For years, the home improvement conversation was basically a two-way race between Home Depot and Lowe’s. Now there’s a name in first place that a lot of shoppers outside the Midwest have never even set foot in. The Scores Menards posted a customer satisfaction score of 690 out of 1,000 in J.D. Power’s 2026 U.S. … Read more
Lowe’s shoppers checking out online or through the retailer’s app can now split big purchases into biweekly or monthly payments through Affirm, after the two companies announced a partnership on February 17, 2026 that puts installment financing directly at checkout instead of routing customers to a separate credit application. How the Payments Actually Work … Read more
Home canning season is in full swing this month, with late-summer tomatoes, green beans, peppers and the last of the stone fruit going into jars across the country. It’s also the time of year public health agencies see the same preventable mistake resurface: canning low-acid vegetables and meats in a boiling water bath instead of … Read more
Fall officially arrives at 12:06 a.m. UTC on September 23, 2026, which works out to 8:06 p.m. Eastern and 5:06 p.m. Pacific the evening before, putting the autumnal equinox a little more than two weeks out from today. That date is the unofficial deadline home-service companies and extension offices point to every year for the … Read more
Apple season is arriving with a smaller harvest this year, and it isn’t a regional hiccup — it’s a nationwide dip that USDA number-crunchers and the trade group representing the entire U.S. apple industry both agree on, just as pick-your-own orchards open their gates and kitchens start turning out the season’s first pies. A 7% … Read more
You spent decades picturing the day the kids finally moved out and the house went quiet. Now that it’s here, a growing number of homeowners in their 60s and 70s are filling that quiet with someone else’s spare room instead of packing up their own moving boxes. Rather than trading the family house for a … Read more
If your electric bill has felt heavier the last couple of summers, the blame extends well past your thermostat. The federal government’s own energy forecasters now expect the U.S. power grid to generate more electricity in 2026 than it ever has before, and they’re pointing to one driver above all others: the data centers running … Read more
Open your bank statement and count how much of it went to your mortgage or rent, plus gas and car payments, before you spent a single dollar on groceries. According to the federal government’s own household spending data, that combination now eats up more of the average family’s budget than it ever has on record. … Read more
Pest control used to mean ants, roaches and the occasional mouse. Lately, more of those service calls come with a very different kind of visitor on the other end — a raccoon in the attic, a squirrel in the soffit, or a colony of bats that found their way into a chimney. Wildlife-removal companies and … Read more
Somewhere under your street, there may be a pipe made of lead carrying water into your kitchen tap — and under a federal rule most homeowners have never heard of, your utility now has a hard deadline to dig it up and replace it. A 10-Year Countdown That Started in 2024 The EPA finalized the … Read more