Tips For Running a Successful Garage Sale

Awww, springtime. It’s a great time to go through the closets and find anything you’re not using. But what do you do with all that junk that’s no longer in your trunk? For lots of homeowners, the choice is clear: it’s garage sale time. Or it’s yard sale time. A garage is not a prerequisite for the sale part.

Running a Successful Garage Sale is Simple

There are so many things in life that people will remark, “if it was easy, everybody would be doing it….” when presented with a related struggle. This is not the case with a yard sale. They’re a lot of work, but they’re not all that tricky to pull off. If this is your first yard sale or you simply want to be sure you’re doing all you can to make it a success, these are tips just for you:

Check your insurance policy. Hey, it seems innocent enough until someone slips and falls and breaks a bone. Suddenly you’re on the hook for their medical expenses. Do you have enough coverage for this? Check with your agent before you start that big sale.
Label everything. It can be tempting to simply put things in bins that are labeled with prices, but it’s much better to label everything so no one is confused. Your kids can be great helpers here, it’s a low risk job that will keep them busy for hours.
Group like items. When you set things out, group them by use or some other common theme. After all, if you sell someone a bucket, they might also want to buy that hose.
Pretend you have an outside store. Everything in a store is for sale for the right price, so make sure that you clear the area of anything you’d rather not sell (or at least put a sign on it). Also, keep your money in a safe place like a money box, keep records on sales, and while you’re at it, get a credit card reader that will work with your phone (many companies offer these for low or no cost swipe fee).
Line up plenty of help. Buying stuff at a yard sale can be fun, but running said yard sale is generally pretty boring. Make sure you’ve got plenty of help so that you’re not forced to spend the whole weekend sitting all alone at the check-out table.
Advertise liberally. If you want to sell something, you have to tell people it’s for sale. Advertise liberally, using social media, local media like newspapers and signs that you’ll post a day or two before the big day.

Donating to Charity

Many people make arrangements with a local charity to collect the items that did not sell. You can do this, too, just keep in mind that most charities will not allow their volunteers inside your home. In these cases, you’ll have to be present in order to donate stuff. It might be just as easy to box up the remains and toss them in the back of your vehicle for a ride to the Goodwill.

Garbage Disposal Care – Tips and Tricks

The modern world has so much to offer, from microwaves that can talk to your favorite smart home assistant to refrigerators that can remind you you’re out of milk. It’s amazing that something as innocuous as the garbage disposal remains relatively unchanged since its inception.

Time marches ever on, leaving the garbage disposal essentially untouched and easily ignored. This is why it’s so important to take proper care of the indispensable kitchen appliance that spends most of its time being wholly overlooked.

Garbage Disposals: Safety First

Before you begin to do anything with your garbage disposal, it’s important to understand how much potential for disaster it represents. You can grind bone, ice and other hard objects with this appliance, don’t think for a second that it will somehow spare your fingers and hands should you stick them inside.

Instead of risking digits, always use tongs or other long grabbing tools to retrieve things that have fallen inside. It doesn’t matter if it’s your wedding band or your keys, your garbage disposal can become a very seriously dangerous machine if you just go poking around in there.

Caring for Your Garbage Disposal

After that cautionary section, you may be wondering if your garbage disposal deserves to be maintained, especially if it’s just going to turn on you. Garbage disposal accidents are generally the result of a lack of care and improper use. So, go on, check out these tips for keeping it in prime shape:

• A clean disposal is a happy disposal. When you’ve run your disposal, put a little dish soap inside and run the cold water. This will help keep smells down and also flush out any remaining food particles. Dropping citrus peels inside and grinding can also improve the situation.
• Only put food in it. Only biodegradable items should go inside the disposal. Really, only food and not even every type of food. Lots of fats, for example, will clog the disposal faster than anything. Pasta, rice and other expanding foods can also be a problem for your disposal and plumbing.
• Grind some hard things to keep the blade sharp. Bones and ice are hard enough to sharpen the blades, so don’t forget to toss a few in from time to time. Do not feed your disposal fibrous foods like celery, even though they are sometimes thought of as hard food items. The fibers can tangle around the moving parts and interfere with function.
• Always use cold water. Flushing with hot water will melt fats inside, making it hard for your disposal to do much with them. Instead, always use cold water, which will cause those fats to solidify, so they can be broken up and flushed away. A little fat in the disposal is ok, don’t pour lots of fat into the plumbing, though, unless you want to call a plumber.
• Avoid harsh chemicals. Although a degreaser can help your disposal stay clean and live longer, other harsh chemicals should be avoided. Drain cleaners, in particular, are very hard on disposals, They can and will damage your disposal. Best to use a plunger or hand crank the disposal to break up jams. If that won’t do it, call in a pro.

Buying a Home at County Auction Post-Foreclosure

What’s two stories tall, covered in long green fur and smells like old, wet dogs? For a lot of people, that would be their mental image of an investment house. The truth of the matter, though, is much more complicated. Certainly, there are investment properties so dilapidated that it’s hard to imagine anyone living in them, but many, many more are in fairly decent shape.

You can use a real estate agent to help scope the good ones out, but frankly, you’ll get first dibs at a lot of the best units if you spend some time haunting the post-foreclosure auctions held both online and off. No more green shag for you!

How a Home Ends Up On the Auction Block

When it comes to a foreclosure auction, there’s really just one way that a property ends up on the block: someone doesn’t make their payments and the bank seizes the real estate securing their mortgage. For most mortgages, this means the former owners were more than 90 days past due. This could be because they couldn’t afford the house anymore due to some major life change, or maybe they just sent their bank “jingle mail”.

Jingle mail was really common during the Great Recession and the steep decline in real estate values that resulted. Homeowners would realize they couldn’t afford their adjustable rate mortgage when its interest rate reset and since they couldn’t refinance, they’d end up there sooner or later. Others just knew how far underwater they were and weren’t willing or able to hang on until they were righted.

The point of all of that was to demonstrate that just because a house goes to foreclosure auction doesn’t mean that it’s going to be a total nightmare. There are lots of nice properties that have been thoughtfully and strategically abandoned. The trick is figuring out how to tell them apart from those that are basically ready to be pushed over with a bulldozer (and a real estate or appraisal expert can help you with this in a big way).

Getting the Most Out of a Foreclosure Auction

There’s a lot to learn about buying houses at post-foreclosure auctions, but if there were just three pieces of advice to offer, these are probably the most important:

• Bring cash or a cash equivalent. You can’t walk into an auction like this and expect to be able to spend a month arranging financing. Most will require at least five percent down on the day of the sale with the balance due soon after. Anywhere from a day to a week is pretty normal. This is why investors are generally the only people at these auctions. They often have credit lines that make it easy to buy on the fly.
• Base your top bid on the value of the home minus any repairs you anticipate. If this is your first home auction, find out long ahead of time if you will be allowed to inspect the property prior to the big day. If no, keep that bid low because you never know what may crop up. If yes, take a licensed home inspector with you and let them do their job on the day the house will be open. They’ll be able to estimate what the visible, necessary repairs will cost so you’re not going into the auction blind.
• Remember that the owner can still redeem that home within a set period. It’s a common misconception that when you buy a home at a county auction, either for non-payment of taxes or foreclosure, that it’s yours. Said and done. It’s not. Most states allow a redemption period for the former owner. Should they be able to get enough money together to solve the financial issue that landed their home in this state, to begin with, within the provided window, your rights to the property will be terminated. So, whatever you do, hold off on any work or spending on the property until that window has expired.

Popcorn Ceilings: What They Are, How to Get Rid of Them & Are They a Health Hazard?

Popcorn is great for lots of stuff. You can enjoy a big bucket with family and friends while at the movies, string it on a thread to give Christmas that old-fashioned touch and even turn it into questionable “treats” for Halloween. One place that it’s a lot less welcome is on the ceiling.

Unfortunately, too many homes still have popcorn ceilings. They often create a lot more questions than they answer.

What Is a Popcorn Ceiling?

Back in the day, someone had a brilliant idea.

What would happen if there was a cheaper alternative to meticulously applied plaster ceiling coating and decoration for homes? This person asked themselves. Well, that would be just lovely!

And that person wasn’t wrong in concept. It was the practice that turned out to really be the killer.

Popcorn ceilings, the solution to the problem, are still around, largely haunting homes built between the 1930s and 1990s. The ceiling texture that oddly resembles cottage cheese far more than it does popcorn, was popular for its ease of application and, at the time, low maintenance requirement.

Popcorn Ceilings: The Kicker

Even if you don’t object to the generally dated appearance of a popcorn ceiling (hey, maybe retro’s your thing, we’re not judging), think twice before going all in because that house you’re looking at has one that’s still intact.

So many popcorn ceilings contain some amount of friable asbestos that they are generally not a great idea to keep around. Even though popcorn ceiling mixtures containing asbestos were banned under the Clean Air Act in 1979, the remaining mixes that hadn’t been purchased were still allowed to be sold. In some areas, this means that new installations of potentially hazardous popcorn ceilings lingered well into the 1980s.

If the asbestos wasn’t enough, many popcorn ceilings have been painted since they were installed, or were installed using paint as part of the initial mix. Lead-based paint was the norm until it was banned in 1978. It’s kind of a double-whammy.

Friable Versus Non-Friable Asbestos

There are two kinds of asbestos: friable and non-friable. Friable asbestos is the most dangerous kind, since any amount of disturbance can result in particles floating around in the air and being inhaled. This is not good news. Risks of free-floating asbestos can range from lung scarring to mesothelioma, an insidious and heartbreaking form of cancer. This is the kind in popcorn ceilings.

While non-friable asbestos isn’t a picnic, it’s a lot safer because the asbestos is encapsulated within another material. For example, older homes often have siding made of cement fiber-board tiles. These often contain asbestos, but unless you’re cutting the tiles, it’s safely contained.

There are very specific laws about dealing with both types of asbestos, but those surrounding friable asbestos are as much about protecting humans around the material as the environment. In most areas, homeowners are legally allowed to remove popcorn ceilings from their own homes, but it’s still a really good idea to at least have a test for asbestos before you try it.

Before You Even Think About Scraping That Ceiling

There are few things easier than removing a popcorn ceiling. A scraper and a lot of time will do the job, but the hazard to someone who goes in blindly cannot be understated. So, before you even think about scraping that ceiling, take some samples. Carefully.

Send one to a lab for testing for asbestos. Send another for testing for lead-based paint (or use a high-quality at-home test kit). Wait until you have results to move forward.

If you test positive for either or both, consider calling in a pro. They have all the right equipment to ensure that asbestos doesn’t get loose in your home, where you, your family and your pets will be at risk of exposure. If you DIY this one, do not skimp on ventilators and other filters to keep any friable asbestos contained.

5 Ways to Make Your A/C Dollars Go Further

The aqua jeweled waters of the Caribbean pared with lush, jungle-like vegetation that seems to stretch along the beach forever greet you every single summer. It’s amazing, really, and you hope that one of these days you’ll be able to turn off the Travel Channel and see them in person. But your air conditioning bill is such a killer — and ruiner of vacation plans.

There has to be a way to knock those electricity bills down while staying cool this summer. After all, the islands are calling you. Will you fill up your travel penny jar this year?

How Air Conditioners Work (The Abridged Explanation)

Air conditioners are very simple devices. They were actually invented to remove the humidity from rooms where the paper was stored. It was only after they’d been in use in the industry a while that anyone thought to use them for cooling.

There’s not much to these devices. Essentially you’ve got an outdoor condenser unit that works like a giant heat sink to carry heat collected from indoor air to the outside. Ultimately, the cooler that outside unit is, the more heat it can remove and the more efficiently the whole system works.

Reduce the Strain on Your A/C, Stretch Those A/C Dollars

There are plenty of ways to help your air conditioner work more efficiently short of replacing the whole system. That will increase your efficiency, but you’re going to put a lot of money into a system upgrade that may not be needed just yet.

Before you do anything rash, give these a try:

Change your filter when it’s dirty. Dirty air filters are a huge drag on efficiency. After all, the more air that can be pulled into the system at once, the faster the air in your house will cool and the less time your A/C will spend running. You’ll know your paper air filters are dirty when they change color from white to gray or brown. That’s dust and other tiny particles clogging the pores.

Another way to tackle this would be to buy an electrostatic filter. These are reusable and washable, saving lots of money on filters, as well as energy (if you keep them pretty clean).

Clean your air conditioner condenser. That outside unit is too often neglected to the point that it can affect your energy efficiency. The fins get clogged with dirt, vegetation grows around the bottom of the unit and things like blowing leaves or plastic bags get caught in and around the unit.

Throw away any trash that’s clinging to the condenser, even if it’s inside. Just make sure the unit’s off before you stick your arm in. Next, remove vegetation that’s threatening to grow into the unit, treat it with weed killer if it’s particularly aggressive. Last, get your garden hose and spray the whole condenser down using minimal pressure. Crank up the water pressure and go over it again, slowly, working from the top to the bottom. Work in sections, moving to the next one when the water coming off the condenser runs clear. You may be surprised how much dirt was hiding in those fins.

Shade your unit. Plant a tree or install a solar shade over your A/C condenser to help keep it cool on those hot summer days. The less heat already being carried by the system, the easier to expel heat from your home. Blocking direct sunlight can make a huge difference, just be sure to allow at least two feet around the unit on all sides so your condenser has plenty of air circulating around it.

Install ceiling fans. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, using properly sized ceiling fans in conjunction with your air conditioner can make 78 degrees feel just as cool as 74 degrees. Those four degrees can add up to serious cash, too. The reason this works is that ceiling fans cool people using a wind chill effect. It doesn’t change the actual temperature in the room, but it does change how it feels to you.

Hang heavy drapes. If your house has any windows that get particularly hot during the summer, you need to insulate them right away. The easiest way to do this is with heavy drapes, and the heavier the better. Make sure those curtains are closed during the hottest part of the day to prevent heat radiating into the rest of the house. To further help those windows stay cool, you can add Low-E film into the equation. When used together, heavy drapes and Low-E film will make a noticeable impact on your indoor temperatures.

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!