Insurance and your personal belongings

You have just moved in, or maybe your just getting ready to move. Do you have a good documentation of your belongings.  A natural disaster could happen at any time. Or theft, fire and other catastrophes in your life and your home.  How do you protect yourself?  Insurance, for starters.  And digital photography for another. 

You will want to have documentation of everything you own.  Remembering what was in the cupboard is a lot easier with a photo. Take the time to photo and document every drawer, cabinet, closet and surface.  Especially the high value items.  With the photos there is no dispute about what items you have. 

Take your digital camera, and go snap happy.  Most digital cameras have a movie setting, be sure to use the movie setting to identify your more valuable items with audio as well.

Once you have it all together, burn a couple of CD’s.  Keep one at home, and keep another in a safe deposit bank, or with a family member in another part of the country.

Hopefully nothing will ever happen to you and your home, but if it does, this record will be a blessing.

A/C problems, possible quick fix

As if not getting much sleep with a new puppy was enough of a challenge, this past week our upstairs air conditioning unit stopped working as well.  No big challenge we thought, since we still have cool air downstairs, we will just sleep on the floor and the couch.  Wow, talk about no sleep.   We got the air conditioning repair folks out there first thing the next morning.

Our unit would blow air with the fan, but it was not turning on the compressor to cool, or even to heat.  The repair company came out, walked up to the thermostat popped the cover off, and as I looked on to my amazement, there were batteries in the thermostat, and we had never changed them.  Didn’t even know they were there.

Long and short of it, those were some pricey AA batteries.  So before calling your A/C repair folks, replace the batteries in your thermostat.  And get a great night sleep.

New Addition - to the family not the house

 

Meet Soleil, she is the newest addition to our household.  She is an Italian Greyhound puppy.  She is keeping us laughing, and thank god, not keeping us up all night.  She has already stolen our hearts.  That was easy to do!  We are very excited that she is getting along with Luna,(seen below) our first Italian Greyhound.  We were concerned about sister rivalry, and believe all will be just fine. We are not sure how big our Soleil will get to be, Luna is full grown and only 5.7 lbs (on a good day).  Our lives have changed and we expect to be entertained by these two for a long time.

What a Pest!

One of my clients recently moved into temporary housing.  Only to discover the house was infested with Scorpions.  When I think infestation of Scorpions, my mind says it takes ONE to make an infestation.  If I see one, I know there are more.  She however was seeing 4 - 6 - 8 a day.  YIKES  Some were as long as 3 and 4 inches.

Getting rid of the pesky things is not very easy.  Nothing kills them quickly.  Nothing keeps them out of the house.  You can spray and reduce, over time, the number of them, but the way to treat is to seal them out of the house (a pricey process) and eliminate their food source.  No quick fixes. 

Talking to Robert Acosta over at Arizona Exterminating he gave me a great tip to a non chemical way to kill the ones you see.  Hair  Spray!  The stickier the better.  The hair spray when dry, will keep the scorpion from moving, it will freeze, and starve.  Couldn’t happen to a nicer creepy crawly pest…

A BIG Thank You

The past few weeks have been a bit crazy.  First my mom and partner, Claudina,  went on vacation to Alaska for two weeks.  Then the banks in response to the elimination of Down Payment Assistance  programs shortened the final date up even more.  I had to rush to find homes for a few clients relying on the Down Payment Assistance programs to get into homes.  Not having my ‘wing man’ or in my case ‘wing mom’ was a challenging.  I can truly say I Appreciate all you do for me mom.  Thank You!  Together we make a great team!