Oregon just did something it has never done before in the nearly five-decade history of United Van Lines’ annual movers study: it became the single most popular destination in the country, with 65% of all moves involving the state last year being people arriving rather than leaving, according to the mover’s 49th annual National Movers … Read more
Americans wasted about 70 million tons of food in 2024, worth roughly $380 billion that never made it from the store or the garden into anyone’s actual meal, according to ReFED’s 2026 U.S. Food Waste Report, the most comprehensive national accounting of what the country throws away and why. Spread across every person in the … Read more
Every year, grills spark an estimated 10,600 home fires across the United States, according to the National Fire Protection Association’s most recent home grill fires report. That number includes 4,900 structure fires and 5,700 outdoor fires each year, together responsible for 10 civilian deaths, 160 injuries, and $149 million in direct property damage annually. And … Read more
Here’s a number that stops most homeowners cold: between 2000 and 2008, at least 30 people died as a direct result of deck collapses in the United States, and more than 75 percent of everyone standing on a deck when it gave way was hurt or killed in the fall, according to forensic engineering data … Read more
Home improvement scams now rank as the fifth-riskiest scam category tracked nationwide, and roughly seven in ten people who engage with one end up losing money — a susceptibility rate the Better Business Bureau Institute for Marketplace Trust puts at 69.1%, with a median loss of $1,405 per victim. This summer, attorneys general in Indiana, … Read more
Spend $28,458 refacing cabinets and swapping appliances in a dated kitchen, and the data says you’ll recoup $32,141 at resale — more than every dollar back, and then some. Spend $164,104 gutting that same kitchen down to the studs for a designer-grade overhaul, and you’ll recover roughly 36 cents on every dollar, according to the … Read more
You’ve probably done this yourself: spent a rainy afternoon scrolling through sofa after sofa, saving a dozen browser tabs, comparing the same sectional across five different retailers’ websites. And then, right when it’s time to click “add to cart,” something makes you close the laptop and go look for your car keys instead. That instinct … Read more
If you’ve ever stood in your living room wondering whether all that pillow-fluffing and closet-purging before a showing actually changes anything, the National Association of Realtors just answered that question with real numbers instead of a stager’s sales pitch. Twenty-nine percent of agents say staged homes bring in offers that land one to ten percent … Read more
By the end of this year, American homeowners will have poured an estimated $518 billion into remodeling, repairs, and home improvements, according to the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. That is a genuinely enormous number, real money changing hands for new kitchens, replaced roofs, finished basements, and … Read more
Run a damp cloth with your favorite “natural” all-purpose spray across the kitchen counter tonight, and you’re releasing a puff of chemistry you probably never signed up for. Researchers recently tested thirty cleaning products pulled straight from store shelves, a mix of conventional and green, and identified 530 distinct volatile organic compounds drifting into the … Read more