HomeStars Helps Home Owners Hire Good Trades.

Have you ever hired a company to work on your home? Did you have a good experience or a bad one?

As you sit sipping your cup of coffee, you take in the room around you and think, 'this house needs a face lift ASAP.' But who do you trust with the most valuable thing you own, your home? First thing you think of is to call your friends and ask them who they hired to update their homes. You collect a few names. Of course you trust your friends, so you trust the companies they refer, but this is a huge decision that will cost you big bucks.

Where else can you find information to make sure the company is the 'right one' for you? The Internet, you grab your computer and do a google search, after all, the more information you have, the better. You type in the company name. Google brings up some links that match your keyword search and you notice a specific link, 'the company has 23 reviews with an average of 9.4.' You click on the link and find yourself at HomeStars.com.

Google sends you to a profile page where you can read reviews written by other customers of the company. Most are good, but there is that one bad one. You notice the company has responded to all the reviews, including the 'bad' review. Yes, the job went sideways, but as the company explains, they did everything possible to fix it, they offered compensation, and the job was completed to the customer's satisfaction in the end. That's what you want. A company that is willing to do work with you, even if something goes wrong. You call them up.

HomeStars.com is a website that helps home owners make better hiring decisions by gathering reviews on home service companies. On the website you will find both good and bad reviews about hundreds of different local home service companies. The website creates a full picture of a company's story by gathering good, bad, and mediocre reviews of their work. HomeStars.com ensures that the information is trustworthy by verifying any questionable review. How you ask? If a review is suspect, they contact the reviewer and ask for proof of payment for work rendered. Plus, they strictly monitor the site's content to keep companies from gaming the system by writing their own reviews. That is not allowed and they are very diligent.

No one wants to hire a home service company and end up with a horror story that costs you more than you budgeted for. HomeStars.com is growing at a rapid pace because of the 'bad' rep the home service industry has. Make sure you don't end up with your own horror story, check out what a company's actual customers have to say by going to HomeStars.com before you hire.

Don't end up with issues like this:

Kitchen Organization Bulletin Board

I am in the process of making a kitchen bulletin board to keep all the notices, papers, and items easily at hand. I started looking online at the various ideas out there to help create an organized space for all the papers that pile up constantly.

Kitchen Fridge organizational system for papers

Real Simple Magazine's How to create a bulletin board article

Organizing your bulletin board can allow you to get the most use out of the space and keep visual distractions to a minimum. These tips can help you get moving in a more organized direction.

The idea room blog has pictures of the king of all organizational boards. A bit more then what I want for myself but if you want a serious organizational bulletin board that will help keep your family organized this might be the idea for you.



I love how this bulletin board from the Family Crafts blog keeps each child visually organized.

Do you have a bulletin board idea on your blog or website? Then leave a link in the comments so we can check it out.

How do Stay at Home Mom's do IT?

I'm gonna go nuts. Stay at Home mom's that are good at caring for their families needs are something to be cherished. No wonder my husband is always pissed off at me, I suck at house keeping, laundry, and cooking. I am going cabin crazy and could use an afternoon with friends.

I have a girlfriend who gave up her own aspirations, goals, and needs to care for her family. She became a different person and did a very good job as a stay at home mom for the first few years, then became quite depressed. A few years ago she decided to do something for herself and start a new career, which her husband didn't agree with. Today they are divorced and she is still trying to get her career off the ground and he continues to make it difficult for her.

I just can't seem to bring myself to do the best job of cleaning, laundry, and cooking. It's not that I don't care about my family or don't love them. I know I need to do a better job but I am so much happier when I am working outside the home. I have no problem putting in the extra effort at the office, I just can't get it together when I'm home with nothing to do but clean and cook.

Women that can work hard taking care of their family deserve so much more recognition and appreciation then they get because it isn't easy to put others first; no matter how much you love them.

It's Driving Me NUTS - The One thing I'd Change with My House Layout

When we built our cookie cutter home in 2000 I requested the bathroom and laundry rooms to be moved to make the kitchen bigger. What I didn't think of and so wish I had was the location of the stairs. Our stairs are right at the front door and there are always shoes and bags at the bottom. It drives me nuts! The next house we buy will NOT have the stairs located at the front door, what a dumb place to put them.

What do you hate about your home's layout? What could the designer have done better?

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Cleaning and Staging the Home for Sale Today

Today is a big job day, I have to get the house ready for sale, that means decluttering, cleaning and staging. I've been so focused on my website and work from home directory that I've let the kids have a lot more free rein then normal, so I have a huge job ahead of me.

Earlier this year I emptied both my kids rooms and piled everything into the Family room, I put nothing back into their rooms. Somehow though my daughters room is so full of stuff that I can't see the floor. It's not all toys, she gets into everything and I mean everything, can't find the nail clippers? Check her room. Can't find the Sour Cream, check her room. No matter how much I tell her food is not a toy she insists on playing with it.

My son's room looks like a Pokemon battle areana, cards and figurines everywhere. For Christmas we bought him a Pokemon card organizing system, I thought it would keep him busy organizing his Pokedex and Cards. Ya no, he still hasn't got around to getting it all organized.

Today's goal is to get the upstairs tidied, cleaned, and staged. Upstairs we have 3 bedrooms, 1 Family room and 2 bathrooms so I better wrap this up quick. Staging a home for sale is very important for a quick sale. I have to get rid of all the clutter, remove oversized furniture from small bedrooms, put away everything and find some nice decrative touches. The only part I'm looking forward to is shopping for the decrative touches.

Need to stage your home, want some help?

Some Websites you may find useful when organizing your home and the kids toys:

Easy 2 Organize - everything you need to know about organizing your home and life.

The Survival Guide - a great article that gets the whole family involved in the task.

Best House Cleaning Tips - One room at a time is this mother's advice

Parentree - Ideas on Organizing a Playroom

Create your own Coffee Station in your Home

Mothers have limited time and as such need to be organized. Not always an easy thing. One area in my home that I need and love to have organized is a coffee station in my kitchen.

Between the stove and the sink lies my oasis, my coffee station. The counter houses the tools and the cupboard above my special mugs, the counter below the coffee supplies and between the utensil drawer for the spoons.

By ensuring that everything is in one place, easily accessable making coffee is easy and quick. Organize your kitchen with various stations for baking, spices, cooking, cleaning. Each area has everything you need just an arms length away. Spices in a drawer or rack near the stove. Plates, cups and utensils close to the dishwasher.

When organizing your kitchen think in triangles. The outside large triangle being the stove, sink and fridge. Smaller triangles for stations that encompass the main point, the stove, sink or fridge. There is no point having spices near the fridge or coffee pot next to the stove instead of the sink.

Do you have any home organization ideas to help mothers make their lives easier? Share them.

The Coffee Store
The Best Coffee in the World.

Children Remember to say "I Love You"

Do you encourage your children to tell each other "I Love You"? They need to know that their siblings love and value them not only to raise their self esteem but to avoid self pity assumptions that are not true.

Do you encourage your children to tell each other how great they are? Self esteem is one of those things that needs to be nurtured and what better way then by their siblings? Siblings who know that their sibling thinks they are a great sister or brother will strive to continue to keep that title. This also will ensure that wrong and damaging assumptions are not made.

Siblings will fight and they will get on each others nerves. They will say mean things to each other and hurt each others feelings. The result of which can be blown out of proportion if they are unsure if their sibling loves them. If they already believe that their sibling can't stand them more negative words will only prove their mistaken assumptions.

This is the month of love. Why not encourage more love in your home by establishing an "I Love You" habit. No one goes to bed without saying "I Love You" to everyone.

Teaching Siblings to have an Attitude of Responsibility

When I became pregnant with my daughter my son was 3 years old. We had 8 months to talk about what it meant to be a big brother and how life would be different. When my daughter came my son was instantly 'in love' with her and we created an attitude of responsibility in him. He is responsible for taking care of her. When she was a baby she couldn't be responsible for him, but as she grew we started creating an attitude of responsibility in her as well. She is responsible for taking care of him too. He watches out for her and she watches out for him.

I am almost daily asking them to watch out for each other and to help each other. Every day I ask them to tell each other they love each other and communicate their feelings as much as they can. They do it now out of habit and automatically, each one caring for the other and worrying about the others well being. If one hurts or upsets the other, immediately it is their responsibility to make them feel better. I don't send them off to their room or have them give a half assed apology. They are responsible for making the other happy again.

By now your probably thinking I'm locco and their is no way your kids will do this. I would have both of them stand in front of me and ask questions about what happened and then ask questions putting them in each others shoes, sorta speak. "How would you feel if he.... " In the end they would have to hug and say I love you. I would remind the one that made the infraction that it was their responsibility to make the other happy again, not mine. I didn't make the child cry, I wasn't the one to fix it, they needed to fix it.

I would give them choices as well, try to ask enough leading questions as possible to get to the end result. The main thing for me was to stay out of it. I didn't punish or fix, they had to do it themselves. If I stepped in as enforcer, I would be creating a wedge between them and not teaching them how to fix the relationship themselves. It takes extra effort and self control on your part, but in the end you will have a lot less headaches and a lot less work to do.