by Kara | Nov 20, 2018 | News
A new season means a whole new set of home maintenance tasks. Use this list to ensure that you keep everything in your home working properly this winter.
Clean Your Gutters
If debris are blocking up your gutters, water can accumulate against the roof and damage it, the siding, and any wood trim, potentially causing leaks or ice dams. You’ll also want to repair any damaged gutters or fascia boards.
Service Your Furnace
Have a technician clean and service your furnace or heat pump ahead of time. Otherwise, you could end up freezing and waiting around once the cold spell hits and technicians get busy.
Inspect Your Chimney
Get your chimney inspected and cleaned early on this winter season to make sure it’s in good shape. Heavy creosote buildup or blockage from other debris could cause carbon monoxide to back up into your home, or even start a chimney fire.
Check Your Sump Pump
If your home has a sump pump, you should be testing it every few months; this is especially important after a dry season and before a wet one. To see whether the pump is working, gradually pour a few gallons of water into the pit. More thorough instructions should be included in your owner’s manual.
Turn Off Outdoor Faucets
To prevent undrained water from freezing and bursting your pipes, disconnect your hoses and drain any water remaining in the faucets. Turn off the shut-off valve in your home if your faucets are not frostproof.
Drain Your Irrigation System
You won’t be using them for a while, so have a professional drain all the pipes associated with your sprinkler system to prevent them from freezing or leaking.
Caulk Around Doors and Windows
If any of your doors or windows have gaps greater than the width of a nickel between their frames and the siding, apply exterior caulk to prevent leaks on stormy days. Apply weatherstripping around doors, making sure that it blocks out all signs of daylight from within your home.
Clean and Inspect Your Roof
Clear off leaves and pine needles, which hold moisture that can damage your roof. Inspect the roof for shingles that are loose, damaged, or missing, as they could allow melting snow to leak into your home.
Winterize Your Pool and Hot Tub
Just covering your pool for the winter isn’t enough — you’ll need to check your pool chemistry every two months, throw out old pool chemicals, and add a special enzyme product to the water. Hot tubs require some work too, whether you plan on using them throughout the winter or not.
Deep Clean Your House
You’ll be spending a lot more time indoors this season, so to create a nice and comfortable environment, a deep cleaning is in order. In addition to your typical cleaning routine, wipe out cupboards and drawers, purge old food from the fridge and freezer, and go through old bills and paperwork. Decluttering and freshening up your space will make cozying up inside that much more enjoyable!
How Pepper’s Personal Assistants Can Help
Don’t know how or where to start? Let Pepper’s Personal Assistants lend a hand. We can take care of some tasks ourselves, and contract outside professionals to do the rest, freeing you up to relax and enjoy the holiday season.
Image via Pixabay
by Kara | Oct 3, 2018 | News
Being a great personal assistant requires more than just completing to-do lists. The very best personal assistants work actively to better themselves and their services, and are aware that there’s always room for improvement. Whether you work in households or offices, the following tips should help you make that happen.
Be Observant
Good personal assistants follow direction well, but great personal assistants pick up on little things and go the extra mile without even having to be asked. Being observant will allow you greater insight into your boss’s preferences, likes, and dislikes, and help you improve your services accordingly. You may even learn from your boss and how they manage their home or business!
Take Notes
Even the best personal assistants struggle to remember everything, which is why taking notes is essential. Never find yourself without a writing utensil. When your boss spontaneously starts explaining something to you, you’ll want to have details to reference later. We’d even recommend jotting down things that may not seem important, as you never know which details will be of use.
Take Responsibility for Your Mistakes
Most bosses will forgive a mistake, but only if you come forward with it and admit that it was your fault. Making excuses or pretending that you don’t know what happened won’t impress anyone. Instead, own your error and clearly explain how you’ll avoid repeating it in the future. If you keep doing the same thing wrong your boss will think that you don’t learn from your mistakes.
Keep Your Boss Informed
Don’t keep your boss guessing about what’s going on in their home or workplace. This is especially true with things that have gone awry, but is also the case with pleasant surprises. Hearing about something from a coworker or neighbor will make your boss feel ill informed and out of the loop. They may even become suspicious about what’s going on behind the scenes.
Don’t Share Your Boss’s Information
This one should go without saying. As a personal assistant, you’ll be exposed to some of your boss’s personal and confidential information — don’t share it. This would be incredibly unprofessional and would jeopardize both your current position and your future employment opportunities.
Become Indispensable
If you do everything else right, our last recommendation should come naturally. The very best personal assistant is one that becomes absolutely necessary to their boss’s everyday life. This means that you’re anticipating their needs, using your observations to manage everything according to their preferences, and generally making their life easier. It may sound like a lot, but for the best personal assistants, it’s just part of the job.
Pepper’s Personal Assistants specializes in residential personal assistant services. If you think you have the skills to make a great personal assistant, apply to join our team!
by Kara | Jun 20, 2018 | News
We all love the sense of accomplishment that comes with completing a task, but juggling too many items at a time can have some unwanted consequences. Read on to learn about the downsides of multitasking and how you can rid yourself of the bad habit.
Why You Shouldn’t Multitask
Your Brain Wasn’t Made for Multitasking
According to Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at MIT and multitasking expert, our brains are “not wired to multitask well.” Rather than focus on multiple things at a time, our minds are quickly switching from one task to another. And the more you try to multitask, the more you lose focus on each task you’re juggling.
Multitasking Lowers Your IQ
Believe it or not, multitasking actually decreases your intelligence: A study found that distractions caused by phone calls or emails lowered participants’ IQs by as much as 10 points. The cognitive impact of such a decrease is the same as losing an entire night of sleep.
Considering this, it’s no surprise that multitasking reduces efficiency, quality of work, and overall productivity.
Multitasking May Cause Long-Term Damage
The damage might not end when the multitasking does.
A study from the University of Sussex performed MRI scans on people who used multiple devices — such as a cell phone and TV — at once. The study found that those who multitasked more frequently tended to have less brain density in the anterior cingulate cortex (the area of the brain tasked with emotional control and empathy).
Researchers still haven’t determined if multitasking is responsible for this, or if brain damage causes people to multitask. Either way, avoiding multitasking is for the best.
How to Stop Multitasking
Multitasking is so instilled in our daily lives that it may take some conscious effort to stop. Start by trying these methods.
Get Rid of Distractions
As obvious as it may sound, if you don’t expose yourself to distractions, you don’t run the risk of trying to multitask. Turn off your phone, close out of your email, and surround yourself only with whatever is necessary for the task at hand.
Give Yourself Less Time
The more time you have to dedicate to a task, the more likely you are to get distracted and start multitasking. The opposite is also true: When you’re on a tight deadline, you tend to block everything else out to focus on getting your work done as quickly as possible. To make this your norm, limit the time you allot for each task so that multitasking isn’t a possibility.
Reduce Your Tasks
When you have an inordinate amount of things to do, multitasking is always going to be a temptation. The simplest way of solving this problem is to reduce the amount on your plate. Whether you’re a young professional, CEO, or stay-at-home parent, letting a personal assistant handle some of your tasks can help you avoid multitasking — and its negative effects.
by Kara | Jun 11, 2018 | News
Anyone who has done it knows that being a stay-at-home parent isn’t easy. Caring for children and managing a household is a full-time job in itself, and brings with it a unique set of challenges. In addition to the day-to-day difficulties of raising children, stay-at-home parents also experience feelings of loneliness, get too little sleep, and struggle both to find time for themselves and to finish everything on their to-do lists.
While every parent’s situation is distinct, a few best practices are universally helpful to avoid burnout, improve quality of life, and make time at home more enjoyable.
Build a Support System
One of the most jarring aspects of stay-at-home parenting is the sense of complete isolation. Before having kids, you may have enjoyed a robust social life, and at least the water cooler chat typical of most workplaces. As a new parent, you may go all day without any real adult interaction — except, perhaps, at the grocery store. This is especially difficult if you feel that you can no longer relate to those who were previously good friends.
To avoid this alienation, establishing a strong support system at the very beginning is crucial. Support systems can include family, close friends, and anyone else who helps you feel that you’re not in this alone. Parents who lack friends with kids may consider attending parenting events, joining a class, or even finding a group on social media to meet people they identify with.
Find Time for Yourself
Another downside of caring for children 24/7 is that the kids are there when you wake up, they are there when you go to sleep, and you must dedicate all the time in between to kids or kid-related activities. Even during nap times or play dates, you’ll likely have an endless list of chores to address, and may feel guilty about taking time for yourself.
But putting yourself first isn’t something to feel bad about. In fact, it’s completely necessary to maintain your mental health and keep you going strong. Remember that you’re still your own person, with your own interests. Set aside time to spend on a favorite hobby, treat yourself to something nice, or even just take a walk by yourself. Making this a regular part of your schedule can help ensure that you don’t overlook your “me time” and become burned out.
Get More Sleep
Sleep deprivation is an unavoidable downside of having a baby, and can be a risk even as your children grow older. Because your job never really ends, knowing when to call it a day and get some rest can be difficult.
Lack of sleep shouldn’t become a constant in your life, though: Sleep deprivation can affect both mood and cognitive function. So, if you’re not sure why you’re in a bad mood and can’t think straight, you might not be getting enough sleep! To get back on track, make sleep a priority (the unfolded laundry can wait) and enforce a bedtime for yourself. Establishing a regular schedule can improve the quality of your sleep.
Outsource
Although many stay-at-home parents think they should be able to handle everything on their own, the truth is that it does “take a village” to raise a child. If you don’t have a village at your disposal, bringing in some outside help can work wonders. In fact, outsourcing is doubly beneficial: It not only helps you relieve stress on its own, but also gives you more time to invest in building a support system, self-care, and sleep.
So, before you get burned out, accept that being a stay-at-home parent is a tough job, and just as deserving of a personal assistant as any other profession.
by Kara | Dec 19, 2016 | News
We live in a high-demand and fast-paced world. Thanks to interconnectivity and mobile access, young professionals are able to achieve more than ever before. However, there is also a trade-off: more is expected from them, and more must be monitored and remembered on a daily basis. To be successful, young professionals sometimes must work longer hours and be available to their customers, clients, and employers on evenings, over the weekends, and even on holidays. Developing your professional career is rewarding, but it can often leave little time for the demands of daily life that aren’t directly related to your job. Life keeps demanding more, even outside of work. Here’s how a personal assistant can simplify your life.
Tedious Phone Calls and Service Visits
Taking care of basic life tasks can be surprisingly time-consuming. For example, when you need to call your cable or internet provider to change your plan, contest a charge, or schedule an upgrade or installment, you could spend thirty minutes or more on hold or navigating an automated phone system… and if a service visit is necessary, then you may need to be home during a valuable business day.
Paying Bills
Paying bills, particularly those that don’t accept online payment, can also be time-consuming. Sometimes it can seem like the farther you climb up the career ladder, the more effort and time life demands from you. Your personal needs all too often take a back seat to your work, household, and daily task management demands.
Your personal assistant: Convenient as a mobile app, but with a personal touch
We put the “personal” in personal assistant.
Mobile apps may rule the service world — and admittedly, they do offer extreme convenience. After all, when you need a meal but have no time to cook, you can log onto a food delivery service app and have the exact meal you want prepared and delivered to you. If you have somewhere to go but either don’t have your vehicle or can’t currently drive, you can launch Uber or Lyft and have a ride pick you up from any location in a few minutes.
But why not enjoy a similar level of convenience without compromising quality human relationships and superior customer service? Working with Pepper’s Personal Assistants allows you to enjoy the best of both worlds. Don’t entrust a stranger with your important personal duties. Instead of one-off tasks, an ongoing partnership with your assistant offers long-term reliability to help you automate your daily life while maintaining a personal touch. The value of maintaining a set weekly schedule is that our personal assistants often know what needs to be done even before their clients do. When you don’t need to worry about making detailed daily lists, you save yourself even more time and headspace.
Let Pepper’s Personal Assistants handle your personal projects
From coordinating appointments and services with utility companies to wrapping your holiday gifts, an hourly personal assistant can help take care of the demands of your personal life that you just can’t squeeze in at the end of a busy day. At Pepper’s Personal Assistants, we pride ourselves on handling your personal tasks with professional attention to detail and timeliness. We understand how busy life can get — it’s time to take some pressure off yourself. Start today: Search for your future personal assistant package online. Find out how a personal assistant can simplify your life.
This New Year, treat yourself to any young professional’s life management trifecta: unprecedented convenience, customized attention, and valuable peace of mind.
