Around our house, we’ve found some things that we love using and use all the time. I find the trick with getting things for your house is that some items can be handy or helpful, but they’re made of harmful substances. Others may look great but fall apart if you use them too much.
Then of course there’s lots of products for your home that claim they’ll practically change your life and often that really isn’t the case. However, I have found several that I absolutely love and that I’m excited to share with you. These are all products that either myself of my family has been using for a while now so they’ve all proven themselves to be durable and reliable as well.
Hypoallergenic Waterproof Mattress Protector
One of the things we’re big on in our family if using quality mattresses. We use both the Perfect Elegance and Casper sleep mattresses. They’re both a type of memory foam mattress and although they’re not cheap, they’re extremely comfortable. So after making a rather large investment in quality mattresses, we wanted to find a good mattress cover to protect them with.
Our favorite one is by SafeRest. It’s got all the basic features we wanted like being 100% waterproof, hypoallergenic and vinyl-free. However, we found other mattress protectors that worked this way as well. So what really set the SafeRest one apart for us is that it’s also breathable, noiseless and it doesn’t change the feel of your mattress.
It was so frustrating to try other mattress protectors that would do a great job offering protection, but you could tell there was this slight barrier between you and the mattress. It took away from the comfort and experience of having such a nice mattress to begin with. And after spending a few thousand dollars on mattresses for the family, it just didn’t make sense to bring the comfort and experience down by using a mattress protector.
But with the SafeRest mattress protector, it didn’t even feel like there was anything covering or protecting our mattress. We even did a test to see who could tell if their mattress had this covering on it and people couldn’t tell. Everyone was just kind of guessing.
So this is one of those products that we’ve been extremely happy with and it actually works! We’re not having to sacrifice the comfort of our Casper and Perfect Elegance mattresses and we’re we protected for when those spills happen on the bed (and they always do).
Oreck Commercial Upright Disposable Vacuum Bags
Now vacuum bags aren’t normally something to get excited about, but we had a real challenge finding quality bags for our Orek Commercial Upright Vacuum cleaner. So when we found the right bags it was a pretty exciting experience. No more bags tearing, no more bags not filling up as they should. It was a happy day for sure.
We get them in a pack of 25 so they last us quite a while, and they really don’t cost that much. They’re easy to install inside the vacuum and super easy to take out. They truly fit and work perfectly with our Orek XL Vacuum cleaner.
Chamberlain CIGBU MyQ Internet Gateway
If you have a MyQ enabled Chamberlain Garage Door Opener, and you don’t already have it enabled so you can use it with your smartphone, than this is definitely something you’ll want to check out. And if you don’t yet have a garage door opener or are looking to upgrade your existing one, then I would highly recommend any of the Chamberlain Garage Door Openers that allow you to use “MyQ Smartphone Control.”
Unfortunately you have to purchase the internet gateway separately, which is what allows you to operate your garage door opener with your smartphone. But the product itself is really cool! To start, it allows you to open, close and monitor your garage door from your smartphone. You can even receive alerts whenever someone opens or closes the garage door. You just connect it to the wireless router in your home and your good to go! It’s actually pretty simple to setup and use, even if you’re not that tech savvy.
This is one of those home automation type gizmo’s that’s not essential to have, but we’ve found it to be really nice to have now that we’ve gotten use to it. For us it’s particularly nice because when you have several people in your house doing different things, opening and closing the garage door… occasionally someone will forget to close it. So it’s a lot of peace of mine for me knowing whether it’s closed or not (especially at night).
Again, the key to being able to use this successfully is to make sure you have a compatible garage door opener that is enabled to communicate with this device.
Anti-Slip Grip Furniture Protector
So this is a product that I didn’t think we’d ever be getting for our home. But with a household of pets, kids and their friends coming over, I found that these have become invaluable at preserving some of our furniture.
Now there are a few different types and brands of these to choose from. The reason I like this one so well and the reason I’m recommending it is because of how well it stays put. I tried some others that would seem to slide around and then you’d end up having to keep re-adjusting them. And while I’m willing to do that, the people that I’m concerned about making a mess on our furniture aren’t as likely to do that. As a result, your furniture has areas that end up not being very well protected.
This is also machine washable so if you do get it dirty or something spills on it you can just toss it in the washing machine. And the size of these are pretty generous so they really do a nice job covering our recliners. The one potential downside for some is that the material is made out of a microsuede type fabric which I think feels fine but I’ve heard it can be bothersome to others.
Bottom line is that these have saved our recliners from a lot of abuse they would have otherwise incurred from our pets, our kids and their friends.