Corraling the Water Bottles and Travel Mugs

One of the challenges that I feel like I face in my house is a place to properly store things. Sure, I can usually find a corner, a basket, a shelf to tuck things away on, but it doesn't always feel very organized to me.

One of the items that have been a challenge to store are our reusable water bottles and insulated travel mugs. Between the ones that we have purchased overtime - with filters/with chilled cores/insulated/fits the bike cup holder/for coffee and the ones that we have gotten through different events - summer reading club/sports/store events/vacation, we have more than our fair share of reusable water bottles. On any given day, several will be occupying the dish strainer in our sink but several need to be stored. The real challenge has always been the varying heights and some of them have straws - so even if I had cupboard space, they likely would be too tall for a typical shelf.

We have what is supposed to be a coat closet at the end of our hallway near our garage door. Because of a feeling of lack of storage space and a desire to have some semblance of order, it has become more of a storage closet. It is where we keep our vacuum, we have two hanging shoe organizers, there is a shelf unit that holds our winter gear, my spring form pans, a roasting pan, my cookie cutters and up until a few weeks ago our water bottles.

Their perch on the top shelf always felt like it was one bump away from having several water bottles come clattering down to the floor.

Then, as I was wondering the web, as I so often do, I randomly came upon the idea of using an over the door shoe organizer to corral water bottles. I loved it. So, the next time that we were at Target, I picked up this inexpensive over the door shoe organizer and set out to organize my water bottles and travel mugs.

My hall closets and pantry all have bi-fold doors, so they weren't options for me for hanging it, so I settled on the back of the laundry room door. It keeps them out of the way, but still readily accessible, just a few steps from the kitchen.

I really am pleased to be able to store 24 water bottles and travel mugs out of the way. The crazy thing is, I still have 4 or 5 in my kitchen - the one I take each day to the gym, one for each of the kids to take to their near daily sports practices or games and summer camp, the one that I take coffee to work in each day and one other for those days when we have back to back sports and need more than one water per child.

In addition, now I have regained a shelf, plus some random other space where some additional mugs were tucked away, that allows me to better organize other things.

This post shared at Works for Me Wednesday.

Chamberlain HD930EV - Ultra Quiet Belt Drive Garage Door Opener

No compensation was received for this post. Complimentary product was provided for this review. All opinions expressed are my own or that of my family.
As I mentioned in my review of the MyQ Universal Smartphone Garage Door Controller review, we weren't able to make it work with the builder installed opener that we had. We had the opportunity to receive a Chamberlain HD930EV Ultra Quiet Belt Drive Garage Door Opener, which we had installed over the holidays.

We elected to have someone install the opener rather than do it ourselves, but the installation seemed straight-forward and did not take long.

So far, this new opener is such an improvement over our old opener in so many ways.

First, the Chamberlain HD930EV is a ultra quiet opener. It used to be that I could tell when my husband was coming home because I could here the opener operating from many corners of the house. I always worried about disturbing the sleeping family when I would head out early to work out or head to work.

Second, the light on the opener unit comes on when motion is detected. The light on our old opener was one that you had to turn on from the control panel and sometimes, it would come on and flash. The control panel for this opener does have a light button, which you can use to turn the light on or off, but since it comes on when we enter the garage, we haven't had a need to use it (other than to shut it off when the light is not needed). In addition, this opener has two lights, one on either side of the garage. It provides a brighter light than our old opener.

Third, the control panel is back lit and features a time and temperature display. We have a clock in the garage, but I like that there is a clock on the control panel.

Fourth, the range on the opener is better than my old one. I can push the button on the remote from the corner and the garage door will begin to open. With the old one, I almost had to be in the driveway to open it.

Fifth, the opener comes with a battery back-up. We live in an area with underground power wires, so we generally don't have too much issue with power outages (at least relative to other places that I have lived), but it is good to know that if we did have an outage that we could still get in and out using our opener.

Sixth, the opener came with the wireless keypad for outside of the garage. With our last one, we had to buy it as an add on, so having it included was nice.

There are some draw backs to the opener though too.

The biggest being that it is not compatible with the HomeLink that we each have in our car. The cars we drive aren't that old (2006 and 2011 Toyota), so I would have expected that it should work. You can purchase a repeater to allow you to operate the opener using HomeLink, but I don't see the benefit in that. So, for now, we are back to using the remotes that come with the opener or using the MyQ app on our iPhones. It works, but old habits die hard and I continue to reach for the HomeLink button, only to remember that it doesn't work.

The opener is much slower than our old one. Not a big deal, but when I am running late, a little frustrating. Plus, in the morning (especially when it is cold or dark), I tend to get in my car before opening, so I have to wait a little longer to start the car.

The opener comes with the MyQ Internet Gateway, but to use the MyQ Internet Gateway you have to plug the unit into your router and into the wall. As such, we stuck with the wireless gateway that we had already installed, since it was also compatible. It would have been nice if the opener used the same wireless technology as the MyQ Universal Smartphone Garage Door controller. Again, it works, so it's not a big deal just a preference.

Overall, I am pleased with the opener and find it to be an improvement over the opener we used to have.

No compensation was received for this post. Chamberlain provided the HD930EV opener, so that we could share our experience with the product. All opinions expressed are my own or that of my family.

MyQ Universal Smartphone Garage Door Controller

No compensation was received for this post. Complimentary product was provided for this review. All opinions expressed are my own or that of my family.
It seems that every time we leave home, we get a block down the road and my husband asks if we remembered to put down the garage door. Most of the time, we are close enough that we take a trip around the block in order to drive by the house to make sure it is down and other times, we text or call our neighbor to ask them to check. So, when I learned about the MyQ Smartphone Garage Door Controllers from Chamberlain, I knew it was a product that would be perfect for our house.

The MyQ Smartphone Garage Door Controller works with a number of garage door openers and allows you to both check the status of your garage door from anywhere on your Smartphone and to operate it remotely too. So, with the MyQ we can now log in to the app on our phone and see whether the door is up or down. It also tells you how long it has been open or closed, a great feature that lets you confirm that your child has arrived home. Having a repairman coming to the house? You can easily use the app to open the door for them when they arrive - no need to give them a garage door code or a key to your house.

The set up of the MyQ is fairly straight-forward. There is a bracket that mounts to your ceiling, next to your garage door operator that is used to attach the WiFi hub. A door sensor is installed next to your garage door. The third step is to connect the WiFi Hub to the home network - with an iPhone or iPod, you use the BlueTooth feature and then launch the app to complete the set up and with other devices you use the web browser to set up the MyQ.

There are several models of garage door openers that the MyQ works with and you can find a list of them here. Turns out (after a good amount of effort and reading the help on the website) that although our manufacturer was listed, we had an opener that the MyQ couldn't learn to operate. We could still use the monitoring aspect of the device/app and were able to see if the door was open or closed and how long it had been there, but if we were away and the garage door was open, we wouldn't have been able to close it. In order to allow us to experience the MyQ Smartphone Garage Door Controller, the group at Chamberlain offered us a new garage door opener - all we had to do was install it.

Once the new garage door opener was installed (more about that here - Chamberlain HD930EV Garage Door Opener), we were able to start testing out the MyQ Garage. We learned a few things early (that we wish we had learned earlier) and put it through the paces.

You can install the app on multiple devices and can put a security code on the app, so that others can't operate your garage door. I like this added level of security. What we didn't know right away is that there can only be one account per device. My husband had initially set it up with his e-mail, but once we found out that we could only have one account, we decided to change it to our joint e-mail account. Unfortunately, we were not able to find a way to do this on the website and had to delete his account. This meant having to reset up the device with the new log in - not a big deal, but it did take some time. A nice benefit of this feature is that in order to add the app to their device and use it, someone would need to know your username and password.

We tested the app near and far. When my husband was away from home and on another WiFi network, he sent me a message and then tested that he could operate the door from there. When I was further from home at work, and on a WiFi network, I tested that I could operate the door from there. We also tested it on 3G, near and far. We had some challenges with the 3G operation being consistent. If the 3G signal was not strong, I wasn't always able to connect to the opener to operate it but once my signal strength returned it worked. We also had an issue when I tried to open it and immediately close it. Normal operation wouldn't typically find you opening and closing within a few seconds and I didn't have the same problem when I allowed time between operation, so I wasn't too worried. I don't really know what didn't work, but my guess is that once operated, the system needed a minute to return to 'steady' state.

A good thing to note is that when you operate the opener to close it from the app, it sounds a beep and flashes a blue light before it begins to operate. I like this safety feature, in case someone would be in the garage when you close it they would have a warning.

Overall, we are very pleased with the MyQ Smartphone Garage Door Controller. We like the added security of being able to check that our garage door is closed. It is nice to know that if we need to let someone in to the house, that we can operate the door from elsewhere rather than giving out our security code for the external keypad. I also like that if I am out with friends, I don't have to worry about taking keys or fumbling in the rain or cold with the external keypad...I can use my phone to open my door when I arrive home.

If you are looking for a home automation product to allow you to monitor and operate your garage door, then I would recommend checking out the MyQ Smartphone Garage Door Controller.

No compensation was received for this post. Chamberlain provided the MyQ Universal Smartphone Garage Door Controller, so that we could share our experience with the product. All opinions expressed are my own or that of my family.