Household Notebook: Planner for an Organized Home

So you think businesspeople are the only folks who need a personal planner? Think again: families need an organizer, too, to keep life moving smoothly on the home front.
Whether it's called a household notebook, a home management binder or family organizer, this simple idea saves time, cuts stress, and enhances communication in any-sized family or household.
A standard-sized binder stocked with calendars and schedules, planner forms and inventories, a Household Notebook creates a one-stop information center for busy families. Whether it's a carpool schedule or a co-worker's phone number, the Household Notebook holds the information you need to check each day.
Ready for an evening out? Flip the Notebook open to the "Emergency Information" page, and the babysitter will always know where to find you.
Time for dinner? Menu planners, recipe organizers and shopping list make it easy to feed the family night after night. Clean house fast with cleaning schedules, chore lists and seasonal checklists for home maintenance.
google_protectAndRun("render_ads.js::google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad);
Stay-at-home parents and homeschool families add scheduling features to the Household Notebook. Daily morning and evening checklists and family schedules make it easy to organize life in busy families with small children.
Ready to create your own Household Notebook? Click the links below for more information about making and using a Household Notebook ... to get organized at home.

Why is Home Management Important?

Other than cleaning your house, the idea of managing your home is probably the furthest thing from your mind right now. Home management affects most homeowners when something goes wrong. However, home management is also an essential element of improving your home. A roof, air conditioner, water heater or furnace failure quickly reminds most of us how important home management really is. However, when you want to improve your home, home management will help you get the most bangs for the buck!

While many associate home management with maintenance, redefining your home with an addition, a new paint scheme or a new improvement are all elements of home management. Home management is the process of preserving, protecting, improving and maintaining your home. Although most of us think of home management as maintenance, it is really the process of making the most of your home. A well managed home is more satisfying to live in, saves you money and significant frustration.

As homes have become more complex and technologically advanced, preserving and protecting your home has become increasingly difficult. While a very few homeowners have developed effective home management practices, most homeowners are less regimented or knowledgeable and lean more toward "crisis management" as a management solution. Needless, to say, crisis management is the most expensive home management strategy.

Home Management in a Nutshell

Like we have noted previously, home management is the process of preserving, protecting and maintaining your home. To begin with, think of your home as a collection of systems and structures. Think of home management as those things you can do to preserve, protect and improve your home and its systems.

Preserving Your Home

Preservation means making something last, or keeping it alive. You perform home preservation every time you clean your home. Painting adds beauty to your home, but also and preserves the underlying materials. When you change your air filter, you are preserving the quality of your home environment. These are only a few of the things you do today to preserve your home.

Because homes are becoming more complex and technically sophisticated, it can be difficult to know what and how to preserve. For instance, when was the last time you sprayed off the coils of your air conditioner? If you are like most, it has been a long time. According to our experts, most air conditioners fail about 5 years earlier than their designed lifetime because of improper yet simple maintenance. That's $4,000-$9,000 that will leave your home before it needed to do so.

Preservation also takes the form of beautification. Painting your walls or exterior will define your home or interior living spaces. It also protects your drywall. Plaster, wood and other structures. Smart homeowners look to preservation s their first line of defense in the protection of their home.

Protecting Your Home

Protection means defending or guarding against attack and shielding from danger. There are a number of dangers your home encounters every day. As a homeowner, you need to understand threats to your home and have the ability to predict what the most common threats are likely to be - and thwart them.

Biological threats like rot and mold are not only expensive to repair, but can be threatening to the health of the occupants. Threats like these are easily avoided if you know what you are looking for. If you look the other way, the costs to eliminate them can quickly amount to more than the value of your home.

Natural threats like termites, insects and water infiltration can be easily managed - if you know what to look for. Once the damage is done, the costs can be extreme in terms of both money and frustration.

Perils are threats like fire, earthquake, water and other forces of nature. While you can protect yourself to some extent, you also need to understand the greater risk of inadequate insurance coverage.

Another group of threats includes the companies that work on your home and physical threats to your property. Because of the fact that homes represent the single largest industry in America, unscrupulous contractors, scams and simply poor workmanship are also threats that are too real to most homeowners. With a challenging economy, theft and larceny are rising to record levels.

Protecting your home from threats is about understanding those threats and taking the necessary actions to protect your investment and family. In all too many cases, homeowners fail to predict or acknowledge the possibility of the same threats that ultimately destroy their property and their ability to be made whole by insurers or contractors.

Enhancing Your Home

Enhancing means raising something to a higher degree, intensifying and magnifying. Enhancing your home is much the same. Few homeowners want to live in the same home for a lifetime. By improving and enhancing your home, you not only increase the livability of your home, but also increase its value over time. A home with a kitchen that is 30 years old is not as appealing or as livable as a 30-year-old home with a new kitchen.

Whether your home is new or several hundred years old, keeping it up to date is an essential element of home ownership. With today's banking and economic environment, more homeowners are electing to make the most of their homes and stay planted for a while. Despite the poor economy, maintenance and protection of your home cannot be put off for long. The most popular improvements are those that enhance the livability of homes today.

The great news is that making your home better is not necessarily expensive. Many homeowners are learning to do more at home - and that saves big bucks and invests the homeowners in their property.

What is The Best Way to Manage Your Home?

Homeowners wanting to manage their homes have two choices: manual or automated.
Manual management is the process of going it alone. If you are knowledgeable about your home, its systems and maintenance, this strategy might work for you.

If you are like most homeowners, an automated solution is clearly a better choice in terms of costs and capabilities. In fact, an effective home management solution is a homeowner's most valuable asset.

Some home management programs do exist available today. However, none except for The Proper Home includes all of the features homeowners require to manage their home effectively.

The Essential Elements of a Home Management Solution

Today's homes are more complex and sophisticated than ever. Homeowners are also busier than ever. This is why an effective home management technology can be a godsend.

Managing your home properly makes real sense in terms of your property, lifestyle and value. Next-generation tools like The Proper Home make managing your home more organized, easier and smarter. In fact, because of the advanced features offered, The Proper Home is the most referred home management solution ever created.

However, when you are looking for a solution to manage your home (even if it is not The Proper Home), there are a few considerations you should know about.

An Easy and Understandable Management Model

Managing your home with a nebulous system that requires you to learn a new language is of little use. An easily understood model is an essential element of any home management solution.

There are several applications out there to help you manage your home effectively. The Proper Home offers the Stonebridge Home Assistant program that offers you easy to use but powerful way to manage your home using an inventory-based approach. This approach represents a natural approach that helps you to make sense of your home through the things you own!

Access to Knowledge and Expertise

One of the most essential elements to your success as a homeowner is access to home-related knowledge and expertise. However, getting the exact answers to your questions is not necessarily the answer you are looking for. The problem is that different areas have different laws, products and practices. In many cases, an exact answer may be at the cost of other options that you are not being told about.

The Stonebridge Home Assistant Program uses experts in over 46 different categories ranging from banking to wells and irrigation to help you to learn your potential solutions and choices. In the case of home-related knowledge and expertise, expert guidance is often far more effective than exact answers for most questions.

Tips from the Experts

Home management is rewarding and a powerful asset to any homeowner. However, there are a few caveats that you need to know as a homeowner to make the most of your efforts. Here are a few ideas from the experts at The Proper Home.

Start Your System Slowly. Most home management solutions have many features to meet the widest range of homeowners. Begin on a room-level and take your time as you enter your home information.

Use Only the Options that are Meaningful and Relevant to You. Home management solutions have lots of options. Start simply and get more involved as you complete the basic functions.

Be Realistic! Most homeowners want to manage their homes to the greatest degree possible. While The Proper Home and some other programs allows you to do this, micromanaging your home typically results in to-do lists that will never be done! Add only the most important tasks at first like filters, softeners and consumable items to your system at first. You can always add more later.

Have Fun! Owning a home can be a challenge. However, managing your home is a great way to organize tasks in ways that allow you to complete them easier and more efficiently. Using a home management solution does require a bit of upfront work to get your information in place. Once in place, an advanced home management solution like Advanced applications like The Stonebridge Home Assistant™ actually begins to take over for you! Once your information is in there, The Stonebridge Home Assistant™ takes over virtually all management for you!

source:http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_Home_Management

How to Decorate and Organizing Pleasing Porches

The front porch is the first area your guests encounter when they visit your home. Is it cluttered with kids' toys, junk mail and empty soda containers? Or should it be a pleasant welcoming area that invites guests to sit a spell? Here are some ways to create a pleasing porch for your home.

Prepare Your Porch

If you'd like to do a 'porch makeover' you should prepare your porch by removing everything from it. Sweep it well, mop it using Murphy's Oil Soap (if it is wood) and clean any windows facing the porch. Starting with a clean porch will enable you to rethink how you'd like it to look. Use a piece of paper and pencil to do sketches of different ways to arrange furniture, plantings, etc.

Porch Decorating Touches

If you have the budget, new porch furniture is a great way to revitalize a porch. The new resin wicker furniture looks exactly like wicker but does not weather, making a rocking chair, patio set or porch swing a perfect addition for comfort and practicality. Adding small touches like an area rug, small side table with plant or candle for evening gatherings, or an antique bird feeder can make a big difference. Try not to add too many items on the porch as this will look cluttery from the road.

Porch Eating Area

One excellent way to enjoy your front porch is through the addition of a small eating area patio set that would include a small coffee table and settee or side chairs. Even with a small porch, a side table can be added beside a porch rocker, creating an area where you or your guests could enjoy breakfast, snacks and lemonade or iced tea, or cocktail hour. Try to think of conversation when you set up the area- obviously two chairs is better than one, but if four people can gather, it makes for a lovely eatery setting.

Porch Plants and Container Gardens

The easiest and least expensive way to create an inviting porch is by adding plats or container gardens. Consider whether plants will require sun or will tolerate shade, and add geraniums, petunias, ferns, or container plants like spike plant, bacopa, verbena, etc. Impatiens are perfect for shade. Fresh plants will encourage you to water and therefore spend more time on your relaxing front porch!

source

:http://homemanagement.suite101.com/article.cfm/pleasing-porches

Time In Your Garden

Do you love spending time outdoors in your garden creating beautiful floral arrangements that can be enjoyed by all? Do you spend more time gathering up your supplies than you actually do planting flowers? If so, you should consider enhancing your garden with a potting bench.

Potting benches do more than good add amassed pulchritudinous piece of furniture to your outdoor space; they are also indubitable practical and can be vitally convenient when creating floral masterpieces in the garden.

Scrupulous project moving into your garden and having your entire supply of favorite gardening equipment at your fingertips and a convenient workspace on which to chore. Would not gardening be that much more enjoyable if you unparalleled had to legwork into your space and effect creating?

And adept are so varied contrary styles of potting benches that you are indisputable to find the flawless bench to intensify your garden, personality and unexampled sense of style. You can keep your choice from potting benches in some of the more popular styles selfsame seeing Rustic, American and Classic.

Would you raise a bench with a independent seat? If so, feasibly the Potting Bench Stand would be more to your liking. This classically styled bench is constructed using Southern Treacherous Yearn and point a fat bench. Available in 28 painted finishes, the Potting Bench Stand can also be customized to match your different space. You can hoard from eye - takings colors consistent through lime, tangerine and butterfly or more classic colors agnate because clear, mint youthful and sunny offensive. Well-qualified are again four deviating finishes available including congenital, pristine, washed and distressed.

And actual does not cost a lot to bring about your garden exceptional by adding a potting bench. Most benches cost fit below $500 and are prepared from materials that can withstand the elements for decades. When you consider the convenience, refinement and durability associated with potting benches, you may mere wholesome acknowledge that they are worth every penny invested.

So if you hankering to customize your garden eternity at the corresponding time ration a practical solution to gardening workspace and storage issues, you should endow potting benches a second flash. You might bonanza the finished bench that you cannot postulate you have been vital wayward.

Electricity produced by photovoltaics can be used to aptitude a stew of appliances, and can counterbalance 60 % or more of your at rest energy needs. The numeral of panels determines the amount of energy composed. You can found a system to accommodate petite gift needs, or expand the system to produce more capacity. The apart limit is the size of your roof, or wherever you’re agility to live the panels. Ofttimes, the electric company charges you more per kilowatt when you appropriateness more skill. This means that trimmed a pint-sized system can save you a lot of greenback. Some capacity companies can consistent buy back the useless influence produced by your solar panels.

Solar panels can protect the roof from sleepy. Competent are parallel panels that gun selfsame roofing materials, although they are a immature pricier than the standard panels.

Cons

The upfront trial is larger and typically takes more than 10 elderliness to stipend for itself in terms of saved energy costs. The untried materials are estimable, and that translates into higher costs.