Yes, correct @oldmom4896. My FIL used to bail out my BIL from his constant financial messes so that he (BIL) wouldn’t have to consider filing bankruptcy and risk his TS clearance. My poor FIL. What a racket my BIL had going.
Legal question please: an employer has deemed a person’s team to be essential and the team must return to the office. They have to sign a document agreeing to let the company know if they have a covid test done regardless of the result. Is this legal? Isn’t that protected health info. I can understand telling if a positive result, but a negative?
I think the answers to your questions can vary from state to state, starting with “who is an essential employee”. You first need to determine if the person can legally be declared an essential employee.
Sorry, but I think you need a lawyer familiar and experienced with your state’s laws, not an internet forum. Free advice is worth what you pay in this situation
@VeryHappy My daughter’s boyfriend worked for a company that specialized in providing marketing for law firms involved in large class action lawsuits. It was my understanding that the marketing group paid for the advertising. It had relationships with media outlets (networks, cable, radio stations, etc.) and was able to get special rates. Also, the group worked out various arrangments with the media, e.g., payment for advertising was based on the number of clients that signed up after seeing the ads. So the more clients an ad brought, the more it cost.(Not sure how they tracked this.) D’s boyfriend helped create the ads. He was paid well, but hated the job and eventually left after paying off his student loans.
Not sure if this is worthy of its own thread or not. We’re in escrow on a second home across the state. Our first was purchased 29 years ago when I was working, had a newborn and two more came down the road. My record keeping was haphazard and I’d like to be more organized with this new house. We’re already encountering inspectors and maintenance people who I’d like to keep track of for the future. The inspection revealed things we’ll need to take care of. Has anyone seen or come up with an efficient system to track things related to house maintenance? We’ll be doing a big remodel as well. Something in the cloud would be ideal since I might need information while not at that house.
I have a jumbo file folder. 
Actually, I have about a dozen file folders. Most of them are for the manuals that come with appliances, etc. I keep everything – even the instructions to sync the new garage door openers with the garage door.
But I also have a file that’s just stuff about the house – eg, receipts for major repairs, a typed list of paint colors in every room, a list of all the improvements we’ve made year by year since we’ve been in the house, receipts for having the AC and the heating system serviced annually, and just about everything else.
When we moved into this house eight years ago, we had Blinds to Go install blinds on all the bedroom windows. Just a few months ago, one of the cords broke in one of the blinds. I looked in my big fat file where I had kept the receipts and all the literature. It turns out I have a lifetime guarantee on the blinds, but only if I kept the original receipt. I had.
Interesting. I have a 2 drawer file cabinet in my home office. In alphabetical order, I keep appliance manuals. Then I have files in the rear of major purchases. Not quite as good as Very Happy, but includes everything.
So, 2 days ago, my childhood friend got agitated that I didn’t keep files in the garage! He felt I was wasting space in office with this drawer. It was irritating, as I can get my hands on any appliance manual, and in a plastic case, every home repair for 19 years. To me, it’s organized, even tho my friend has his own and “better” way.
I like my way. Perhaps I should clump home repairs into 5 year periods.
Somehow I consider manuals differently. I have several file folders for our manuals. One for kitchen/major appliances, one for TVs/entertainment and one catch-all for the rest. I keep receipts with them and often use a sharpie to highlight the date.
I’m thinking more about how best to track which companies I use for work or ones I try that I don’t care for so I don’t use them again, along with the details about what was done and what’s recommended in the future. And other household-related things that I’m not thinking about at the moment…paint colors is a good example.
For our current house, in addition to the files for manuals, I have files for “maintenance” but, tbh it’s just a mish mash without organization. I guess I could create one for plumbing, one for electrical, etc. but that seems like overkill.
Manuals live in a pantry drawer. I just know they’re all there, if needed- which is almost never. And you can find the pdf online. When we’ve needed some repair or part, it was always good enough to find the serial number on the unit (which includes year.)
Nearly all relatively current general house maintenance/upgrade receipts go in one big file folder in a big file cabinet in the study. Older files hold about 5-year periods. That’s really just a deep archive, here. Again, I know where they are, that’s been good enough for us. But larger projects (eg, the boiler replacement, lots of different contractors involved,) get their own file, everyone on the project put together.
My concern is less the month to month organization and more about any improvements deductions we can get if we ever sell. Someday, when the to-do list is smaller, maybe I’ll go back through it all.
I just keep two lists, “Who to Use” and “Who NOT to Use”, in a document file on my computers. They get updated fairly often. I sometimes make notes about why a person or company is on the “not” list, in case desperation drives me to consider them. That way I’ll be reminded if the issue was a serious problem or just an annoyance.
I’ve signed up for NextDoor in both neighborhoods and run a search for recommendations if I can’t get a referral from someone I know. My current HVAC guy has provided names of two good electricians, but his plumber referral was disappointing. It was unfortunate that he was swamped at that time and couldn’t do the repair himself as he’s a master plumber and is gas certified, too. He’s since done several small jobs for us.
I also keep a couple of paint files, both a document file on the paint colors, brands, sheen and locations we now have and a bookmark file of paint colors I’m considering for next year. I recently ordered a color fan deck from Benjamin Moore and have been surprised by the significant difference in how most colors appear on any of our monitors vs. the fan deck.
I married a guy who can fix practically everything. Things he can’t fix or we don’t want to do ourselves I just have to put my request in and he contacts someone he knows from work who will do a terrific job. The rental house I(we) decided to sell he got rehabbed extremely quickly and they did an awesome job even with “whatever” was supposedly in short supply. My job is to pay the bills and keep our budget. I just sent a check out today to the guy who did our rental house.
It’s a system that’s worked really well for the past 32 years.
He also keeps all manuals and receipts.
I like that “who to use” and who not to use" idea – thank you, @Silpat!
I have a bag o’ manuals in the laundry room, but to be honest, most are findable online.
I do this also. I have a bin for all of this. Once… In 30 years I really needed it… Lol… But it helped save hours of research for a part…
BTW - parts - repair clinic online… Lol
I have the better part of a filing cabinet drawer filled with appliance manuals, etc. I go through it every couple of years and full it, but I could probably get rid of more.
OTOH, when we had a tree branch go through the roof, it was good that I had the booklet with the shingles we used when redoing the roof 12 years ago. We were able to get the matching shingles, and the contractor said we had picked a better grade than what the insurance would have covered. Having the documentation got us exact replacements.
Random thought— what ever happened to the $ we were supposed to get from the Equifax breach settlement?
@jym626 That’s funny …never thought about it…Like to use it for lunch…LOL
@college1 We too just bought a new house (after 35 years) in a different state. I read your question to be more on the lines of what we are thinking:: How to keep track of all the little things to fix that you notice on inspection, but just ignore after living there a year. And then how to keep track of people to do them. For example, in the new house the entry door from the garage was badly damaged (looks like someone tried to get in with a hammer). If we don’t fix it the first week or have it done before we move, I will bet that it will still be banged up 5 years from now. ugh.
For manuals etc, we either scan the users manual or find the current one on the web and download it into PDFs on the computer. We have a Reference volume which is backed up only on changes where things like that live. DH is very good about organizing so that I can find things. He would never understand my naming processes (and I would forget, too). We were happy to get rid of the file cabinets and although I missed them for the first while, now I am really happy. We will need to do a purge when we leave this house though.
We’ve always kept receipts and maintenance manuals. My husband is something of a paper pack rat. We had a house improvement/repair file which was very helpful when we sold our house.
The previous owner of our current house had a huge binder with all work and repair orders for decades, plus manuals for all appliances and systems. He also gave us the names of his gardener, tree guy, and pool guy. This was immensely helpful. We were able to start with companies familiar with the property. Even when we switched companies, we could tell them the details of work previously done.
@collage1 is interested in a way to store and access maintenance info in the cloud, for when the paper files are elsewhere. I don’t know what kind of software might be available for this - it mainly seems to be for businesses, not homeowners. But one idea would be to create photo files to be stored in the cloud. You could at a minimum photograph each work receipt, and the covers of manuals showing model numbers and purchase date and price. Take pictures of those metal plaques with all the model and serial numbers. Then organize and name the photo files in whatever way works best for you. As others have noted, you can look up tons of users manuals online so no need to photograph entire manuals.
You can even photograph the specific work being done, by you or others. Then include those photos with the pictures of the associated paperwork.
I like to use my Amazon Photo cloud storage that comes free with Prime, but certainly there are lots of cloud storage potentials with tons of memory at low prices.
Congrats, @esobay, on the new home and, yes, we’ve already interacted with about 6 professionals and we now have the inspection report which lists some 20+ things that should get done. The inspection report is only on a usb right now but I think I’ll create a folder within my email (or maybe my documents) and start keeping track of things that way. @Marilyn, I think I can incorporate your suggestion that way too.
And thanks to a suggestion above, I created a google spreadsheet and listed each person I’ve met with, contact info and some notes. It’s a start.