6 Items You're Washing Way Too Often, According to Experts

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If you're curious about whether your home's boiler room—which contains your furnace and water heater—can serve as a storage space for common household items, the answer in most cases is no, pros say.

Neem oil is potent in keeping a wide array of garden pests and diseases at bay. But, when it comes to application, do you target the soil or the leaves? Let’s find out!

You know that old saying that “friends don’t let friends grow annuals”? I now ignore that sentiment. Some of the best plants in my garden are annuals, and they are more than worth the effort of growing them every year. Annuals add bold color to my containers and beds, fill in spaces beautifully, and bloom for longer than any coneflower (Echinacea spp. and cvs., Zones 3–9) or phlox (Phlox spp. and cvs., Zones 3–9), so they bridge the flowering gaps between my perennials’ bloom times. But over the last few years as I’ve strolled the ever-more-homogenized aisles of the garden centers in my area, I’ve found myself bored silly, and in sticker shock. I always buy a few standard sweet potato vines (Ipomoeabatatas cvs., annual), calibrachoas (Calibrachoa cvs., annual), and coleus (Plectranthus scutellarioides cvs., Zones 10–11), of course, but if I want something a little different, I grow it from seed.

There are several spots around your home that generally get left out, or at the very least deprioritized, when it comes to designing—and one such area is the hallway.

If you're planning an IKEA trip in the next couple of months, you'll want to ensure that you're making the most of your visit, no matter whether you've frequented the retail store just once or have shopped there dozens of times.

Attractive, mature trees boost a property’s curb appeal, and offer shade and privacy for residents.

Skunks are easy to identify from appearance—and smell! But these handsome mammals typically mind their own business and are more interested in excavating their dinner than in what you’re doing. “They’re primarily insectivores so they provide a useful ecological service, digging up insects in the soil,” says Sheldon Owen, PhD, wildlife extension specialist atWest Virginia University. “The issue is if they decide to den under your porch or crawlspace.”

For some people, holiday decorating begins the moment the Thanksgiving dishes are put away. The joy of the holiday season sweeps through their homes, but in the midst of the festive fervor, it's easy to overlook all of the stuff around your home that should probably not be around your home. 

Gardeners will most likely need to lime their lawn at some point. Lime is a soil amendment used to increase the soil’s pH, making it less acidic. When soil pH is too low, many lawn grass species cannot make use of nutrients in the soil, including those added through fertilizer. Liming your lawn enhances nutrient availability, which promotes healthy root and leaf growth. However, not all lawns require liming. Get to know the species of grass in your lawn as well soil characteristics to determine if your lawn needs liming.

Following the trends and keeping a home that feels current can be both extremely fun and fairly intimidating. That’s why most designers will tell you to go with what you love—and if that happens to align with the trends, then that’s great.

There are lots of ways you can flex your DIY muscles around your home. But while painting furniture, building a kitchen backsplash, or grouting tile can be tackled on your own, there are some home projects that are better left to the professionals due to their complexity—and because of safety concerns.