting of grief.

After all, you don’t know if the new owners will take care of the rows and rows of brilliant iris that line the fence in the spring or if they’ll cut down the crepe myrtle because they don’t realize it waits for the first kiss of summer heat to spring back to life.

Will they paint your son’s former bedroom and cover up the mural he spent so much time creating? Will they take out the built-in desk and bookcases you made for your daughter?

Maybe saying goodbye isn’t the easy process you thought it would be.

Selling Your Family Home is a Type of Loss

When you’re selling your family home, it’s not just a building that you’re saying goodbye to. It’s all the memories you made there, the familiarity and, maybe most importantly, the security of that one place you could always fall back to if life started kicking you too hard. This goes for the house that you raised your kids in as well as the house where you were raised — both are genuine losses.

“You’re dismantling something that was once precious, and you have to go through grief and mourning when this happens.” psychologist Dr. Arthur Kovacs explained in an interview with the Chicago Times.

Of course, that’s only part of the story. Another element that makes it so hard to quit a family home is the link between memory and physical space. When your memories are tangled in with your home, it can be hard to let go.

“We have memories and associations that are connected to all of those things that make houses so heavily connected to ourselves,” Duke University’s department of psychology and neuroscience chair, Dr. Scott Huettel, goes on to explain the phenomenon to the New York Times.

Easing Into Selling Your Family Home

Much of the time when you’re looking to sell a family home, it’s due to a big change in life. Maybe your kids have all left home and you’re planning to downsize or maybe your parents have died and you’re having to liquidate their estate. No matter the reason, it’s one of the hardest things you can do, even if you think you’re totally prepared.

How do you get ready for such a big sacrifice? It’s all about your mindset. Start to detach from the house by taking down and packing anything that’s personal. This includes photos, crafted decorations, paintings and so forth. As you take these things off the walls, the space starts to become more generic, less personal and it gets easier to consider selling the house.

If you’re still feeling the pain at this point, work on other parts of the house. Remember that crack in the wall from four years ago when the game controller flew from your daughter’s hand and hit the drywall at full force? Patch that up. Your buyer probably won’t even notice it, but you will. Sterilize your home until you can bear to sign the papers

When the Offer Comes Through

The day will come that you get an offer. Resist the urge to flat out reject it, no matter the price. This is where the rubber meets the road — it’s now grossly apparent that you’re selling the house you poured so much of yourself into rather than just thinking about it.

It’s time for a wake.

Maybe you’d be better to call it a “remembrance party” or something a little cheerier, but the whole point is to say goodbye in a big way so you can get the closure you need. Some people go room by room to have one last good walk down memory lane, others celebrate by doing something they hadn’t gotten around to doing, like hosting a luau.

Your goodbye will be best if you do it in a way that’s meaningful to you and your family. There aren’t really any shortcuts when it comes to grief, unfortunately. Don’t beat yourself up, it’s not “just a house.” That’s the building that sheltered and protected you year after year. That’s the stuff that attachment is made of.

3 Better Ways to Track Your Home-Related Expenses

Owning a home means having a place that’s safe and secure to come back to after a long day at work, every day, forever, until you decide it’s time to buy a different home. In exchange for all this homeless, all you have to do is keep all the broken bits together, maintain the grass and track home-related expenses.

Oh yes. If you don’t do a little bookkeeping, the tax man gets his and more. Might as well keep that cash as not, right?

Why You Should Track Home-Related Expenses

Your primary residence isn’t an investment, this has been said time and again (especially since the market crashed entirely), but that doesn’t mean that when you go to sell you have to take a loss. Far from it.

In fact, as of the writing of this article, you’ll likely qualify for a tax exclusion (meaning you won’t pay taxes on this amount of profit from your home sale) of $250,000 if you file on your own or $500,000 if you and your spouse file your taxes together. But, if you sold and there was more than the applicable amount in gains, you’ll have to pay taxes only on the profit above the mark. When you have all your ducks in a row, it gets a lot easier to see what side of that line you stand on.

Reducing Your Tax Burden is the Goal

When your gain from your home sale exceeds your tax exclusion, there are two ways to help improve the situation with all those receipts you’ve been saving (you have been saving them, haven’t you?). First, you can deduct expenses related to selling your home, provided these are not expenses that affect the house physically. Think closing fees, brokerage commissions, and some seller-paid closing costs.

The other way to reduce your capital gains burden is to produce records that account for your extensive remodeling. These are the kinds of projects you definitely need a hand with. 

They include, but are not limited to:

• Adding an additional room
• Upgrading your kitchen
• Replacing flooring
• Having new landscaping installed
• Putting on a new roof

The best part? These don’t have to be from the same tax year as when you sold. If you added that bedroom three years ago, pony up the receipts and reduce your tax burden. Unfortunately, regular home maintenance isn’t included on this list of ways to save a few dollars. Make sure you keep those receipts separate.

Get a Little Help From Your Friends

Keeping track of your personal finances, let alone the expenses related to your home, can be a daunting task. There are so many ways to pay these days and so many different kinds of things to pay for. This is the very reason, though, that you must be even more careful when tracking home-related spending.

Everybody has their own system, to be sure, but some are clearly superior to others. For example, if your plan is just to toss a bunch of receipts in a bucket until you get around to sorting them and manually recording each one, you may want to look into something a bit more efficient.

Even an Excel workbook is out-modeled these days, but there are several different types of apps you can use to help track your expenses, including:

• Complete personal finance apps. Popular apps like Mint and Wally are essentially full personal finance packages that happen to store receipts. While you can give these apps permission to grab your bank information from a variety of banks all at once, you may end up with enough data that it’s a trick to find those old receipts down the road.

• Dedicated receipt storage. Shoeboxed, Receipts by Wave and Expensify are far more focused on the receipt part of your financial picture. All allow you to photograph and upload the receipts in question, can export the data you collect as a variety of reports and have a cloud-storage option, so you don’t have to worry that you’ll lose your receipts if you change phones or need to reload your operating system. PS. BTW, Shoeboxed will actually take that bucket of receipts and process them for you if you mail them in.

• Receipt storage designed for homeowners. Not to toot our own horns, but toot toot. HomeKeepr allows you to scan your receipts in and helps you track home-related expenses automatically. All you need to do is snap a picture of your receipt and the software does the rest. You can then sort your receipts by the service type or business so you can see at a glance how much you’re spending on your project. Unlike other receipt trackers, HomeKeepr can track and maintain records for related items like appliance manuals and maintenance tasks that are due for your home.

Are You Ready to Invest in Your Home This Year?

All this talk of bookkeeping and receipt scanning surely has you thinking about how much you’ve been wanting to redo the deck or hang new gutters. Well, today’s the day. Not only can you store those receipts in the HomeKeepr platform, your real estate agent can hook you up with some of the best contractors in your area. Just pop into your HomeKeepr community and check out who has been recommended for you. Your agent put their reputation on the line by providing these referrals, so you know they have to be good!