Six Things to Do After Buying a New Home

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Congratulations! It finally happened. You survived the housing market and have purchased your first home. You probably don’t need us to tell you that there are many things to do after buying a new home. Since there’s so much to do and keep track of, it can be easy to overlook things. To make it easier for you, we’ve compiled a list of home security items you won’t want to neglect to help you ensure your move is smooth and safe.

1. Social Media

What does social media have to do with home security and things to do after buying a new home, you ask? More than you might think.

It’s your first home. You’re excited, but you will want to be mindful of how you celebrate on social media. Don’t include your address in any of your posts. If you have family and friends who need your new address, send them a private message. That friend from high school who you haven’t seen in years but you’re still following because they share funny memes doesn’t need to know where you live.

Also, don’t post a picture of your key online or show it in a video. YouTuber Josh Sundquist discovered this firsthand when he challenged a locksmith to create a working key to his apartment using only an image from a video. Initially, it looked like the final key was very similar but didn’t quite work. However, a second test using a suggestion from a follower proved that the locksmith had indeed created a working copy.

Should you post a picture or video with a key, you probably won’t end up in a friendly competition with a locksmith. Still, you may be at risk of someone with malicious intentions creating a working copy. If you still feel like you need to share a picture of yourself with your key to your new house, you could use the key from before you rekey, which leads us to the next item on your home security list.

2. Rekey

Unless you purchased a brand-new house with no previous owner, you need to rekey. This is one of the most important things to do after buying a new home. You don’t know if the previous owner turned over all their keys or if other keys they gave to family and house sitters are floating about.

You may have been hoping to avoid the extra cost of rekeying since moving is already so expensive, but it’s a small cost compared to the $2600 lost in the average home robbery. While you’re at it, you will want to change the codes on any smart locks, garages, or gates.

3. Windows

Now that the main entrances are secure, you will want to check the most commonly neglected entrances: the windows. The previous owner may have forgotten to secure all of them when they moved. Perhaps windows got opened during showings. Maybe one of your movers left a window unlocked with the intent of coming back and having an easy way in later. Whatever the case, taking a few minutes to check the windows now could spare you problems later.

4. Smoke Alarms and Carbon Monoxide Detectors

Test the smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors. The previous owner might not have maintained them. Replace any that might be missing and change out batteries as needed.

5. Home Security System

To maximize the safety of your home, you may want to consider getting a home security system. Not only can a home security system protect your belongings, but also it can protect you and your family.

6. Neighbors

Get to know your neighbors so you can better watch out for each other. Then, they can intervene if they see people moving things out of your house when you’re not there, but they know from recent conversations that you aren’t moving. Plus, crime prevention aside, it’s always nice having friends in the neighborhood.

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Three Unique Uses for Smart Lights

Do you want to get more out of your smart lights? You’re enjoying the energy-savings. Perhaps you already have automation set up to turn them on and off at certain times. Maybe you have schedules making it so that the lights are different tones and levels of brightness at different times of the day. There are countless things you can do to take full advantage of your smart light’s features. Here are three unique uses for smart lights you may not have thought of before.

1. Enhance Your Doorbell

A blue door with a Ring video doorbell

Sometimes, it’s nice to take a break from technology. With everything connected to your phone, it can be easy to feel like you need to have it with you all the time.

If you’re playing with your kids, you might want to cut ties with technology so they can have your full attention. You ordered dinner through Doordash, but you know from experience that you can’t hear the doorbell from the basement playroom. Without your phone, you won’t get a notification from your Ring Video Doorbell, either. Since you have smart lights, you can set up a way of getting notified without being interrupted by all the other notifications that come in before dinner arrives. Before playtime, create a rule for the lights in the playroom that will let them act as a secondary doorbell. You could have them blink blue three times or something similar when the doorbell rings. This will let you know dinner has arrived without cellphone interruptions.

Perhaps you want an easier way of notifying your teen that their friends have arrived for their weekly game night. You could text your teen or go down to their room to inform them in person, or you could save yourself needing to do either by setting the smart lights in their room to indicate when the doorbell rings. They might not want their lights acting as a doorbell every other day of the week. You can set the rule to only take effect on that day within the timeframe their friends usually arrive during.

You could also use this to have the lights on the patio flash to tell you when guests have arrived for the barbecue you’ve been outside cooking and other similar scenarios.

2. Budget Friendship Lamp

Over the last few years, much of society has come to understand the importance of connection in a new way after all the time we’ve been isolated and otherwise apart. Whether you have a friend who moved to the other side of the state, family in a different part of the country, or a long-distance relationship with someone on a different continent, you want to have ways of staying connected to the people you love. Perhaps you send texts, have phone and video calls, send emails, and see what they’ve been doing through social media. In addition to these more conventional means, friendship lamps have been gaining popularity.

The concept is to have two connected lamps. When one user touches their lamp, the second lamp will light up wherever it is in the world, so long as it has power and a Wi-Fi connection. This serves as a simple way of letting someone know you are thinking of them. This can be cute and sentimental, but it’s also expensive. The lamps are around $100 apiece, $200 for a set.

You could set up friendship lamps using smart lights as a more affordable alternative that can be just as meaningful. Start by getting lamps, either a matching set or by finding lamps for each other. Then, put color changing smart lights in them. Using the app’s sharing settings, share your bulbs with each other. From there, you can create different scenes to indicate specific messages. Pink could mean “thinking of you.” Blue could mean “I miss you.” Yellow could mean “I hope you have a great day.” When you want to activate your friend’s lamp, go into the app and tap the scene named after the message you want to share.

You could also set timers for the lights to turn themselves off after a certain amount of time. Then, you won’t accidentally leave your friend’s light on all day if they aren’t home to turn it off on their own after they’ve finished enjoying your message.

3. Red Alert

Alarms are designed to scare off intruders. You can take it up to the next level with your smart lights. In movies, when there’s an emergency, a spaceship or base will often go to red alert. The alarms and flashing red lights are a nice visual effect for cinematic purposes. In the real world, that’s bound to scare more than a few people. By programming your smart lights to flash red when the alarm goes off, you can create your own personal red alert and send intruders running.

What other unique uses for smart lights have you found? Let us know in the comments.

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You Need a Smart Garage Door Controller

As you’ve been looking into smart home features you could add to your home, you’ve probably read about many of the standard products like smart lights and smart thermostats. There are numerous lesser-known smart devices you may find useful as well. For example, did you know you can make your garage smart? With a smart garage door controller, you can access your garage door remotely and control it from anywhere.

How A Smart Garage Door Controller Can Help You

Say you’re running late in the morning. Your alarm didn’t go off, and the rest of the morning has been a fiasco. The kids were fighting all through breakfast. One of them let the dog slip past on their way out the door. Thanks to the rain last night, the dog got covered in mud by the time you got to come back inside. You had to clean him up so he wouldn’t track mud all over the house all day. By the time you got that done, you had to fly out of the house so you could get to work.

When you’re partway down the street, you realize you can’t remember if you closed the garage or not. You don’t have time to turn around and check, but you have a smart garage door controller. When it’s safe to do so without breaking any road rules, you check the app. If you find it’s closed, you can go about your day without any worries. Otherwise, you can close it remotely. Then, you will have peace of mind knowing that your garage won’t be open all day and vulnerable to burglars.

How It Can Help Your Family

You’re out when you know your teenager will be leaving for an after-school event soon. She’s old enough to drive herself. However, she frequently neglects to close the garage when she pulls out, no matter how many times you remind her. With your smart garage door controller, you can know when the garage door opens. If the status doesn’t change after a few minutes to show it’s closed again, you can assume your teenager left it open. But no worries. You can close it from the app and know that your home will be secure while both of you are away.

These scenarios might not apply to run specifically, but perhaps you’ve been in similar. If so, and you would like to learn more about how a smart garage door remote can help you, feel free to contact us at 844-904-9473 or request info online.

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Houseplants Even You Can’t Kill

Perhaps while updating your home or your home office to be more eco-friendly, you thought about bringing nature indoors and getting some house plants. That’s turned out to be a better idea in theory than in practice, though. You’ve discovered you’re the exact opposite of Isabela Madrigal. No matter what you try to grow, whether roses or cacti, it’s doomed to die. It’s as though Bruno predicted you’d never have a green thumb. But let’s not talk about your horticultural failures. Instead, let’s talk about things you can do to change your success rate and some houseplants even you can’t kill.

Disclaimer: No plant is invincible. They’re living things, and they have specific needs, but by being aware of those needs, you can avoid killing them. To further ensure your success, the plants we’ll discuss here are more forgiving than other plants. They can handle some neglect and improper treatment.

Why Do Houseplants Die?

A good way to understand how to keep plants alive is by looking at how they die. Plants can get bugs or diseases, which can be at no fault of your own and difficult to treat. Two of the most common human-caused culprits of plant death are well within your control, though: underwatering and overwatering.

Underwatering

Life is busy, and it can be easy to forget about watering your plants. Without water, they will die. To help yourself remember, you can set a reminder on your phone to check the soil.
Why not set a reminder to water it? Watering on a schedule is not as good for your plants as it is to water them when they need it, and it can lead to overwatering.
So how will you know when it’s time to water your plant based on the soil? That will depend on your plant. Some only need water after the soil is completely dry. Others need to always be a bit damp. Others yet are somewhere in between. When you get your plant, learn what it needs. If you have multiple varieties, don’t be afraid to take notes so you can keep track of which needs what.

Overwatering

Many plants can recover from not getting enough water. We’ll discuss a few of those later in this article. Far fewer can recover from being overwatered. In addition to making your plant unhealthy, it can cause root rot. To prevent overwatering, you will first want to make sure your plant is in a pot with good drainage. Without drainage, your plant can get waterlogged and develop root rot even if you are watering it properly. After that, it’s back to a matter of learning what your plant needs.

Sound complicated? It doesn’t have to be. Here are six low-maintenance houseplants even you can’t kill.

Pothos

Pothos, also known as Devil’s Ivy, is a versatile plant you can get creative with. You can plant it in a regular pot, have it creep up a poll, or make a wall covering by placing it on your landing and letting the vines grow down the wall by your staircase. It gets the name Devils Ivy because it grows well even in undesirable conditions and is hard to kill. This can be problematic in the wild, but as a houseplant, it’s to your advantage.

Pothos likes to have indirect sun, and you don’t need to water it until it’s partially dry. However, it can survive in darker spaces like a windowless office. It can also survive some neglect if you forget to water it occasionally. Unless there is severe root rot, you can save it if you find out you’ve overwatered it.
It’s the perfect plant for the black-thumbed gardener, but it might not be the best plant for a pet owner. It’s toxic, so if you have pets with a tendency to eat plants, you will want to consider a different plant.

Chinese Money Plant

If you’re looking for a pet-safe plant that’s easy to grow, Chinese Money Plants could be the plant for you. They can’t take as much of a beating as pothos or some of the other plants mentioned in this article, but we wanted to include at least some pet-friendly options. Chinese Money Plants are at least low maintenance, and if you treat them right, you won’t kill them.
Keep it in bright, indirect light, and water it when the soil is nearly dry (about once a week). Chinese money plants are said to bring good luck, so perhaps that luck will extend to your plant care success.

ZZ Plant

Native to Zanzibar and Eastern Africa, these plants are nearly indestructible. They can survive drought and only need water about once a month. They do best in bright to moderate light, but they can tolerate low light, making them another good office plant. ZZ plants are not pet-friendly.

Snake Plant

If you’ve ever seen a snake standing upright, it’s not difficult to see how snake plants got their name. They’re also known as Saint George’s sword and mother-in-law’s tongue due to the sharpness of the leaves. These plants like being watered after the soil dries out, but they can tolerate being forgotten about and can go around a month without water. Place your snake plant in full sun or partial shade and somewhere your pets can’t get to it.

Peace Lily

Peace lilies have white “flowers” that can bloom up to twice a year. The petal is actually a leaf called a “bract,” and the flowers are on the lumpy spike, called the “spadix.” If you tend to overwater your plants, peace lilies could be good for you. They can handle excess water to an extent. Just make sure the pot has good drainage. Otherwise, it could get waterlogged and develop root rot. Peace lilies prefer to be watered whenever the top of the soil is dry. If you’re someone who tends to forget to water houseplants, you won’t need to set a phone reminder because your plant will remind you itself. When the leaves start drooping, it’s time for a drink. These are not pet-friendly.

Bamboo

With bamboo, you never need to worry about over watering or under watering again because it grows in water. Fill the container you’re going to plant your bamboo in with stones. Then, fill the container with filtered or distilled water. Regular tap water may have chemicals that will harm the bamboo. From there, it’s more like taking care of a fish tank than a plant, minus feeding fish. Replace the water once a week and clean the container every few months to prevent algae. Bamboo requires little attention and can grow in most light conditions, and it’s pet safe.

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