Homes are Safer with a cleaner kitchen 10 new tips

RISMEDIA, April 14, 2011—(MCT)—The first day of spring has come and gone. To get the cleaning season started right, we looked for the best advice on cleaning the busiest—and maybe dirtiest—room in the house: the kitchen.

For a list of what we should clean, how and when, we asked a bunch of germ experts.

The biggest surprise? People with pets are six times more likely to get salmonella-based infections. The culprit is pet bowls, particularly the water bowl. We often dump it in the sink before we start handling food.

Want to sanitize?
Professional kitchens use a sanitizing solution made with one teaspoon household bleach in four cups of water. It’s sprayed on counters and cutting boards. Experts disagree on the need to use it at home, but if you do, do it correctly: Let sprayed surfaces air-dry—drying with dish towels may recontaminate the surface. Always clean before you sanitize. If chlorine comes in contact with dirt or soil, it can no longer sanitize. Don’t use more than one teaspoon chlorine—stronger isn’t better. And change it about every five days. Chlorine dissipates quickly.

1. Microwave
Fill a bowl with two cups water and a whole lemon, cut into slices. Place it inside and microwave for two minutes, then wipe it out with paper towels. The hot water softens food spills and the lemon cuts grease and keeps the microwave smelling fresh

2. Stove and oven
Spray stove spills with an all-purpose cleaner and let stand 10 minutes for easier cleaning. Oven spills aren’t a food hazard if you regularly heat the oven to 400. Cover a fresh spill with salt until you have time to clean it.

3. Counters
Clean regularly with an all-purpose cleaner. Spray with a weak bleach solution and air-dry if needed.

4. Dishes and dishwashers
If you hand-wash dishes, be sure to air-dry them in a rack as dirty or wet dish towels can recontaminate clean dishes. To reduce soap buildup in a dishwasher, occasionally fill the soap dispenser with baking soda or place a small cup of vinegar on the top shelf, then run the dishwater empty.

5. Sink, drain and faucet handle
Clean regularly with household cleanser, especially after washing or rinsing raw meat. Don’t forget to clean the faucet handle.

6. Refrigerator
Every day, wipe down the handles, including the underside. Every week, throw out anything that’s past its date or shows age. Every three to six months, empty shelves and clean the inside with 1/4 cup baking soda in one quart warm water, then spray with a bleach solution and air-dry. Remove drawers and clean under them. Before you return the food, wipe jars to remove drips. Clean the rubber gasket inside the door to ensure a tight seal. Vacuum the coils in the back and empty and clean the drip pan if necessary.

7. Pet bowls
Find a place besides the kitchen to clean turtle or frog habitats and empty pet bowls, or clean and sanitize the sink before you start washing fresh food.

8. Cutting boards
Most scientists believe wooden cutting boards are safest, as long as they are kept clean, sanitized and dry. Studies have shown wood hampers bacteria growth, while bacteria thrive in scars on plastic. Either way, keep them clean by running them through the dishwasher, or sanitize by spritzing with a weak bleach solution. Always change boards or clean with soapy water after preparing raw food—even vegetables. They grow in dirt, after all.

9. Sponges and dish towels
Change dish towels daily, or more often if they’re wet or dirty. You can microwave a wet sponge for two minutes, but the time varies depending on the power of the microwave (and if the sponge is dry, it could catch fire). Instead, put sponges on the top rack of the dishwasher at the end of every day.

10. Cross-contamination
You know you’re not supposed to put cooked food on the same surface you used for raw food. But it’s not just a problem with cutting boards. You touch all kinds of things while you’re handling raw food: Salt and pepper shakers, cabinet handles, etc. Pay attention to what you touch so you can wipe things down. Tip: It’s not necessary to rinse raw meat and chicken—it just spreads bacteria.

Thanks to our sources: Benjamin Chapman, the extension food-safety specialist for N.C. State; David Sweat, foodborne-disease epidemiologist with the North Carolina Division of Public Health; Douglas Powell, professor of food safety at Kansas State University; and Dean Cliver and Linda Harris with the University of California-Davis.

(c) 2011, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

HUD Approves 13.1 Million Emergency Home Loan

HUD Approves 13.1 Million Emergency Home Loan

Idaho Housing & Finance Association is ready to take applications immeditely

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan today approved the State of Idaho's bid to administer HUD's Emergency Homeowner Loan Program (EHLP), a bridge loan program designed to help unemployed families pay their mortgages. HUD determined Idaho's Housing and Finance Association's mortgage bridge loan program is "substantially similar" to HUD's program, thereby allowing the State to begin implementing the program itself.

HUD's Emergency Home Loan Program will work through a variety of state and non-profit entities and will offer a declining balance, deferred payment "bridge loan" (zero percent interest, non-recourse, subordinate loan) for up to $50,000 to assist eligible borrowers with payments on their mortgage principal, interest, mortgage insurance, taxes and hazard insurance for up to 24 months.

Under the program, eligible borrowers must:

1.Be at least three months delinquent in their payments and have a reasonable likelihood of being able to resume repayment of their mortgage payments and related housing expenses within two years;
2.Have a mortgage property that is the principal residence of the borrower; and
3.Demonstrate a good payment record prior to the event that produced the reduction of income.

The Contractor Agreement: 7 Steps to an Iron-Clad Contract

By: Barbara Eisner Bayer
Published: February 24, 2011
Follow these seven tips to make sure your contractor agreement works in your favor—not your builder’s.
Step 1: Hire a lawyer
Contractors use their own forms, which are drafted for their benefit, not yours. You’ll benefit from hiring an attorney to review your contractor agreement or draft one that’s you-friendly. Even though this may cost around $250 to $500, it can save thousands of dollars later if there’s a dispute.
Step 2: Take the home court advantage
Add a “choice of law” or “forum selection” provision, which says that disputes will be litigated on your turf. This provides protection against out-of-town contractors or suppliers—you don’t want to have to drag yourself across multiple state lines for a lawsuit.
Step 3: Create an incentive to finish
Define when the contactor will deliver on his promises, and when he’ll get his money. Within the contractor agreement, create a payment schedule in your favor by holding money back until the work is fully completed and you’ve verified the final payments to subcontractors. Maintain control by holding the purse strings.
Step 4: Reeling in a runaway contractor
The most common problem you’ll encounter is a general contractor who gets paid, but doesn’t pay his subcontractors and suppliers—possibly leaving you on the hook, according to Craig Robelen, a home builder in Boca Raton, Fla.Robelen advises protecting yourself upfront by requesting the names of all professionals your builder will work with. Verify that your contractor has paid his subcontractors by requesting conditional partial lien releases during the construction term, and a final lien release at completion. (Have the general contractor collect them and present them to you.) These are essentially formal acknowledgments from subcontractors that they are being paid for work done.Also, see if your contractor has a “payment bond” that guarantees subcontractors will be paid.
Step 5: Corral unauthorized costs
Your contract should state that any changes that will affect the price of construction should be in writing and countersigned by both you and your contractor. This protects you from unauthorized charges.
Step 6: Avoid kickbacks
Protect yourself from kickbacks—where contractors gets bonuses from their subs for referring business—by requesting that builders sign affidavits that they’re not getting any “fees” from subcontractors as a prerequisite for doing business with them. Keep costs well-defined by asking for a “bid summary,” which should show a minimum of three quotes in every cost category of your budget.
Step 7: Binding words
If you’d like to avoid going to court in case of a dispute, add a clause in the contractor agreement for binding arbitration. If there’s a problem, you and your contractor will plead your case in front of a non-biased arbitrator, whose decision will be final.If your contractor balks on any contract point you feel strongly about, do some more research. Maybe what you’re asking isn’t typical for that kind of job. Talk with neighbors who have had similar work done and sound out other contractors regarding their policies on the disputed issue before you sign anything. This helps you determine what’s customary for your particular area. Barbara Eisner Bayer has written about personal finance for the past 17 years. She recently completed a home renovation on time, on budget, with the aid of a cold compress on her forehead.

Living (Briefly) without Electricity

Maria Rodale Mar 6, 2011 6:01 am

It’s not a real winter in these parts without one good ice storm—the kind that covers all the trees with a clear-crystal-candy coating, stops all the traffic, and invariably, knocks out the power for a while. Which is an important reminder of just how close to primitive chaos we would be without a steady supply of that electric juice. In fact, I wrote this blog post on a paper tablet (gasp!) using a pen (shocking!).

When the electricity goes out there are essential things that become impossible to do. I can’t use my coffeemaker; I can’t use my oven (the stovetop is gas, and the fridge and freezer are on a backup generator, thankfully). I can’t compulsively check my email or play music on iTunes. Obviously, I can’t turn on any lights or check accuweather.com or huffingtonpost.com to see if the world has ended or not. Even my phone will only work for a while (and doesn’t work very well where I live anyway) without being recharged.

Here is what I worry about: Will the electricity come back on in time for my next coffee fix? (If not, I do have a backup system that requires more work.) Will we be able to watch American Idol? (I don’t worry about having enough food, since I tend to stock up a lot and could last at least a few weeks if we had to.)

And here is what I am thankful for: Candles. Real books. Needlepoint and other crafts. A gas stovetop. A fireplace. Real paper. Real pens and pencils. Maybe a deck of cards or a puzzle, if we are feeling ambitious.

But here is what I noticed most after an hour or two of only natural light and no distractions. The universe shrinks measurably. Who I can communicate with is reduced from infinite to a few. I become oblivious to cyclones on the other side of the planet and revolts thousands of miles away. It’s both a relief and a frightening prospect—that we are vulnerable, so dependent on such a fragile system. A thing we take for granted every day.

Fight loneliness by figuring out what you enjoy doing most, and then seeking to meet others with similar interests to create meaningful relationships.

Sometimes, I think about what the world might be like a thousand years from now. If there is some catastrophe that eliminates the power supply or the knowledge that enables digital reality, think of all the things that will be lost—all our online photos, our Word documents, our ebooks, and our email. It will be worse than the alleged burning of the library in Alexandria. This is why, every once in a while, it’s good to print things out. Write real letters. Make real photo albums, not just virtual ones. Keep a diary on paper. You never know what will be unearthed from protected pockets beneath the rubble of our current existence.

And in the meantime, the electricity comes back on and there will be an American Idol viewing this evening, thank goodness!

Read more: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/living-briefly-without-electricity.html#ixzz1G2F3Lb5O

Is your home-renovation project really worth doing?

ARA) - Maybe you've watched one too many home improvement shows. Perhaps you're still stinging from that holiday guest's comment about how your kitchen countertop has seen better days. Or maybe you're just really tired of the same old, same old every day.

Whatever the reason the remodeling itch has settled into your brain, before you bring in a contractor - or pick up a hammer - you should consider two important questions: How will you fund your project? And will it be worth it in the end?

A little research and credit self-assessment can answer both questions. In addition to pulling your credit report to see how likely you are to qualify for good loan terms, you should consider the potential resale value of the improvement, how it will improve your life and if it will enhance your enjoyment of your home.

Fortunately, it's not difficult to evaluate the potential resale value. Kitchen and bathroom remodels, adding a deck, or finishing a basement or attic are all popular renovations because they upgrade the most-used rooms in the house or add living space.

In terms of resale value, here are some popular projects with high paybacks, according to Remodeling Magazine's 2009-2010 Cost versus Value Report:

• Adding an attic bedroom - 83.1 percent
• Adding a wooden deck - 80.6 percent
• Minor kitchen remodel - 78.3 percent
• Major kitchen remodel - 72.1 percent
• Basement remodel - 75.4 percent
• Bathroom remodel - 71 percent

Keep in mind that smaller remodels, while costing less than major jobs, can still have a major impact on how your home looks and feels. For example, simply replacing that old front door with a steel version can cost around $1,000 but offers a return on investment of nearly 129 percent, according to the report.

Another factor to consider when weighing the value of any remodeling project is how it will affect your quality of life in terms of financial security. It's important to be sure the cost of the project won't be a financial burden that detracts from your enjoyment of the results.

To help understand your current credit status and how it might affect your remodeling loan terms, obtain a copy of your credit report. Websites like CreditReport.com can provide you with a credit report with your paid monitoring membership. Obtaining your credit report and monitoring your credit can help you identify any inaccuracies or errors that might lead to higher interest rates, and also catch and resolve potential fraud quickly. You'll also find tips on the website for understanding your credit, and tools such as a credit score tracker to help you anticipate how certain financial decisions - like financing a remodel - might affect your credit.

Remodeling projects will likely remain popular as homeowners continue to stay put in a still-sluggish real estate market, experts agree. With some careful planning, budgeting, research and credit insight, you can ensure you reap the most financial and personal value for whatever renovation you decide to undertake.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

Nonprofit Organization Rehabs Discarded Houses into Super-Efficient Homes By Bruce Siceloff

RISMEDIA, October 1, 2010—(MCT)—Wendy and Robby Haun had to sell their home near Cary, N.C., to make way for a state highway project, but the comfortable ranch house did not go to waste. It went to Builders of Hope, a pioneering Raleigh, N.C., nonprofit that has found new life and new families for more than 60 discarded dwellings in the past four years. Since 1999, the Hauns had lived in the house next door to Wendy’s childhood home. The N.C. Turnpike Authority bought both houses for the 18-mile Triangle Expressway which is now under construction.

After they moved in November into a bigger place on a smaller lot a few miles away, the Hauns yearned to see their old house put to good use.

“We got frustrated trying to donate things from our old house to Habitat for Humanity,” said Robby Haun. “We opened the doors and told people to take anything out. They got ceiling fans and some solid wood doors. Somebody took the carpet. They got a toilet.”

Builders of Hope is moved by that same recycling impulse, but the group works on a larger plane.

The organization stripped the Hauns’ house—which was donated by the state—and reduced it to little more than studs and subfloor. The remainder was trucked to Fuquay-Varina and replanted in Consolidated Pines, a new subdivision that will be filled in the next couple of years with 18 affordable “green” homes for first-time buyers.

Over the summer, the house was radically overhauled with super-efficient HVAC system and windows, foam insulation and low-flow plumbing, Energy Star appliances, air-tight siding and roofing, and a big porch and front door where the side door used to be.

Builders of Hope sold the 1,350-square-foot house at cost to Shaun Cross, pastor of a small Angier, N.C., church, and his wife, Melissa Cross.

“We were doing fine, and our rent was cheap,” said Melissa Cross. “But when they started this new neighborhood in Fuquay-Varina, it was where we wanted to live. We really like the Builders of Hope philosophy and the beautiful homes they make, and there was the first-time home buyer tax credit. A lot of things lined up for it.”

Builders of Hope’s radically rehabbed homes vary in size and sell for an average of $130,000, less than half of the $270,000 average price of a new home in Wake County, N.C.

The prices are low for several reasons. The donated houses are free. Federal, state and local government grants cover all or part of the land costs. Other government subsidies and private grants augment the organization’s revenue from home sales and from rent on dozens of green-rehabbed apartments.

Most homes are available only to families that earn no more than 80% of the median income. That means, in most cases, a Wake County family of four would qualify with a yearly income of $61,500 or less.

“And that’s working America,” said Nancy W. Murray of Raleigh, a former advertising executive and real estate developer who founded Builders of Hope in 2006. “We’re building for a group of people that has been locked out of the housing market for decades.”

Murray stood in the cul-de-sac of State Street Village, a new Raleigh neighborhood that will be filled with 25 recycled and rehabbed homes by spring 2011. Eleven families have moved in during the past year, and five more donated houses are being rebuilt on new foundations.

She pointed to attractive homes with rain barrels and drought-tolerant lawns and talked about their new owners.

“The gal right there works for the DMV,” Murray said. “The person there is a retired disabled gentleman. Next door is a teacher. Next door to that is a single mom that works for a pediatrician’s office.”

The houses come from all over. A handful are from Rolling Hills, a failed subdivision near downtown Durham, N.C. A few were on lots inside Raleigh, where owners wanted to replace small houses with large ones. Instead of paying $20,000 or more to demolish and remove the old houses, the owners earned tax deductions for donating them to Builders of Hope. Most of the houses are rotated sideways onto small lots, with porches built onto their new fronts. “So they look like they all match and belong together, even though they’re pulled from all over the Triangle,” Murray said.

Builders of Hope has settled new families in redeveloped neighborhoods in Raleigh, Fuquay-Varina, Durham and Cary, with more homes in the pipeline for all four communities and in Charlotte, N.C.

And the group, now with 50 employees, is reaching beyond North Carolina. This month in New Orleans, Builders of Hope began moving and rehabbing 100 houses from a historic district that would have been bulldozed for a new hospital. More projects with a few hundred homes and apartments are planned in Dallas and Fort Worth.

The whole-house rehab approach elevates recycling to a larger scale. It sets Builders of Hope apart from other affordable housing organizations, such as Habitat for Humanity, that use materials salvaged from old homes when they build new ones.

“We’re taking raw land and developing it and wholly comprising that community of recycled homes,” Murray said. “Every lot here in State Street Village, all 25 lots, are going to be filled up with houses that were saved and rescued from somewhere else.” Those recycled houses will keep about 1.5 million pounds of construction debris out of landfills, Murray said.

After Wendy Haun’s childhood home was stripped to the size of a double-wide mobile home, it sat for weeks until Builders of Hope had a spot for it. Last week, workers prepared a new foundation on Lot 2 at State Street Village, where the house will be installed and rebuilt for a new family. “We’re selling them before we get them out here,” Murray said.

The organization matches buyers with houses and helps the buyers qualify for grants and other housing subsidies. The whole process, from receiving a donated home to closing the sale with its new owner, can take as little as four months.

Shaun and Melissa Cross paid $154,000 for their house in Fuquay-Varina.

Two weeks after they moved in, the Crosses and their two children opened the new-old home to its former owners.

Wendy and Robby Haun could hardly recognize the place. They struggled to get their bearings in a bamboo-floored living room that had been their white-linoleum kitchen. “It looks great, but it looks nothing like it was,” Robby Haun said. “The only thing I can recognize is the master bedroom and the two stairwells.”

Just as hard to recognize are the Crosses’ low utility bills.

The Raleigh-based nonprofit Advanced Energy, a Builders of Hope partner, pledges to reimburse them if they spend more than $45 a month to heat and cool the house. “That’s the part that got to me when I heard it,” said Wendy Haun. “Ours was never that cheap.” The Hauns shelled out $150-$240 a month when they lived inside these walls, and the house was never comfortable in the worst of summer and winter.

The Crosses had similar memories of their drafty old rental house. “You’d be upstairs and it would be like 85 degrees, and downstairs it was 60,” said Shaun Cross.

“It will certainly help our budget now, to know we’re not going to exceed $45 a month,” Melissa said.

As the Hauns walked back to their car, Wendy took a last look at the reincarnation of a house she had known her whole life. “I lived there for 10 years, and before that, I grew up beside that house,” she said. “It makes me feel good that it wasn’t just torn down and is being used for a good purpose.”

Defining a true real estate recovery

Defining a true real estate recoveryMood of the Market
By Tara-Nicholle NelsonInman News™
February 21, 2011
Our esteemed 33rd president, Harry S. Truman, once said, "It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours." In the vein of everything old becoming new again, it seems that this eye-of-the-beholder issue has never rung truer than when it comes to pinpointing when the current/recent real estate recession began, and when it ended (or will end, depending on your point of view).
The Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Indices calls recession and recovery in terms of peaks, troughs and the rises and falls thereto and therefrom. The Case-Shiller called the top of the market in 2006 or 2007, depending on the market, and the bottom of the national housing market in the spring of 2009; the Case-Shiller is primed to mark another nationwide bottom -- the second dip -- any moment now.
Last fall, a committee that studies business cycles for the National Bureau of Economic Research raised more than a few eyebrows when it declared that technically, the recession had been over for more than a year. The NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee said the recession began in December 2007, and ended 18 months later when the economy stopped contracting and began to expand again.
But for many individual Americans who own homes, the Truman definition rules their personal sense of when the recession began. That is, the housing crisis became real only when the prospective listing agents told them what the comparable sales looked like for their home, when they received a notice from the county that their property taxes were being reduced (without having applied for a reduction in their home's assessed value), when they lost their job and realized they couldn't sell the place for what they owed on it, or when their mortgage payment began increasing and they realized they couldn't refinance the loan because the place wouldn't appraise at their current loan balance.
While the housing bubble's deflation occurred in a geographically spotty manner over a year's time, which made it even tougher for the average Jane to pinpoint -- it was still more of an encapsulated event -- than recovery will be. Media outlets and real estate data reports have proliferated faster than Android apps, so that recovery and its absence are alternatively heralded, predicted or dismissed on a weekly or even daily basis in various outlets.
The Case-Shiller ostensibly views recovery as a return of home values to their mid-decade peaks, while former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan recently said recovery wouldn't be here until housing prices rise another 10 percent from the status quo.
All these definitions have turned the issue of when the real estate recovery was, is or will be into an economic Tower of Babel, with every analyst and report shouting out about a different definition of recovery, so that no one really understands what the other is talking about.
And in the minds of homebuyers, sellers and homeowners, this disconnect is exponentially gappier, because their positions on what recovery is is largely driven by their own perceived interests, as I realized in a recent conversation on my Facebook page about the Obama administration's proposal to phase Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac entirely out of existence.
I had sketched out a number of implications to the proposal -- including hikes in loan costs, interest rates, down-payment requirements and, generally speaking, the barrier to entry to homeownership. But I'd also mentioned that the Fannie/Freddie bailout has U.S. taxpayers $130 billion in the hole, and counting, and that the proposal provides a set of options to resolve the troubling and ideally, very temporary, current state of affairs, in which 90 percent of the home loans originated on today's market are backed in some way by the federal government.
Most real estate professionals and virtually all prospective homebuyers thought this was outrageous and would cripple the market. Those viewing the matter from their perspective as taxpayers thought that for the government to do anything but phase Fannie and Freddie out would be the real outrage. "But recovery will take longer," cried the first group, "or never happen at all," indicating that their definition of recovery was probably tied to a rise in home values or sales activity. The other group thinks recovery, by definition, will include a stable market, not propped up by the government, where homebuyers and refinancing homeowners are required to document some serious creditworthiness and put significant swathes of their own skin in the game when they take mortgages.
In his 1980 presidential election campaign, Ronald Reagan appended a definition of recovery onto Truman's definitions of recession and depression: Recovery, Reagan said, "is when Jimmy Carter loses his" job -- as U.S. president.
In today's American economy, there is no single person whose position in or out of any office will generate the housing market's recovery. The fact is, many homeowners won't think the market has recovered until it gets back to their mental target value for their home; and some buyers won't think recovery is here until they've been priced out. In every household, there is a single person whose sense of what recovery is will dictate whether it has been achieved in his or her mind: you.
Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of "The Savvy Woman's Homebuying Handbook" and "Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions." Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com.