A new home comes with a lot of moving parts. It can feel like there’s no end to the documents and contacts swirling around, from insurance information, mortgage documents, and new bill-pay accounts, to any number of contractors offering who-knows-what services.
With the ability to store all of this information digitally comes the burden of sorting through the noise. On the one hand, you probably don’t want your personal inbox spammed with people offering to mow your lawn. On the other hand, who knows when you might need to remember the name and number of the moving company you used?
The good news is you don’t have to doom you or your partner’s inbox to all this information. Instead, you should create a dedicated email for your home.
Benefits of a dedicated home email
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Gone are the days of only one person in the home knowing exactly where to find that one piece of insurance information in that one filing cabinet in the basement.
- Everything all in one place. Creating an email account for your house will take a few minutes, but with years of pay-offs. From now on, you’ll have one designated place to send and find all home-related documents and contact information. Your digital records will be safely and easily organized, plus you’ll know exactly where to look if you need to find the contact information for a random contractor in three years.
- Consolidated power/labor in the household. Sure, one person in your household could create a folder for all things home-related. But even if your family divides power and labor in the home this way, life is uncertain. It’s helpful to have a dedicated email that everyone has equal access to in the event that one person is unable to log in. (Not to mention that one folder for all things home-related is going to be one hell of a crowded folder.)
- Cleaning up your own inbox. Creating your new home’s email before you begin the moving process is ideal, so you can direct all moving-related information to the right place (and away from your personal or work email) from the start. But even if you’ve been in your home for years, setting up a dedicated email address for it now can unburden your personal email folders and give you a fresh opportunity to get organized, forward along what you might want for the future, and purge what you know you no longer need.
Reminders for your home email
- Create descriptive folders within the household email, so that you can easily find “lease agreement” versus “drywall guy” whenever you need it.
- Make sure everyone agrees on the password and store it in a safe place.
- Only use this email account for household related things. If you start using it as a repository for all kinds of spam, it loses its purpose as a small but mighty household hack.
A separate email account for your home is a game-changer in terms of organization. The dedicated household email ensures that everyone with the password can find what they need, when they need it.