Not Martha did this post on "Things I have learned after buying a house."

Well, I've learned a few things, too. So here they are, for better or worse:

1. Good repair-people are like gold. If you find one, get his or her card, and stick it up on the wall next to your phone. (And only give the name out to people you really love, lest the person get so busy that they're not available when YOU need them!)

2. Change your furnace/a-c filter monthly if the owner's manual tells you to. Don't cheat and try to squeeze extra time out of it. Also, the annual check-ups before the start of heating season are probably a good deal, and certainly are nicer than waking up on the first 30* day of the year and realizing your furnace won't come on.

3. Changing out a wax toilet seal is not hard, but it is also not fun. (and if anyone wants the blow-by-blow instructions, e-mail me).

4. Most things promoted as ant repellents, don't. Vinegar is worthless. Cinnamon only works for a while, and who wants little piles of cinnamon scattered all over their house?

5. Check your dryer vent regularly to make sure it's not filling up with lint. You can often tell that it's got too far gone because it takes forever to dry stuff. (Lint is a bad fire hazard; you can buy tools that look like giant bottlebrushes that you can use to de-lint the vent/ductwork)

6. Sometimes, it really does seem like things break all at once. It is okay to sit down and cry when that happens. But don't cry too long - you need to start calling repair people.

7. It helps a LOT to have a retired friend (or a stay-at-home parent) on your street - someone you trust - who is willing to come in and sit and wait on repair people when they've taken past the 4-hour window they gave you when they "would" be there, and you really have to get back to work. (I've only had to do that once but it did save my bacon.)

8. Sometimes flipping a breaker off and back on really IS all it takes to correct a problem with an appliance. Unfortunately, it's usually a temporary fix.

9. Don't test your "in-sink-er-ator" by putting all kinds of crap down it. I don't even do eggshells and lime rinds any more - anything more fibrous than lettuce goes in the trash.*

10. Neighbors can and do change. I went from sweet-little-old-lady (who accepted packages for me and watched out for my house when I was out of town) to the Party Crew from Hell (after Little Old Lady went into a nursing home and her son decided he could make money renting her house out). (I was pretty much obsessed by this problem throughout the Summer of 2003). I wound up having to move my sleeping arrangements to the other side of the house (they partied loud enough to be heard through the walls of their house and mine, and over the noise-machine I was running at the time, until 2 am every night of the week), pick up all the trash they threw in my yard, hide my trashcart (because they'd fill it up with THEIR trash), and replace my mailbox after someone drunkenly bashed it up. After they moved out, I also wound up with a slop-over rodent problem: apparently no one in the house ever cleaned anything up and they had rats and mice that then went looking for a new home - I had rats in my garage and mice in my house and rats ate my garden that year.

Fortunately, the house is now owner-occupied by a cop and his family and things are fairly quiet.

But there's not a lot you can do when you get stuck with sucky neighbors other than hope they get evicted or move away soon.


(*Yes, I know, I should compost. But small yard + indoor ant problems + past rodent problem thanks to neighbors from Hell scares me off of it.)