HGTV Made Owning a House
Look Easy and Fun
and I'm Here to Tell You It's Not
Home Ownership Survival Tip # 493
If you see a problem, address it immediately.
Do not procrastinate.
It will not magically get better if you ignore it.
It will get 3,409 times worse.
And cost 6049 times as much.
Data and Automation are the Keys to Owning a Home Without Losing Your Mind
This is a SMART HOME.
And I'm not talking a nest and ring.
Sign up for paperless everything.
Sign up for auto-pay for everything.
Automate everything else.
Track your bills, your warranties, your maintenance.
Put it all into Notion and Claude and Google.
Create an agent who pays your bills and catalogs the reciept emails and tracks your averages.
Create an agent to remind you of home maintenance tasks and schedule contractors.
Pro Tips
01
This is YOUR House
Decorate it however you want. Put holes in the walls. Change your mind. Be weird, be yourself.
03
Get to Know your Neighbors
I'm serious! If you ignored me in the earlier section, suck it up and go introduce yourself to them right now.
Think of it as community resistance. Seriously. Be nice to them and get to know them and they will invite you to BBQs and bring you Christmas Cookies and shovel your sidewalk.
02
No More Wall Mates!
You can hammer a curtain rod at 3am and no one can hear you and no one cares. You can work from the privacy of your backyard or paint in the living room. It's all your's, baby.
04
ASK QUESTIONS
This time, you get to ask the contractors. Every single person who comes to your house to fix something or do a job - go through it with them. Ask them to explain what they are doing. Why. How can you do it? What can you do to prevent this from happening in the future?
Everyone I've ever had in my house has been more than happy to go above and beyond to teach me how to care for my home.