Have you ever stood in a flooding garage, phone in hand, searching Facebook for a plumber on a holiday weekend? Or packed up your home during a fire evacuation and realized you had no idea what mattered or where anything was?
That was me. Twice.
It started with water coming through the ceiling.
It was a Friday before Labor Day weekend. A neighbor, a retired firefighter, came running to the front door. He walked around the side of the house and the outside wall was soaked from the inside out. When the garage opened, it was, in his words, “raining inside my garage. Like a full rainstorm inside my house.”
The bathroom upstairs was completely underwater. Water was flowing into both kids’ bedrooms on either side. And in the middle of all of it, standing in a flooded garage trying to think, there was one glaring problem: she had no idea who to call.
“I went to Facebook to ask if anyone knew one. Because I had zero idea who to call, and I was terrified I wasn’t going to find anyone over a holiday weekend.”
She had lived in that house for years. She had a husband. She had a neighbor who happened to be a retired firefighter. And she was still a hot mess.
Then Came the Fires
Flash forward to January 2025. The LA fires. Living about 30 miles outside of LA, her neighborhood went under evacuation warning. Not an order, a warning. Which meant: pack your stuff, get ready to go.
She and her family started packing, taking videos of valuables for potential insurance claims, trying to figure out what mattered. And two things stopped her cold.
“One: I didn’t know what to pack. I had important things scattered everywhere, not labeled, not organized, not together.”
“Two: I was so focused on managing stuff that I wasn’t focused on protecting my family.”
They came back to their home completely unscathed. But that night cracked something open.
“I thought about all the women like me, women who let this stuff fall on a partner, or who are going through it completely on their own, or who maybe don’t have a neighbor who happened to be a retired firefighter. And I thought: this is ridiculous. I have to be more prepared than this. We all do.”
The Poll That Said Everything
After sharing these experiences with her online community, she polled her Facebook group and asked a simple question: How well do you know your home? Could you turn off the water or the gas in an emergency? Do you have numbers for service providers saved somewhere you can actually find them?
Seventy-three percent of the women said they were either winging it or had no idea how their home worked.
“These are not helpless women. These are grown, capable, smart women who manage careers and families and whole lives.”
And almost three quarters of them did not actually know how their home functioned.
Five Things Every Woman Should Know About Her Home
The lesson is not about being handy. It is not about knowing how to fix things. “It’s about being informed.”
Here are five places to start.
1. Where is your water shutoff? Not “somewhere outside, I think.” The actual location. “When water is coming through your ceiling, you have approximately zero seconds to figure it out.”
2. Do you have a plumber’s number saved in your phone? Not a Google search. An actual saved contact. Same goes for an electrician, an HVAC technician, and a locksmith. “You do not want to be crowdsourcing a plumber on Facebook on Labor Day weekend.”
3. Where is your circuit breaker, and do you know how to reset it? This one is for anyone who has ever stood in the dark flipping switches and hoping for the best. The breaker box is usually in a closet, garage, or utility room. Find it. Consider labeling those breakers while you are at it.
4. Do you have your important documents somewhere you can find them in three minutes? Insurance policies, your lease or mortgage documents, warranties, your will and trust. “If you have to evacuate, you will not have time to dig. You’ll grab what’s visible and leave. Make the right things visible.”
5. Does anyone else know how to get into your home? A spare key. A garage code. A lockbox. “This is the one people skip because they don’t want to think about ‘if something happens to me.’ It feels morbid. It’s not morbid. It’s grown ass.”
One More Episode Worth Your Time
If this resonates, the episode that inspired all of it is worth a listen. You can find that here.
And if you want to talk through any of this with other women who are figuring it out alongside you, the Grown Ass Woman’s Guide Facebook group is where the community lives. It is also where the poll happened that surfaced the 73% statistic. That number did not come from strangers. It came from the community.
Being Informed Is Not Optional
Whether you own, rent, are newly single, recently divorced, or just bought your first place, these things matter. Not because you have to do everything alone, but because “being informed is not optional. It is the foundation of being a grown ass woman.”
“It’s not enough to hope someone else will handle it.”
The question is simple: do you want to be the person scrambling on Facebook on a holiday weekend, or the one who has a clear system?
The House Manual is the system. It covers emergency contacts, home systems, service providers, and a step-by-step action plan for when something goes wrong. It is available now at grownasswoman.guide/housemanual with 30% off the early bird price, automatically applied at checkout.
Complete Transcript
Hey — before we get into today’s episode, if you’ve been listening for a while, you know I’m all about helping you get your life together in the most practical, non-judgmental way possible. And I am so excited to share something brand new with you.
The House Manual: The Grown Ass Women’s Guide to Home Management, Maintenance, and Peace of Mind is now officially available. It is a complete system for documenting how your home works, who to call, where everything is, and what to do when something goes wrong. Because you know it will.
If today’s episode resonates with you at all, you are definitely going to want it. Get 30% off with a limited-time early bird price. The link is in the show notes, or visit grownasswoman.guide/housemanual. The discount is automatically applied. Okay, let’s dive in.
It was a Friday afternoon — the Friday before Labor Day weekend. I was sitting in my home office recording an episode with my friend and guest Courtney Townley. Some of you know Courtney; she’s been on the show many times, and spoiler alert: she’s the guest in my next episode.
Anyway, I look out the window and I see my neighbor running toward my front door. Not a neighbor I hang out with. I’m thinking, that’s weird. So I tell Courtney I’ve gotta go, I answer the door, and my neighbor — a retired firefighter, which will matter in a second — tells me my house is flooding.
I’m like, how do you even know that? But he walks me around the side of the house, and the outside wall is just wet. Soaked from the inside out. He has me open the garage, and when I did, it was raining inside my garage. Like a full rainstorm inside my house.
We run upstairs, and the bathroom my kids use is completely underwater. The water is flowing into both of their bedrooms on either side. At some point during all of this, my neighbor turns off the water to the house. I don’t even know in what order it all happened.
Then he tells me to call 9-1-1. Not because there’s a fire — but because the fire department actually helps with flooding. I had no idea this was a thing, and I didn’t want to clog up the 9-1-1 system. So I’m like, I don’t think we need to do that. But he said, “Call them now.” And they came. And they helped. And crisis was averted — ish.
Now I needed to find a plumber. So I did what any normal Gen X middle-aged woman does: I went to Facebook to ask if anyone knew one. Because I had zero idea who to call, and I was terrified I wasn’t going to find anyone over a holiday weekend.
Here’s the thing: I had lived in my house for years and I was completely helpless. I have a husband. I had a neighbor who happened to be a retired firefighter. I had people around me — and I was still a hot mess.
Flash forward to January 2025. The LA fires. We’re about 30 miles outside of LA, but we have our own fires happening, and my neighborhood goes under evacuation warning. Not evacuation order — warning. Which means: pack your stuff, get ready to go. Because if this moves from yellow to red, you have no time later. You just go.
So my husband and I and our three kids start packing up the house. We’re taking videos of our valuables for potential insurance claims. We’re trying to figure out what matters, what to grab, what to protect.
And I realized two things that stopped me cold.
One: I didn’t know what to pack. I had important things scattered everywhere — not labeled, not organized, not together. I was wasting time on things that didn’t matter because I couldn’t quickly identify what did.
Two: I was so focused on managing stuff that I wasn’t focused on protecting my family.
Now — we spent the night at the grandparents’, came back to our home completely unscathed. We were absolutely okay. I am grateful every single day, and I think about the people in LA who were not so lucky.
But that night cracked something open in me. Because I thought about all the women like me — women who let this stuff fall on a partner, or who are going through it completely on their own, or who maybe don’t have a neighbor who happened to be a retired firefighter. And I thought: this is ridiculous. I have to be more prepared than this. We all do.
It’s not enough to hope someone else will handle it.
I recently did an episode with a woman named Beth, who actually has it under control — I’ll link to it in the show notes. That episode inspired me to poll my Facebook community, the Grown Ass Women’s Guide group.
I asked them: How well do you know your home? If you had an emergency right now, could you turn off the water or the gas? Do you have numbers for service providers saved somewhere you can actually find them?
73% of the women in my group said they were either winging it or had no idea how their home worked.
73%.
These are not helpless women. These are grown, capable, smart women who manage careers and families and whole lives. And almost three quarters of them don’t actually know how their home functions. And honestly? I was right there with them. I’ve lived in my house for 10 years and I’m still learning.
But here’s what I want you to hear: it’s not about being handy. It’s not about knowing how to fix things. It’s about being informed. It’s about knowing where the shutoff valve is. Having your plumber’s number somewhere you can actually find it. Knowing what’s in your home, where it lives, who to call when something goes wrong.
Because something will go wrong. That’s not the pessimist in me. That’s the realist. The question is whether you want to be the person scrambling on Facebook on a holiday weekend, or the one who has a clear system. I’m choosing the latter. And if you need it, I’d love to help you too.
Five Things Every Woman Should Know About Her Home
Let’s talk about what every woman — whether you own, rent, or are currently sleeping on a very nice pullout couch while you figure out your next move — should actually know about the place she lives in.
1. Where is your water shutoff?
Not “somewhere outside, I think” or “my ex handled that.” The actual location. Because when water is coming through your ceiling — and I speak from experience — you have approximately zero seconds to figure it out. If you’re renting, this matters even more, because your landlord is not showing up at 11 PM on a Friday. Go find your water shutoff. I’ll wait.
2. Do you have a plumber’s number saved in your phone?
Not a Google search. An actual saved contact. Same goes for an electrician, an HVAC technician, and a locksmith. You do not want to be crowdsourcing a plumber on Facebook on Labor Day weekend. Again. Experience.
3. Where is your circuit breaker, and do you know how to reset it?
This one’s for the women who have stood in the dark flipping switches and hoping for the best. The breaker box is usually in a closet, garage, or utility room. Mine’s outside on the side yard. It has little switches — one of them is probably slightly off from the others. That’s your guy. Flip it all the way off, then back on. And if you’re an overachiever, consider labeling those breakers. We’ll talk about that another time.
4. Do you have your important documents somewhere you can find them in three minutes?
Not in a pile. Not in a drawer you haven’t opened since 2013. I’m talking insurance policies, your lease or mortgage documents, warranties, and maybe your will and trust. Because if you have to evacuate, you will not have time to dig. You’ll grab what’s visible and leave. Make the right things visible.
5. Does anyone else know how to get into your home?
If something happens to you, is there a spare key? A garage code? A lockbox? This is the one people skip because they don’t want to think about “if something happens to me.” It feels morbid. It’s not morbid. It’s grown ass.
The House Manual
This is exactly why I built the House Manual. It is not a home repair guide. It is not a DIY course. It’s a complete documentation system for your home — the things you need to know, the people you need to call, the information you need to have when everything hits the fan.
It covers your emergency contacts and service providers: the plumber, the electrician, HVAC — all of it in one place. It walks you through your home systems so you actually know where things are and how they work. And it includes a home emergency action plan so that when something happens, you’re not standing in a flooded garage trying to think.
It is the thing I wish I’d had back on that September day when my house was raining inside.
I know so many women who are handling it on their own — women who are single or newly divorced and suddenly responsible for a home they shared with someone else, women who inherited a house they don’t fully understand yet, women who just bought their first place and are figuring it out as they go. We are constantly moving through transitions. And in those transitions, we don’t always have partners. We don’t always have neighbors who happen to be retired firefighters. We need to be able to handle our own stuff.
Not because we have to do everything alone. Absolutely not. But because being informed is not optional. It is the foundation of being a grown ass woman.
The House Manual is how you start. The link is in the show notes, or go to grownasswoman.guide/housemanual. Fill it out. Put it somewhere you can actually find it.
And if you’re in my Facebook group and you voted on that poll — thank you. Your honesty is exactly why this community exists. We are all figuring this out together, and that is the whole point.
I’ll see you next time. Until then: you are a grown ass woman. Act accordingly.
