Manuals, warranties and passwords?

Week 3:

Manuals, warranties, passwords and other things to remember.

Day 1:

One of the things I find the most difficult about being online and digital is my passwords. You need so many and you run the risk of being hacked if you keep one password for everything. It is easier to remember a password for accounts that you use often but what about websites you use only once every few months?

So I have written down my passwords and put them somewhere, that I will always remember, but not near my computer, on my computer, or on my phone.

I have a downloadable form you can use to write these important details down. You can keep a book or file with the forms inside.

To make it not too time consuming, all you do is write down the passwords in the book only when you access that website.  This way it only takes a minute.

However you choose to keep your passwords, you should write down the following details:

1. Name of website or business
2. URL of website for logging in purposes (website address)
3. The email address you gave.  I have 4 emails; 1 for private, 1 for kasheringyourlife, one for adiesdesigns and one for subscriptions to other blogs that I think may help me but who I know I won’t look at often.
4. Username
5. Password, you can also write down any password hints that you provided.

You need to decide if writing down all your passwords is too risky, or if it is worth just having one password for everything, or even if you should just try remembering all the different passwords.

Obviously if you are going to write down the passwords, you are not going to label them ‘PASSWORDS’ for the entire world to see.

The other thing that you need to consider is if something happens to you, your family may need to access some of these websites.

Yes this may be risky, but only you can decide whether it is worth it or not.

There are apps available if you prefer to use that but ever since watching a few episodes of ‘CSI: Cyber’, I am reluctant to use the apps.

Remember to do what is best for you and your family. My ideas are only suggestions and I would love it if you had alternative suggestions to share with the group.

Day 2:

Something that I know a fair number of us don’t do, is keep all our warranties and appliance manuals together. Do you know where the instruction books for your microwave, washing machine, dishwasher, fridge, TV, etc. are?

Walk around your house collecting all the warranties and manuals you can find. Don’t worry if you can’t find some.  By the time the house is organised, you will have all the manuals you need.

Day 3:

As we are trying to declutter our homes, a very important aspect of sorting warranties and manuals is that you can get rid of the ones for which the warranty has expired and/or you no longer have the appliance

Day 4:

Using Google, download all the manuals that you haven’t got for the appliances you own and store them on your computer or print them if you wish to.

Day 5:

Now that you have everything, it is time for you to store your warranties and manuals.

I have thought of possibly 3 ways to store manuals and 2 ways for warranties.

The first way is to store manuals and warranties in a home filing system (coming up in a later installment), just create a file or folder into which you put everything.

The second way is to keep manuals and warranties together in a space/file/folder in the room in which the appliance is stored.

The third way only works with manuals and that is to download the manual for your appliance to your computer and store it there or on a memory stick.  You can then get rid of the printed manuals by putting them in the paper recycling!

As always, share how your decluttering is going and any tips or tricks that are working for you and your home.

Show off your hard work by posting your picture to the FB page.