Welcome to Friday Favorites June 2019
Hey there, happy Friday to you. We made it! THANK GOODNESS I say. This summers cough/cold that I have has kicked my butt and I’m ready to get on with life. It’s also my birthday month and I feel like this sickness has cut into my obnoxiousness of the whole thing, ha! I love birthdays! Yep I’m aware that makes me weird but I love celebrating another year on this earth. This year my friends and I created a Birthday Club for the first time. For each birthday we contribute $15 for that person and they end up with a nice amount of money to spend on whatever their little heart desires. I love hearing how each person spends their birthday money. So fun!
Friday Favorites June 2019
Currently Reading:
I currently have Joshua Becker’s book, The Minimalist Home (affiliate link) on my nightstand. I’ve been reading Joshua’s blog for years. It’s so good and I highly recommend it. This post titled, Decluttering is Great. Minimalism is Even Better, is worth the read and might challenge your thinking.
I am really enjoying this newest book of Joshua’s so far. He’s not telling you to get rid of everything you own. Instead his message is this:
Minimalism isn’t about removing things you love. It’s about removing the things that distract you from the things that you love.
Currently Organizing:
Gosh I don’t have any organizing projects on the go right now. My sickness is cramping my organizing style which is no fun at all. I do have one project I’d like to work on and that entails emptying out my memory tote from highschool (that was a long time ago y’all!). I have a hope chest in my bedroom which also holds memories so I’d really like everything to be all in one spot. Problem is both are full so it will require me to be a little ruthless that is for sure.
Most people wouldn’t believe that I still have many of the notes passed between me and my besties in high school. I love going back and reading them especially since those ladies are still the best of friends to this day! They are all three hole punched and stored in one small binder so it makes flipping through them easy to do.
What are you currently working on?
Favorite Organizing Storage Bin:
One of my favorite storage bins lives in my closet. I purchased two of these bins a number of years ago off Amazon and absolutely love them. One holds my bathing suits and beach cover-ups and the other my scarves. I love that the window makes it easy to see what’s inside and the handles on the sides make them easy to get down off the shelf. I couldn’t find the exact ones on Amazon anymore but these storage bins (affiliate link) are very similar, only a bit bigger.
Favorite Organizing Links:
I love sharing some of the great blog posts I’ve read recently that I think you might like too. Let me know which one is your favorite.
Remember way back when I posted about my wedding dress? I still have mine but Kalyn recently wrote a post how how to declutter your wedding dress with no regrets. She includes a great list of places that will take them.
Are you in the middle of a renovation? These tips over at Polished Habit about how to keep the house clean during a remodeling project are sure to help.
I love to laugh and this post highlights why it’s so important: Laughter is Healthy? 3 Really Good Reasons to Laugh Everyday
These next two posts you might find helpful with your kiddos this summer:
The Important of Chores for Children (with free printable) ~ @ Sunshine & Hurricanes
The cutest free printable: Summer Screen Time Rules ~ @ Hello Joy
Also speaking of kids and summer, don’t forget to download my own free printable reading punch cards if you haven’t already.
Have a great weekend everyone and remember to make some time for organizing!
PS: Want to see more of the organizing products I use and love in my own home, click on the image below to visit my Amazon shop (affiliate link).
You will find affiliate links included in this post. I do make a small commission (at no extra cost to you) should you purchase product using these links. As always, any and all opinions are genuinely my own – or the author, in the case of posts by my guest contributors. Thank you!
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House too Hot or Cold? Adjust Your HVAC Dampers for Year-Round Comfort
fizkes/Shutterstock
If you find yourself complaining that parts of your home are too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, there’s a good chance you’re not using your furnace dampers correctly. Here’s how to balance your HVAC system for year round comfort.
What’s a Damper?
Most people are familiar with the registers and vents you see in the actual rooms (and with the concept of closing a vent in a particular room to slow or stop the flow of air through the heating and cooling system into that room). But closing the vents in rooms is nowhere near the most efficient way to control the flow of air through the system.
That’s where balancing dampers come into play. A balancing damper is just a simple mechanism inside the ductwork that closes off a given duct—they are called balancing dampers because you use them to balance the flow of air throughout the system. Below you can see an example of a manual balancing damper.
Grainger Industrial Supply
Unlike a register (which is located at the end of the duct run where the ducting meets the floor, wall, or ceiling of a room), however, the damper is located very close to the central unit. The benefit of this arrangement is that it closes down the duct closer to the source of the hot or cold air and helps more efficiently redirect the forced air somewhere else in your home.
So what does that mean in practical terms for you? It means more cold air from the AC in the summer, and more hot air from the furnace in the winter directed precisely where you want it.
Practically speaking, adjusting your dampers is as simple as turning the lever to open or close the damper. There’s a wee bit more to it than just that, however, especially if you’ve never done it before—so let’s dig into some practical tips and tricks. We’ll assume you’ve never fiddled with your dampers and will walk you through the entire process start to finish.
Locating Your Dampers
First thing’s first. You can’t adjust anything until you find your dampers. This should be pretty straight forward for most folks, but there will be some situations for some readers in which adjusting the dampers isn’t an option.
In some homes (especially newer construction) there aren’t balancing dampers attached to the ductwork—a rather poor cost-cutting measure in our opinion. In other homes, the dampers, if they exist, have been covered up by drywall during remodeling projects or when a basement was finished into a rec room or some such thing. (Conscientious contractors will often use “false” vents to provide access to the damper handles, so shine a flashlight in all the ceiling vents in your finished basement to check if what you thought was a functional vent is actually an access panel).
On the opposite (and more positive) side of things, if you have a premium system in place, you might have electronic dampers that are automatically controlled by your heating and cooling system and provide zone-controlled air flow. But let’s be real here—if you have this system, you’re probably not reading this article because your automatic system is already taking care of things. If you’re not sure whether you have such a system, you can figure it out pretty easily; instead of physical handles, your dampers will have little motors with wires attached.
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