You may never have heard of a home reference binder, but once I explain what it is, I think you'll agree that it's a pretty handy thing to have around. A home reference binder is a place to store all sorts of information pertaining to your home (scroll down for a list of things to add to yours). You can use files or a box, but I really like the convenience of using a binder.
I started our home reference binder as soon as we bought our house, but it's never too late to start one and it's a never-ending project. I keep ours handy, both for referring to and for updating. It's so much easier to grab a page from the binder to take to a store than to go searching for things or try to remember.
MATERIALS
- 2"-3" binder
- hole punch
- clear page protectors
- sturdy cardboard or plastic dividers (you can make your own with the hole punch)
- strong glue (I use GOOP)
- pen, marker, scissors, stapler, tape, glue stick...
ITEMS TO COLLECT (as much as you have or want to include)
- paint chips with your wall colors
- swatches/samples of your flooring, siding, baseboard, etc. (or color photos)
- manuals/warranties/receipts for appliances, furnace, smoke alarms, etc.
- information from your municipality about things like garbage pick-up, bylaws, etc.
- business cards and/or contact information for contractors, plumbers, electricians, suppliers, etc. that you have used or might use
- pamphlets/brochures/printouts that contain pictures or information about home improvement products you have in your home/yard/garage
- color photos of other items around your home/yard/garage that you may want to refer to when you can't actually see them in person
1. Divide your items by area (i.e. basement, main floor, 2nd floor, exterior, yard, garage, etc.). Label your dividers.
2. Decide what order you want things to be in the binder.
3. Glue samples to your heavy dividers. Write details beside them (room names, color, item numbers, etc.). Place them in your binder.
4. Place your other information in page protectors or hole punch the pages.
Write in additional details (purchase/installation date, product numbers, etc.).
Attach smaller to large pages with glue, tape or staples.
Put everything into the right sections of the binder.
5. Keep the binder up to date by removing things you no longer have and adding new information as you add things to your home.
I've decided to dedicate one of my small flower beds to my favorite hockey team, the Edmonton Oilers. I have started gathering seeds/plants for blue and orange flowers, as well as blue and orange rocks to go around them. I will also include some broken hockey sticks as decoration and to keep the dog out of the flower bed.
It occurred to me to include a little hockey player in the bed, so I built an inukshuk, or rock person, using two round "leg" rocks, an oblong "body" rock, a round "head" rock, and a piece of aluminum hockey stick for "arms". I added a water-less Oilers logo tattoo to the "body" rock and a couple stickers on the "shoulders". I glued it all together using GOOP, and had to use a black pop bottle cap behind the legs to get it to balance properly, but I think it turned out pretty well.
We're lucky enough to have a fully fenced back yard for our dog to run in, but sometimes we need the gate open or don't want the dog into something, so I designed a tie out system to keep her out of trouble.
MATERIALS:
- two fence posts that are securely in the ground
- a length of strong aircraft cable that will reach between the posts
- 2 eye hooks
- 2 cable clamps
- 2 cable tighteners
- 2 quick links or carrabiners
- 1 short length of chain or cable, or a chain dog leash
- tools
1. Screw the eye hooks into the fence posts, facing each other. Make sure they are at a height that will allow the dog to lay down comfortably, but high enough that you don't have to dig it out of the snowbank or mow around it or whatever.
2. Attach the tighteners to the eye hooks.
3. Attach the cable to the tighteners. Tighten it as much as you can.
4. Secure the short chain to the cable with one of the links/carrabiners. Put the other link on the other end of the chain (use this to attach it to the dog's collar). DONE!
The dog can be clipped to the cable quickly and can have the full length of the yard to move, without the risk of getting wrapped around something. In my yard the dog can get from the sun to the shade.
I was given two little dragonfly solar lights a couple years ago and I love them to pieces (I love dragonflies), but they are on stakes that are meant to go into the ground, which doesn't work when you have a dog that insists on chewing everything she can reach. I had used twist-ties to secure them up in my tree, but the wind blows them crooked all the time and the twist-ties break. This evening I used my drill and drilled a hole into one of the dead branches on the tree and stuck the stake into the hole - voila! The light is still high enough that I don't think the dog will bother it (although I did put a piece of wire fence around it just in case), the ugly stump now serves a purpose, and the light will be easier to see and get more charging sunlight once the leaves are on the tree than it did before. Now I just have to decide whether I'll risk doing the same thing with my second light in my tree in the front yard - I'm a bit worried that someone might walk away with my light if I do...
I've previously modified other solar lights to get them up off the ground. They are little lanterns that were meant to hang from hooks that were poked in the ground, but instead I hung them from "quick-links" (used for joining chains) and eye-hooks that I screwed horizontally into the top ends of my fence posts. They work great for lighting up the path still, but we don't have to mow around them or worry about the dog eating them. And they won't blow off in the wind because of the eye-hooks and "quick-links" rather than just hooks.
It's raining here this morning, which should get rid of the last of our snow and hopefully clean things up and "green" things up as well. I'm hoping to get more rocks arranged in our yard this summer. We did a stone path from the house to the garage, which really cut down on the spring mud. I'd like to do along the back of the house, where nothing really grows anyway, to stop the dog from digging and cover some of the barren clay. It's a lot of work, since we use "found" rocks, not nice even purchased ones, but I love how it looks when it's done.
