Bright at Home

By The Editors
August 13, 2012 9:00 am
Bright at Home
Picasa

Home improvement can be a tedious, expensive and humorless endeavor, as property owners and viewers of Tim Allen sitcoms can attest.

Make your tool time productive and enjoyable with Brightnest.Brightnest

Just launched online by a helpfully OCD home designer, Brightnest diagnoses your abode and offers customized maintenance tips, to-do lists, and step-by-step instructions — thus saving your home from shabby, neighbor-shunning ignominy.

Set-up is a snap — just click a few icons to tell Brightnest specifics (e.g., my home has two floors, no pets, a standard water heater, exterior siding, etc.), and Brightnest reveals a personalized owner’s manual that reminds you what to do, plus e-mails you to remind you to do it (in the site’s parlance, “4 nuggets of awesome in your inbox 2 times a week.”)

The tips and tasks are divided into over a dozen categories, including everything from interior design to pest control (“Know Thy Enemy: Cockroaches”) to home energy audits, all listed by level of difficulty and estimated completion time.

Brightnest also offers “Homefolio,” an online locker where you can store important info (paint colors, phone numbers) and access owner’s manuals for almost every type of home appliance — basically providing all the faceless sagacity of Wilson, with none of the faceless creepiness.

The InsideHook Newsletter.

News, advice and insights for the most interesting person in the room.