Feel in your gut that you’re paying too much property tax? Add the Homeowner’s Property Tax Reduction Kit (direct PDF link, 1.4MB) to your reading list. The 86-page guide from the American Homeowner’s Association helps you look for common assessment errors, and compiles state-by-state tips on laws and appeal procedures. [Consumerist]
Windows only: IKEA has released its own 3D room design tool to help you plan the modernist, clean-lined kitchen, bedroom, or workspace of your dreams. Check out screenshots of what the Swedes have given us below.
IKEA’s Home Planner download site lists three separate downloads, but they all seem to be the same exact file of the same size, and feature the same planning tools. It’s a Windows-only tool at this point; anyone want to give it a shot in WINE on Linux or Mac and tell us how it runs?
Here’s the Home Planner in action:
IKEA Planner Tool is a free download for Windows systems only. Thanks empkae!
Looking to re-arrange the stuff of your house or plan a dream room? Floorplanner is a web-based tool for planning rooms and furniture layouts using a simple but powerful editor.
We originally reviewed Floorplanner in 2007, but since then they've introduced some helpful new features. We originally dug it because of the easy drag-and-drop interface and the extensive library of furniture, fixtures, plants and more are still there. One of the principle reader complaints back then was the lack of 3D planning, but you can now plan in both 2D and 3D, switching between the views for a long view of proportion and layout. The free demo on their site doesn't allow you to save, but does give you a feel for the tools and layout—though you might be tempted to sign up, after a little Sims-style rearrangement. Or, you know, they put that PrtSc key on up there on your keyboard for a reason.
Floorplanner has a free and premium tier; the limitation on the free plan is one house or apartment floor plan. If you upgrade to Floorplanner PLUS for $27.50 a year, you can create up to five home plans.
A detailed home inventory serves an important purpose, giving you something to show your insurance company in the event of theft or damage. As Apartment Therapy points out, a home inventory is also a great decluttering tool.
Photo by yenna.
The post provides a two-part guide to home inventory. The first part explains how to make a good inventory, from spreadsheet creation to recording items with your digital camera. Whether or not this is your first home inventory, we’d recommend trying out previously mentioned Know Your Stuff, a free application for Windows and OS X that dedicated to creating home inventories.
After you’ve inventoried your stuff, the post suggests that many of us, when faced with all of our belongings, realize we have way too much stuff. That’s when the decluttering begins.
Go through your list, room-by-room, and ask yourself how many of each item you really need. Highlight each item that can be reduced. You may realize that you only need five t-shirts instead of fifteen, two sets of sheets instead of four, or one frying pan instead of three.
Whether or not you get any serious decluttering done using this method, you’ll still come out on top with your new home inventory. Good on you!
VetHelpDirect is a web-based assessment tool for determining whether or not your pet needs veterinary care, as well as getting reliable information about various animal behaviors and conditions.
The site has expanded to provide assessments and facts on horses, donkeys, rabbits, reptiles, and birds, but Fido and Mr. Scruffles are covered as well, of course. Head to the site, select an animal, then answer a series of questions. Based on the responses to the questions, the site database will recommend immediate emergency veterinary care, care within the next day, or assure the user that the behavior is not usually an indicator of an illness, or just needs at-home treatment. In addition to the assessment tool, there are general guides on pet care and conditions to help pet owners take better preventative care of their animals. Free to use, no sign-up required.
If you've got space you're not using—from space to park a car to an empty corner of your basement—Homstie can help you rent that space out as storage.
The premise of the site is that self-storage units are expensive and not particularly friendly to the environment—there is over 2.2 billion square feet of commercial space devoted to self storage in the US. Homstie links people with space in existing buildings to people who need space. If you're wondering about the logistics of using the extra space in someone's garage to store your stuff, Homestie provides custom lease agreements—for a $19 fee—based on the arrangement you have. Space-holders are ranked by experiences others have had with them and other information, such as whether or not the space is lockable. Payments are not orchestrated through Homstie but in a manner agreed upon through the landlord and leaser. Currently the majority of listings are in California with a spattering in other smaller states. Would you consider signing a lease to rent out space in a residence instead of a commercial storage facility? Sound off in the comments.
Crock pot cooking is dead simple and has the capability of turning basic ingredients into delicious meals with little time actually spent in the kitchen. These simple five-ingredient recipes will help you get started.
Photo by baykes.
Trent at The Simple Dollar blog shares some crock pot recipes that share a common theme: they all have five ingredients, are made with basic and inexpensive cooking staples, and require very little prep time. Beyond adding the basic five ingredients, the only instructions for the recipes are:
Combine all of this into a crock pot. Add salt and pepper to taste. Turn it on low and walk away for eight hours. Add a quarter of a cup of water for every additional two hours you intend to cook it.
His pot roast recipe for instance—assuming you're a speedy vegetable chopper—could be prepped from the fridge to the counter to the crock pot in under five minutes. If you have some simple and tasty crock pot recipes of your own, share them in the comments below.
