Unique Home Articles

Would you like to save hundreds of dollars, maybe even more, when you sell your house?  Of course, who wouldn’t?  There is a simple solution:  hire a home inspector before you list.

Why, you ask?  Your buyers are going to do a home inspection anyway, right?

Yes, they should.  However, the home inspector will find things wrong with the house, no doubt.  And the buyers may well ask for repairs to be completed prior to closing.  They may well even ask for the repairs to be done by a licensed, bonded contractor. And you know how much that can cost.

If you don’t want to do the repairs, you risk losing the buyer.  If you do the repairs, you can be paying hundreds more than if you did the repairs yourself (assuming you can, of course.)

But, if you hire a home inspector yourself, before you list, you can get a list of what needs to be repaired and either do them yourself or hire someone more economical.

Then, as an added bonus, when the buyers have their home inspector run through, they won’t find nearly as much needing repair.  The buyers might be so impressed that they don’t ask for any repairs.

A few hundred dollars up front can save you at least that much – and maybe even the entire deal.

Now that we’re getting ready to move out of this house, we’re looking at what we need to do to around here to fix things and make it prettier.  I’ve done this before and you’d think I’d have learned then.

Fix the stuff and make it pretty before you move!

Really.  If you’re going to spend the money on fresh paint and flowers out front and a little other landscaping to make the house more presentable and attractive to buyers, why wait?  We should have done it all along so that we could enjoy the fruits of our labor instead of just paying so someone else can enjoy it.

On the other hand, had we fixed it up 5 years ago, we’d still have to do some touch ups to make it look fresh and clean, but at least we would have enjoyed a better patio and a better color and non-flaking coat of paint outside.

Part of it is that it’s hard to find the money and time when there’s not as much incentive to fix it all.  It’s not that we didn’t want to, but we kept putting it off.

But not next time… Next time we fix up while we’re living there.

One of my favorite memories from the Honduras mission trip was the way they did laundry.  Remember, this is a teeny tiny island, about 1 mile long by .5 miles wide, if that.  But even part of that is heavily wooded and not inhabited.

It’s very tiny.  You can’t even find it on many maps.

Being tiny and without roads or even electricity in many homes, they naturally do not have washing machines.  They use washboards in a tub with home made soap.  I remember walking by a home where a woman was washing clothes outside.  It smelled SO good!   I commented on the smell and was told it was her home made lye soap she was using.  I wish I could share the smell here, but let me tell you, it was nothing like the chemical smell of our cleaning materials here.

And then, because they don’t have dryers, either, they clothes hang out in the sun to dry.  If you’ve dried clothes outdoors, you know that sun-drenched clothing smells good, too.  I have a feeling their clothes, with the lack of income and lack of conveniences they have, are cleaner than ours here.

Now… to find a home made soap recipe…

So this trip to Honduras I took a few years ago was incredibly life changing.  Recommended for all!

This was a mission trip with our church, but you don’t have to go as part of a mission trip necessarily.  There are several humanitarian groups that offer such trips to help fellow people in need.  You can go to another country, or you can even work right in our own country, helping people fix their houses or perhaps building a trail in the forest for hikers to use safely.

Either way, the feeling of helping others is fantastic.  It’s great to get out and see another culture and to see that we have so much compared to many other people.  That can be good or bad.  It was sobering to compare what we’re used to here next to what is a normal way of life for Hondurans on this tiny island.  It’s so small, they walk everywhere – there are no roads, only dirt walking paths.  Electricity is strung up by a single electrical line run from palm tree to palm tree and then into the house – if they have electricity at all.  People who cannot afford land build their homes over the water in the lagoon.  Toilets are merely a hole in the floor.

And yet, their way of life was so much more appealing than our lives of excess.

Arrested for kissing in public?  Yup.  It happened to a British couple who are living in Dubai.  Apparently expatriates (people who are citizens of one country, but living and working temporarily in another) make up a whopping 85% of the population of Dubai.  Wow!

Imagine the culture issues there, which is exactly how the kissing arrest happened.  Locals wear full-length clothing that covers their bodies.  Expats, used to a different culture, hang out on the beach wearing only skimpy bathing suits.

It was on the beach that a British couple was kissing (and a little more?) which goes against the local laws of decency and landed them in legal trouble.

When I traveled to a teeny island near Honduras a few years ago, we were warned that we might hear the “S” word in church, but that it wasn’t a cuss word there. However, we were to refrain from using the word “nuts” because that was quite the rude word.

Just another reminder that when traveling someplace, it’s a really good idea to learn the local culture before heading out.  Know what is acceptable, what is rude, and what are outright no-no’s.

Have you read much about these RFID chips?  It stands for Radio Frequency Identification.  They are tiny tags used to track people, animals, and things.  You may have used this technology to have an implant put into your pet with your personal information incase they get out of the yard and picked up by Animal Control.

They’re also being used for toll road payments and asset tracking, such as library books, jewelry, airline baggage and nearly everything else it seems.

Some of this probably isn’t a surprise to you, especially if you have a smart-pay chip for toll roads.  But did you know RFID chips are going into products you buy, like orange juice? Yes, the chips can be placed on products so manufacturers know the trip that carton of orange juice makes.  When was it purchased, how long was it in your refrigerator, when was it tossed out, etc.

These examples are miniscule compared to how many ways the chips are already being used – many in ways that would surprise you. You can even get a chip implanted into your body.  Some businesses are already offering this to their customers as a means of identifying VIP customers and allowing them to pay for goods and services effortlessly.

In addition to making homemade refried beans, I recently started making homemade tortillas.  Store bought tortillas are pretty nasty, unless you get those made by local tortilla companies, which we have here. They’re also a lot more expensive than homemade.  Granted they’re not wallet breakers, but I try to find cheaper alternatives for most everything because I’d rather have a dollar in my pocket than give it to a huge grocery store chain.

Still, homemade tortillas are tasty and rather fun to make.

All you need is a recipe, a few ingredients, a rolling pin (unless you can figure out how to stretch them by hand), and a frying pan or griddle.

Mix the ingredients and then divide the dough into balls slightly larger than golf balls, but smaller than tennis balls. Let the dough balls sit a few minutes and then roll them out and put onto a hot pan or griddle (try medium to medium-high).  After bubbles form on one side, flip it over to cook on the other side.  Slather in butter and eat.

You may want them smaller or larger, thicker or thinner, but this is a starting point.

You can also make them really thick, about ¼ inch, and fry it in butter or oil for a totally different taste feast.

Making home made refried beans is simple and a money saver as well.  I’m no chef.  I’ve even been known to eat out of a tin can without heating – at least in the summer when it’s hot and hot food is a turn off.  But homemade beans are so good and so easy!

First, get a crock pot and put in some pinto beans.  You should rinse the beans first incase there are odd things in them.  Cover the beans with water and turn on the crock pot.  I’ve found that longer is certainly better, like cooking them on an all day setting, either 6 or 8 hours.

I don’t add salt since they turn out salty on their own for some reason.  But I do add some chicken bullion.  (Yes, I realize this has salt, but the beans were salty on their own before I started adding bullion to the mix.)  They don’t end up tasting like chicken, but it adds some flavor.

You can also add a can of diced tomatoes, some salsa, some chiles, jalapenos, cheese, whatever you like.  However, I tend to lean towards keeping the big pot of beans “additive free” and letting people add their own stuff to their own servings.

Once the beans are good and soft, beat them with an electric mixer until they’re the right consistency. You might need to remove some water before beating them, but keep the water handy incase you need to add it back in as you beat them.

Enjoy!

Who doesn’t need to find new sources of income these days?  Gas prices are still high, food prices are still high, and much worse, layoffs are still happening, which means foreclosures are still happening.

If you need to cut your expenses, take a look at your food bill. If you eat out, this is one big place to save money instantly.  Eating out is incredibly expensive for the food you’re getting.  Even purchasing pre-packaged food at the grocery store is far more expensive than it needs to be.  You’re paying an awful lot for convenience.

Rather than purchase pre-packaged foods, you can make your own for pennies in many cases.  For instance, a bulk package of rice or pinto beans cost about $10 – $15, but that’s for quite a large bag of each.  You can make your own rice or beans for pennies per serving, literally.

And rather than buy cans of soup at $1.50 – $3.00 per can, you can make your own huge batch of soup at home for pennies and have the equivalent of a dozen cans or more.  Chicken noodle, split pea, minestrone, garden vegetable, potato corn chowder… you name it.  And homemade tastes much better than canned!

Especially now that the economy is rougher than it was several years ago, saving money is more important than ever.  There are literally hundreds of ways to save, some of which we’ll cover here day by day.

Do you go out to eat for lunch while at work, school, or even hanging out at home?  That can cost you easily $160 a month if a typical lunch costs you $8 (consider meal, drink, and tip).  Even if your meal costs only $4, that’s still $80 a month that you could redirect to bills that are mounting up.

Rather than going out to eat, cook a larger dinner the night before, or every Sunday, and take leftovers for lunch. The cost is only pennies rather than several dollars.

A large Sunday meal is one of my favorites to be ready for the week’s lunches.  I make a large batch of spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, extra hot dogs, a batch of home made burritos, etc and then also package up 5 lunches for the coming week, so they’re already portioned out into containers.  Now, my husband or I only need to grab one of those containers on the way out the door.  Simple, convenient, and very inexpensive.

Now, what will you do with an extra $80 – $160 each month??

In light of all the natural disasters happening lately (it does seem like they’re happening with more frequency the past couple years) and with the ever present threat of terrorism or illness pandemics, it’s not any surprise why we’re hearing myriad agencies suggest we get at least a 72-hour emergency kit ready, complete with at least a 3 day supply of food.

Well, when you get right down to it, I imagine most people already have at least 3 days worth of food in their kitchen at most any time – at least enough to get by for 3 days, if not a full-fledged, multi-course meal.

Reality is you can go several days without food.  But not without water.  So, before you go spending money on a special survival food kit for the home, question whether or not you typically have enough food to last three days on hand.

However, it would be good practice to always keep a few gallons of clean drinking water on hand in case your local water supply is compromised.

You may not find it necessary after all to have a 72-hour emergency food ration at home, but do consider keeping an emergency kit in your vehicles, in case you are unable to return home for a few days.  Keep some food, water, blankets and a first aid kit in each vehicle.