More Smart Ways to Automate Your Home

In the early days of home automation, getting your home set up typically required buying a central hub that your devices could connect to and coordinating everything from there. In some cases, you might have even needed multiple hubs, since not all devices worked on the same network. While automation hubs and alternate networks still exist, these days most automation is done using your home’s Wi-Fi network and digital assistants such as Alexa or Google Assistant.

With smart home automation having come so far in recent years, there may be more options available to automate your home than you realized. While the specific automation that you use depends on how your home is set up and your own personal preferences, it’s worth it to explore a few different options to see if there’s something new that might fit into your home setup.

Automation Options

There are a number of ways that you can automate your home. You’ve likely at least heard of some of the more popular options, such as smart lights and smart thermostats. Smart video doorbells and automated garage doors are also increasingly popular and may be automation options that you’ve considered for your own home. These all share the advantage of you being able to control them remotely from smart home apps and can typically be integrated with digital assistants for hands-free use.

These aren’t the only options available to you, of course. Smart door locks allow you to automate access to your home, window sensors can give you alerts if you leave your windows open, and flood sensors can help protect your home from flooding and broken pipes. You can even integrate smart smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors into your home to give you immediate alerts in case there’s danger even when you’re away from home. If that’s not enough options, smart plugs are available which allow you to control existing devices by turning the power on and off remotely at the outlet where the device plugs in.

Smart Automation Routines

One of the big advantages of modern home automation is that none of these devices really exist in a bubble anymore. You can set up home automation routines that utilize multiple devices together, and can even use the state of certain devices to control others. Smart motion sensors can automatically turn on lights when they detect movement. Bedtime routines can adjust speaker volume and lighting in bedrooms to create a perfect sleep environment. You can even set routines that kick off before you get up, so that your coffee is brewed and specific lights are on so you can start your day on a positive note.

Depending on how you have them set up, these automation routines can kick off on a schedule, from a voice command, or in response to other actions. This can be really useful if you have certain things that you want to happen at specific times, but other things are only done as needed; you can program multiple routines in different ways to have your home running exactly like you want it to at all times. If you install additional automated devices later, you can even add them to existing routines with minimal effort from your digital assistant’s app.

Automating Your Home

Depending on the scope of what you want and your experience with electronics, a lot of home automation can be done as DIY projects. If you lack time or tech experience, though, you might want to get some help setting your automation up. Fortunately, HomeKeepr can help with this. From our app you can connect with electricians and electronics pros who can install smart outlets and switches, help you hook up and configure devices, and otherwise get your home set up for automation. Best of all, creating a HomeKeepr account is free. So sign up today and get started with fulfilling your home automation dreams.

 

New to Gardening? Tips for Success!

Having a garden is a great way to enjoy the outdoors while also getting some delicious fresh-grown fruits and vegetables for your meals. The thing is, if you’ve never maintained a garden before then you might not realize just how much work goes into it as well. You need to consider the type of soil you have, the amount of sunlight your plants receive, how often different plants need water… you even have to think about what sort of things to plant and when to plant them! For newcomers to gardening, it can be pretty overwhelming.

That doesn’t mean that it’s not worth doing, of course. You just need to be sure to garden smarter, not harder. A lot of work goes into a successful garden, and a decent portion of that work involves figuring out how to maintain your garden and what you should avoid. While we can’t cover every possibility here, the following tips should put you on the path to garden success.

Planning Your Garden

A lot of planning goes into a successful garden. You need to take the time to choose a spot for your garden, plan out a plot with enough room for all your plants to thrive, and ensure that you have easy access to water (or some other plan in place to get water to the garden) so that your growing plants don’t have to rely on unpredictable rain to get the water that they need. To avoid flooding, you’ll need a mostly flat area, with soil that drains well, that isn’t located in a low-lying area. An area that gets sun at least 8 hours per day is also important for a lot of garden plants.

Once you have a space picked out, you can avoid a lot of problems by testing the soil’s pH with a soil testing kit. Most vegetables grow best in soil with a pH between 6.5 and 6.8, so if your soil falls outside of this, you’ll need to amend it to adjust the pH. This can be done by adding things such as lime, wood ash, or commercial soil adjustment mixes, and tilling them into the top 6 inches of soil. Follow instructions on the packaging and test your soil again, making additional amendments as needed until it falls within the desired pH range.

Know What to Grow

After picking a good garden site and prepping the soil, the next key to success is picking the right plants for your garden. Consult a planting zone chart to see which zone you live in, then make your selections based on plants that thrive in your zone. You should also pay attention to the growing conditions that your plants prefer; while many plants like full sun, some may prefer partial shade. To accommodate that, you may have to set up a small barrier or other source of shade to block the sun for part of the day.

One last thing to keep in mind is that the planting and growing requirements for different plants can be significantly different. Some need to be planted shallow, while others do best when planted deep. Some can be crowded and thinned later, while other plants need a lot of room from the start. To get the best possible harvest from your garden, follow the planting instructions for your different plants as closely as possible. If there are notes about the plants needing supports or climbing structures, you should accommodate that from the beginning as well.

Get the Help You Need

Even with planning and research, it’s still possible to end up feeling overwhelmed when trying to start a garden. Fortunately, there are landscaping and gardening pros out there who can help. Whether you need to set up raised beds, choose the right plants for your planting zone, or just get a little extra help managing what grows best in sun and shade, HomeKeepr can connect you with the pros in your area that know exactly what you need. Creating a HomeKeepr account is free, so sign up today and get to gardening!

 

Reducing DIY Project Waste

There are a number of reasons why you might choose to take on a DIY project. You may decide to do something yourself because you think it will be an easy project, or because you enjoy working with your hands. You might even consider doing a DIY project because you think it would save you a lot of money over hiring a professional to do the same thing. Regardless of your reasoning, there’s one thing about DIY that a lot of project guides and instruction sets leave out: what to do with everything that’s left over once you’re done with the project.

DIY waste can be a real concern, since depending on the project there might be a lot of waste produced. Given the nature of the materials involved with most DIY projects, you shouldn’t just throw away everything that you didn’t use in your project. Here are some things to think about regarding how you can reduce the amount of waste that your DIY projects produce and what you can do with those waste materials that are produced. By changing the way that you think about DIY waste, you can change the way that you approach projects, and maybe even save some money in the process.

Planning Away Waste

One of the first things you should do when trying to reduce your DIY waste is to stop for a moment and rethink your measurements and calculations. If the project involves wood or other materials that are cut from a larger piece, make sure that your cuts are efficient and made to preserve as much of the surrounding material as possible. If you’re going to need single-use items that come in a lot of packaging, consider whether you’ll have use for similar things in the future, and if so, buy a multi-pack if available so that you’ll have one on hand without even more packaging waste. If you’re going to paint or stain the project, select colors that you’ll likely be able to reuse for future projects. You can probably see where this is going.

Basically, spend a little bit more time during the planning phase of your DIY project to make sure that you aren’t creating excess waste that could otherwise be avoided. Ideally, you’ll end up with larger pieces of scrap that can be saved for the future, as well as other materials that either you or someone else might have a use for. Even if you only manage to reduce your project waste by a little, every little bit helps, and those waste reductions can really add up if you end up doing a lot of DIY.

Reusing Waste Materials

When it comes to reusing scrap material from past DIY projects, you aren’t always going to get a perfect match to what your current project calls for. Sometimes you’ll have different types of wood on hand, or a color of stain that doesn’t quite match what you’d planned on. That’s okay; if what you have is a good substitution, then you can use it and save some money on your materials. If it’s not, don’t try to force a match and end up creating a substandard result. Just save your scrap and excess materials for a future project, because if you’re active in DIY, then there’s always going to be another project.

One thing that’s important to remember is that you should keep your scrap and waste material well organized. That might even be a DIY project of its own. Create an organization solution to hold scrap wood, piping, paints, and other materials that you kept out of the waste bin, so that you can always find what you’re looking for.

Other Options

There’s a lot of satisfaction that comes from doing something on your own as a DIY project. Not every project is ideally suited for DIY, though. If you don’t have the time or experience to tackle a project correctly, keep in mind that there’s no shame in calling in some help to get it done. HomeKeepr can help you with this; sign up for our free app today to connect to pros in your area that can help you get your project list done. They’ll even take care of the waste afterward.

 

Carving Out Your Home Office Space

When COVID-19 emerged, a lot of employers realized the advantage of allowing at least some employees to work from home. Not only can it act as a benefit for employees, but it can also help to reduce the cost of stocking and maintaining a physical office space. As a result, the number of people working in home offices has increased significantly over the last few years. This trend will likely continue as well, since companies are realizing that many employees like a work-from-home option and are actively seeking out WFH positions.

While there are definite advantages to this, it does bring up one potential problem: If your home wasn’t designed with a home office in mind, where are you going to put it? While some people solve this problem by just sticking a desk in the living room or bedroom, that isn’t exactly an elegant solution, and doesn’t afford you much privacy for work. If you need a new home office space, here are some suggestions that might help you find the room that works for you.

Determining Your Home Office Needs

In general, a home office may be kind of small in scope compared to what you might be used to in a corporate office setting. While you’ll certainly have some requirements that your office must meet, they aren’t going to be as elaborate as if you were planning out an office layout at the workplace. To figure out exactly what you need for your home office, start by making a list.

Most likely you’ll need a computer and a desk, since the internet is usually what makes the “from home” part of work-from-home possible. You may also need a printer and printing supplies, even though a lot of your work will likely be submitted in digital format. From there it gets a bit more specific to you and the way that you work. Will you need sticky notes or a whiteboard to aid your productivity? Does your job require any sort of special equipment to perform? Do you have privacy requirements, either personal ones or legal ones (such as if you’re processing customer/patient data)? Make a list of everything that you’ll need your home office to provide.

Consider Your Available Space

Once you have a good idea of your home office needs, start looking at places in the home that might meet those requirements. It may mean converting a craft room, study, or den into an office, or rearranging furniture to make room for the desk to make those rooms into multi-purpose spaces. You may have to shuffle around a few different rooms to come up with the space that you want. Some people have even converted walk-in closets or pantries into home offices that are small but get the job done. Regardless of how you work things out, just make sure that the office area you choose fully meets your needs before you settle into it. You should also keep track of the square footage of your new home office for tax purposes, since you may be eligible for a tax break on your home office depending on where you live.

Home Office Alternatives

While the most common way that people create a home office is to shuffle things around and set up an office space within the home, there are other options available as well. If no space in your home meets your specific needs, you might consider hiring a contractor to build an addition that matches the specs of the home office that you want. Another option is to install a large shed or other outdoor building and convert it for home office use. Not only do these options give you the space that you need, but they may also help to better define the line between “work” and “personal time” at home.

If you think that an addition or external office is right for you, HomeKeepr can help you find the pros that you need to make it happen. Contractors, electricians, external building installers, and more can be found on our app, ready to match with you and make your home office dreams come true. Creating a HomeKeepr account is free, so sign up today. It’s the first step toward the home office that you need and want!

 

Make Your Virtual Tour Irresistible

Virtual tours are all the rage these days, and for good reason. Not only do virtual tours make it easier for buyers to view homes they might be interested in at any time of the day or night, they’re safe, even when COVID cases are high. With a virtual tour, a home shopper can eliminate homes they definitely do not want to see, making the whole process a lot more efficient.

As the seller of one of these homes, it’s extra important that your home is staged so that the virtual tour makes people want to come in and see more. This often goes well beyond what you’d need to do for a regular showing, since your goal is to mimic the feeling of what it’s like to be in your house. Don’t worry, we’ve got some tips to get you started!

Declutter Like Your In-Laws Are Coming for Vacation

Before you list a home, it’s always important to declutter. Get rid of anything you don’t immediately need, or at least put it in storage somewhere away from the house. That idea goes doubly for virtual tours. It may seem like no big deal that you’ve got an extra ottoman or side table in a room when people are physically in the space, but the goal of a virtual tour is to try to create a sense of how the space actually feels in real life, and that can be hard if there’s too much distracting stuff sitting around.

When it comes to virtual tours, less is more, to a point. It’s still important to keep a few things even in unused rooms to provide a sense of scale and purpose for the room, but remember that the people seeing the tour want to see your home, not your belongings. Balance is key, and it can be a delicate one to strike.

Make the Best Features Obvious

When you’ve lived in a house long enough, even the coolest features can seem pretty mundane and kind of turn into background noise. When you’re trying to sell that house, think like a buyer. Does your home have some great things that buyers would want to see, or unique detailing that’s worth a second look?

Rather than skimming over these points of interest, emphasize them! Use well-placed lighting, simple decor, or other tactics to draw the eye to the cool parts of your home and landscaping without overwhelming them. It’s all about scale; just remember that your home’s best features are the main attraction!

Remember to Keep Security Front of Mind

We’ve all got something that would be absolutely tempting for an unscrupulous sort to rifle through or carry off. Whether that’s family jewelry, a gun safe, or even just a fire safe for paperwork, the temptation can be strong. Rather than display these items during a virtual tour, put them away so they’re not advertising to potential visitors that you might have something worth taking.

Along those same lines, try to tuck security equipment like cameras and sensors out of the way, even if they are part of the home and will be sold with it. As long as they’re in place and present when people view the home in person, potential buyers will be aware of the security system they’re getting, without everyone on the internet also knowing where all the sensors and cameras are.

For More Ideas to Improve Your Home’s Virtual Tour

If you need even more help improving your home’s look before a virtual tour, you’ve come to the right place. Your HomeKeepr community can point you to the exact right person to help you stage, decorate, or even repaint or relight your home before the big day. All you have to do is ask for the help you need, and before you know it, recommendations for the best experts in your area will be right at your fingertips. And, best of all, it’s free to join! Log in today and take a look around!