GTFO Home with Peachtree Garden and Craft

 People have a lot of negative feelings about home warranties.  Many view them as the extended protection plan of home buying.  Either we've just been lucky in who we've dealt with, or American Home Shield actually has a good warranty. When we bought our home 4 years ago it came with appliances and AC that were each well over a decade old, so we made sure that the purchase contract included the sellers providing a year of home warranty coverage.  We kept our fingers crossed that things would fail in that year so we could have them replaced.  Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, nothing failed in year one.  When the year came to an end we had to decide whether to keep coverage or let it lapse.  Since the appliances were only getting older we decided to keep it. Luckily for us, that turned out to be a good decision because we soon had our dishwasher break down and developed a leak from the unnecessarily massive 50-gallon hot-water...

 When the internet of things was in its early years the concern about hacking run rampant seemed to dominate the conversation.  In addition, did anyone really want to swap a lock and key for a smart lock that just hit the market?  But as the years have passed, the technology has matured and improved, and having a Smart Home finally seemed like a rational idea. Make sure that any product you choose is compatible with whatever smart home system you are using--Google Home/Nest, Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Samsung Smart Things, etc.  This may become less of a concern once the new smart home standard, Matter, is introduced.  But for now definitely check.  Most products are compatible at least with Google, Amazon, and Apple, but sometimes the only work with one or two.  It's probably also best to choose one ecosystem and stick with it.  That way you can avoid becoming this person whose editor obviously tasked them with making up an article about how chal...