I've got several of the same in my garden. Beautiful. Yarrow will flower soon. Usually it's white, but it may be pastels or red also. It's known as "little feather" for the shape of the leaves. It was used by Native Americans to staunch the flow of blood. Easy to save seed. Easy to transplant if you want to put some somewhere. Your Penstemon is gorgeous. It takes years to get it that full. Should flower in the spring, lovely pink flowers that last several weeks. It looks to me like Husker Red, but I'm wrong more than I'm right. Husker Red gets it's name from the red in the leaves and blooms pink. Is #3 a Coral Bells? Hollyhocks start out small and shoot off into the air. They get up to 8' around here with flowers up and down the long stem. Known as a country flower, all the grandmas I know had hollyhocks at their farms. My mom would take a hollyhock flower and put it on her doll as a skirt. Garden mums are wonderful. When your annuals and summer flowers are fading, there is a burst of color with your mums that is long-lasting. The previous person was right...pinch them back and they'll get bushier. Nurseries sell them in spring and they are blooming, but they have been manipulated to bloom. If you transplant, do it in the spring to allow the roots to develop well so they will make it through the winter. Lots of colors-red, orange, yellow, purple, white. Milkweed is a butterfly host plant. They like to lay their eggson the milkweed plant. Most milkweeds have white sap if you break them open and that is poisonous so be careful. The blooms are wonderful and pull in bees and butterflies. Of course milkweed seed pods are beautiful. They break open in the fall and cotton-like substance floats on the breeze. Some people find it messy, but I love it. Much milkweed has disappeared in the flowerbeds and butterflies look for places to go. Has a deep, deep taproot and comes back yearly. It's one of those 'sit back and enjoy' plants. Heidi

Electrical: 1. Two-way switches at top and bottom of each stairway iucluding basement stairs. 2, Two-way switches inside house and garage to flood lamps lighting driveway. 3. Outlets on ends or sides of kitchen island counter. 4. Extra outlets in basement. There should be 2 to 3 outlets in the laundry/water softner area. There should be outlets along each basement wall. If you know where your basement workbench will be, install a couple of outlet boxes there. 5. Phone jacks in almost every room and one in the garage. Omit phone jacks in bathrooms and powder rooms. Nust have locations for phone jacks are entry hall or location of your primary phone, kitchen, each bedroom, basement, and garage. Structure: 1. Make sure that a back stoop is included. Often, these are on the model home, but not included in the owner's house plans. It may be an extra, and if so, you won't get one unless it is added. The best time to build a stoop is during basement wall construction. A beam and footing is built into the basement wall below the frost line to support the stoop and keep it in register with the house. 2. Pay attention to the ouside design of entryways, especially the main front entrance. The front step become hazardous in winter if the roof dribbles water and melting snow on the stoop. The stoop becomes iced. Rain gutters are no protection. Figure that gutters will fill with snow and drip over its edge. A cupola over the stoop or a recessed entrance is nice in northern climes. A sheltered entrance is a plus. One caveat: On a two story, the design of the entrance cover should not interfere with ladder placement to the second story roof. 3. Add anti-ice dam sheets on all lower edges of the roof. The best time to install these is when the roof is first built. This sheet is cemented to the roof board. Also, add the same to all roof valleys. 4. Consider the method of attic venting. Older constructions used vents through the roof with soffit vents. Some new constructions are using ridge vents in place of the roof vents. 5. Seal the garage floor before moving in. 6. Add chimney caps to keep birds and vermin out. 7. Inspect the framing before the siding or brick is installed. make sure that all holes are blocked, especially places where wind might penetrate. Typical places were unwanted openings may occur are at the ends of the second story floor joists, and places were the upper floor changes direction or cantilevers over the lower wall. 8. Pre-stain the interior finish wood before it is installed. You'll have to work with your builder and finish carpenter for this. The carpenter may not like to work with stained wood if the color is too dark. Woodwork finishing is easier and faster when the wood has been pre-stained. Its a pain to stain wood after it has been nailed on the walls. Its tough to keep from getting stain on the walls. 9. If there will be decorative ceiling beams, paint the ceiling and pre-stain the beams before these are installed. 10. Carefully plan where the furnace will be located if it will be a high efficiency, gas fired model. These vent through the sidewall of the house and do not use a chimney. Plan the location of the furnace and vent. If the furnace does not use the chimney, a chimney liner may be required for a gas water heater that does use the chimney. (A gas water heater does not warm the chinmey sufficently in winter to prevent condensation.)

Lots of great tips given already, but my best tip is not to let it get dirty/untidy/cluttered in the first place. In other words, take care of issues with a few spare minutes before they get out of control, rather than having it overwhelm you After it's out of control. Think - PREVENT DEFENSE..... -Do dishes and clean the kitchen immediately after each meal (takes 10-15minutes) - you can relax after it's done and not have it as a negative thought eating you up the rest of the evening. Take another 5 minutes to sweep the floor so it doesn't get tracked all over the rest of the house. BTW - dish cloths and dish rags are ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL, as are dust cloths, brooms, vacuums, and any number of other cleaning items ;-). There are also not any gender-specific household chores. I think the best training my husband got was being a janitor at a number of businesses and schools while he went to college. The man can out-clean me any day of the week! -Eat together at the table, not all over the house at different times - (you won't have to take time to locate dirty dishes). -Put dirty clothes in a laundry basket/s (they will be all in one place when you need to start the laundry). We use 4 baskets located above the w/d on a shelf, and automatically separate clothes into whites, lights, darks, and kitchen towels. We air dry any wet items on a drying rack before tossing them into the laundry baskets to prevent that "sour" smell from wet items. -Do laundry on a regular schedule - and never run out of underwear! -Develop the do it NOW habit - don't just lay things down on the first convenient flat surface available intending to put it away later - put things away where they are supposed to go so you can easily find it later, hang coats/jackets in closets, shoes belong in your closet - not cluttering up the front entrance... We're not a shoes OFF family, which is a much debated issue on message boards ;-). Our flooring is designed to be walked on by us and by our guests/visitors (we have a rug outside and inside the front door to wipe shoes on). In fact, I'd rather visitors DIDN'T remove their shoes! My sister-in-law always went barefoot around the house and she always had warts on her feet, and her doctor told her it was because she was spreading the virus by going barefoot. - Go Figure - Keep your shoes on, please, we don't need your warts! So different strokes for different folks - but shoes don't belong at the front door entrance, whether you remove them there or not. -Get rid of/eliminate/prevent clutter - We don't take a daily newspaper or any magazine subscriptions, so that's a great way to save money, and we don't have a stack of them (usually left unread) to try to get-around-to. We had a friend who hated cleaning their bathroom. If they eliminated the 40 bottles of stuff lined up around the tub like a race track, it would make using AND cleaning the tub a breeze. The same went for the vanity that was completely covered with "stuff". Think of storage options to keep things clutter-free for easy cleaning - better yet, don't have "stuff" that causes clutter. -Deal with mail immediately - put "junk mail" into the recycling, put bills/correspondence in one place and take care of them a.s.a.p. -Tidy the public spaces of your home before retiring for the evening - takes 5 minutes - so it's turned a negative into a positive and a mess won't be greeting you the next morning. -Make beds each morning - it takes about 1-minute, and you'll have a positive space to retire to at night (btw - a 4-year old can make their own bed if you teach them how and don't make it complicated - and expect it to be done each day). -Identify problem areas, as already suggested. Most problems can be avoided or corrected with 5-minutes of regular attention that become good habits - and everyone participates in good habits. Reward good habits - everyone likes a little praise when it's deserved. If we keep the house clean this week, it won't take us as long to do the regular housework on Saturday, and we will have time to go out for an ice cream cone if we all do a good job all week! -Children should have a list of things they do just because they are part of a family. Pay them for things above and beyond their normal chores. Example: our kids got paid 25-cents per bag for leaves they raked (1980's prices :-), or helping with cleaning out the garage, or helping in the garden -- but taking their dishes from the table to the sink/dishwasher, helping do dishes, keeping their room clean, helping prepare a meal or setting the table, feeding/walking any pets, etc., was part of being a family - a good social skill and common courtesy. When our children were old enough, they planed and cooked one meal each week, and hubby did one on the weekend. We were all busy, so shared responsibilities made them a little lighter for all of us. -It's good manners to leave something in good or better condition than when you used it, so everyone has a positive experience. So if you splashed a few drops of water on the mirror, go ahead and wipe them off - rinse out the sink/tub/shower when you're done, or any number of other day-to-day things. If not you, then who? I AM my own housekeeper, so why would I want any more to do than is absolutely necessary? -It shouldn't take more than an hour to clean the entire house once a week, even less if you divide the tasks between 3 people, especially if you use "prevent defense" between cleaning days. Everyone in the household needs to be involved - they all dirty it, they can all help clean it AND keep it tidy. If they can mess something up, they have the skills to clean it up, especially once it's been defined as something they need to control and they have been instructed how to accomplish that task. The same motor skills that it takes to take toys out and play with them, remove a book from a shelf, take the blankets down to go to bed, can all be done in reverse. Unfortunately, that half of the equation is often ignored. When my son was going to college and living with different roommates, he often had to teach them these social skills about living as a "family", as well as how to do dishes, laundry, clean a toilet/bathroom, mop a floor, take out the trash, cook, and any number of other skills he'd been doing since he was a child. -If all else fails, get up 30-60 minutes earlier so you can take care of a portion of the list of things-to-do we all have to do, until you get a routine established. Your family will benefit from all you do, and all you teach THEM how to do. A friend with three children bemoaned the fact that she was a poor housekeeper because her mother was. I told her that was a lame excuse. After all, wasn't she in charge of her own activities, not her mother? Didn't she have the option to do the opposite? And if she didn't change the "poor housekeeper" model for the family, how did she ever expect her children to be good housekeepers? -Grainlady

There's no such thing as leaving the fan on too long. My wife took a shower before bed last night leaving the bath and bedroom sticky with the extra humidity (she doesn't like the fan on for some reason). I turned the fan on and left it running all night. What would be the problem with that? It's a waste of electricity, and it puts more wear/tear on the fan. Deep medicine cabinet if your situation allows for that (pic attached). Love that. Cavernous vanity storage under sink (pic attached). I don't love that deep, dark storage where it'll be easy to lose things. Shower at least 16 square feet. If grab bars are a concern (for aging in place), be careful of how you structure that square footage. If you go beyond 4' wide, you may not be able to reach the grab bars on the two sides at once. Plenty of shower storage. We have two horizontal shelves and a small window ledge. Still we needed a hanging shower caddy. I used Command hooks to hang the caddy and a squeegee in the shower. Love it! If you are going to use a tub and it is any kind of oversized unit, it should be insulated and have a high flow faucet. If not insulated and with a low flow faucet it can take 30 minutes or more to get a usable amount of water. By then the water is cooling off. You should be able to fill a tub in way less than 30 minutes. Related thought: Be sure your water heater is big enough for a tub. Don't see a reason to have a light dimmer in the bathroom. Mood lighting?? What mood are you trying to get into when you're in the bathroom? I have LED night lights all over the house. I can think of two reasons for low light in the bathroom. Night light is one of them. I also don't see a reason to have two sinks in a bathroom. In my 40 years of marriage there have been zero times when another sink would have helped. Agree. It's just more money and more square footage. San Antoin' - lots of great ideas but I don't understand the need for 36" around toilet, is that to give plumber more access space? 36" is for your comfort. You, especially when you reach your arms for the toilet paper, are wider than the toilet itself.