Lessons in home ownership

When taking possession of your new home, have one person stay at the circuit breaker box while one other person goes around to every single electric socket in the house with a small device to check and see which breaker controls which socket (and each lightswitch that doesn’t obviously control a lightsocket, for that matter). Make a map that shows what the circuit breaker box really does.

I would never have thought to go look at the pump for my pond when attempting to trace a short under the breaker labeled “bedroom”.