Those Pesky Users Manuals

Monday, January 12th, 2009

Last night, the washer wasn’t working quite right so I knew I needed to take a peek at the user’s manual to see what was going on.  Problem was, I normally store all of my user’s manuals for inside appliances in one place…but I had taken the washer manual out and neglected to put it back.  Instead of wasting a bunch of time tearing apart the house looking for it, I remembered a website that I had used in the past and boom!  there was my manual, in my hands, in 5 minutes.

This particular website is quite handy: www.managemyhome.com. You create a user account and then search for your user manuals for all of the different appliances and gadgets in your home.  Then, in a stroke of brilliance, you can save them to your account.  This way, the next time you have a  problem with something–just log on, click on “Home Profile” under the “Home Management” section, and your user’s manual is at your fingertips in PDF form.  For free!  This is a great time and money saver!

Getting all of these manuals in one “virtual” place could also be a good rainy day activity for the 6+ age group.  Give your kid(s) a blank piece of paper and have them run around and play “detective” to find all of the brands and model numbers…and give a prize to the child who collects the most or the most correct information.  It will keep them occupied for a little while and you’ll get all of this handy information all in one place!

The only complaint I have about www.managemyhome.com is that once I saved my users’ manuals, it was tricky to try to find them again–which is why I told you how to do so in an earlier paragraph.   Still, it is a great, free way to save time and money!

Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.

Tags: appliances, kidtivities, user manuals
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Saving Big on Appliance Repairs

Monday, June 9th, 2008

Hello!  For those of you on the East Coast, I hope you are surviving the heat.  It’s rather hot here, even by CT standards!

The featured Top 10 website this week is Repair Clinic, found at: http://www.repairclinic.com/.Repairclinic.com is a way to save a lot of money by avoiding the repairman! It’s a free website that helps you diagnose common (and not-so-common) appliance problems and can sell you the factory-authorized part to fix it.    It has an easy to use Parts Detective to help you identify the broken part in your fridge, washer, dishwasher or a number of other appliances. And if the Parts Detective doesn’t work, they have Repair Gurus on staff for you to contact—for free! With over 500,000+ parts in stock and an easy to use DIY website, it is a time and money saving. Most recently, we used www.repairclinic.com for a dishwasher whose handle decided to break.  We went through the Parts Detective, located the part, and within 2 days, it was fixed with a screwdriver and cost $45.  You can’t get a repairman in the door that fast!They also sell things like dishwasher repair kits and such if your racks are looking a bit rusty.  They are friendly, helpful and reliable–definitely worthy of the Top 10!

Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.

Tags: appliances, top 10
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