The county I live in is big on pedestrian sidewalks. It recently started a major project along the road where my house is to put one of those look good/never use facilities for the "many" pedestrians you see in a suburbs of Atlanta. Nevertheless, considering my growing age and waistline (both not that bad for now!), I gave my consent for the construction. Of course the few thousand dollars I was able to negotiate for the inconvenience helped to convince me too:).
 
All was going great until one day, while the construction crew was changing the main water pipes, my water heater busted and flooded my basement with wholesome muddy water. Good thing our brave construction manager Scott was quick to respond to my SOS call and came to replace my water heater.

 
I bought the old water heater from Home Depot 5 years ago. Luckily for me it came with a six year warranty. Amazingly I was able to dig out the purchase receipt - it was so old that you can barely read the numbers. Armed with the broken water heater and the receipt we headed for Home Depot. After some haggling (no bad feelings - she has a business to run too) the store manager gave me full credit which I happily used towards the purchase of a new water heater.
 
So here is my recommendation to all home owners - store your home related receipts!! The best way to do it is to store them online so you can access from anywhere and no matter what the circumstances.

On Nesters.com you can go the My Homes section, create a profile for each of the homes you own(ed)/live(ed) in and store all relevant documents, receipts, etc. Of course the service is FREE.