I maintain that brisk temperatures are no reason to keep you indoors. After all, there’s good growing season left, and your garden can be taking advantage. It’s also the prime time to get your lawn ready for the conditions ahead.
Before the coldest of the weather hits, you might want to aerate your grass and lay down any of the fertilizer you may want to add. Photo Credit: flickr
You can even start planting in the late summer to harvest some early summer crops. Species especially suited to cooler environments include spinach, pansies, and garlic. It’s also a good chance to get your bulbs in the ground for next spring and plant some grasses, which bloom in the late summer and early fall.
Another great strategy for your fall time gardening projects might mean investing in a cold frame. These great little gadgets are lightweight, easily portable, and insulate plants or shrubs from the harshest of temperatures. If you’ve put in bushes or shrubs and the weather is set to get colder sooner than expected, cold frames are a great way to protect your investment and enjoy the foliage in the spring without worry.
Looking toward fall, we’re closing the windows more often and pulling out the weather stripping. Among the other emotions that come with preparing for the colder seasons, what you don’t want to be experiencing is the negative effects from VOCs lurking in your home as you’re sealing it up tight to keep out the cold.
We’re making the effort to make our homes more energy efficient and to save on our heating and cooling bills. However, this can sometimes have some unintended consequences. We’re talking VOCs: Volatile Organic Compounds, and not only can they damage your home’s indoor air quality, they can make you and your family sick.
Homeowners tend to experience the effects of VOCs more often as a result of sealing up their homes, because keeping the cold out often means keeping the fresh air out as well. Where do VOCs come from? Well, if you’ve recently had carpets installed, bought new furniture, or happen to be an enthusiastic user of household cleaning products; you’re going to want to pay attention:
In addition to carpets and cleaning products, VOCs can come from new beds. Mattresses can be big contributors to decline in indoor air quality as most are treated with chemical fire retardants. Good for your bed’s chances of surviving a blaze, not so good for your lungs. Carpets are big culprits for similar reasons, fibers trap and store chemicals, and synthetic carpet pads can off-gas harmful chemicals, mainly polybrominated diphenylethers, (PBDEs) that can cause illness and respiratory problems like asthma in high concentrations. Eeek. New furniture can also add to the problem for the same reasons.
Another big contributor? Paint. We all know it smells, and there’s a reason. Traditional paint is packed full of VOCs whose effects can linger long after the paint has dried.
Get the VOCs Out
So, what’s a homeowner to do? Short of freezing out your home in the dead of winter, there are a lot more practical options you can take to make your home’s air a bit safer:
Step 1: Replace all vinyl shower liners in favor of non-toxic nylon ones. Your vinyl liner releases chemicals (toluene and methylene chloride to name a few) that can cause allergic reactions.
Step 2: Use low or no VOC paint. (Available from most major paint suppliers)
Step 3: Stop chemically cleaning carpets and furniture- look for organic cleaning solutions that don’t use harsh, highly concentrated chemicals. Try to ditch home chemical cleaners entirely in favor of more organic options like vinegar, baking soda, etc.
Step 4: Stop dry cleaning. Not only is it expensive, but evidence suggests that the chemicals used in the process are carcinogenic and can accumulate in your home whenever you bring your comforters, bedspreads, drapes, rugs and clothes back from the cleaners.
Step 5: Cut down on carpet. If you’ve got the option, switch it out for hardwood or tile flooring options that don’t require chemical rich mats or stain treatments. If you can’t kick your carpet habit, clean it thoroughly with an organic cleaner and air out extensively afterwards. You can also opt for organic fiber rugs to keep the soft under your feet.
Step 6: Invest in solid wood furniture. Believe it or not, manufactured and pressed wood products can off-gas chemicals like formaldehyde over time as well, leading to decline in your home’s environment. Make sure you air out rooms where you’ve got a lot of particle board products frequently, and if you’ve just bought a similar product, set up a fan to vent fumes out of your home.
I live with someone who is very organized. If you can relate, it’s no secret that this can be a somewhat stressful endeavor. The benefits of living around such individuals though is that it provides a constant drive to find more easy ways to get and keep your home orderly.
And have we ever.
The season provides great inspiration to get organized as well, with kids setting off for school and schedules filling up, making the aspects of your home more streamlined will add up to more leisure moments during a time of year where play is generally at a premium.
I’m personally a big fan of hooks because they can be handy in any room in the house:
Use them next to your front door to house keys, pet leashes, hats, and coats. Mount them in your closet to organize belts, necklaces, ties, scarves, hats, or ribbons. In the kitchen, hang dishtowels, measuring cups, and large utensils. For the bathroom, mount them on the wall or behind the door for more places to tuck drying towels, robes, brushes and scrubbers.
Pegboard is another way to create more unique storage and order in your home. Frame it for a more sophisticated look, and get started placing organizer boxes and bins, note pads and pens. This element is particularly useful and appropriate for a laundry room or garage entry space.
Get your home office buzzing with efficiency using magnetic strips to hold ‘to-do’ items, reminders, and calendars. Also, never underestimate the power of new shelving. If you’re running low on space, shelves can be mounted higher walls to add an interesting visual element, as well as an out of way place to store less frequently used items.
Do you ever think about how your home and your lifestyle impacts the world at large? I cringe every time I commute to work (13 miles to work, 13 miles home), and dream of one day being able to bike. Your impact on the planet has come to be known as your “carbon footprint,” and making your footprint as small as possible means understanding how your personal choices affect the planet.
To better understand your household’s environmental impact, there are a plethora of calculators that let you enter in the specifics of your home, and car and airline travel habits to calculate your impact rating. Along with your rating they offer suggestions on how to lower your score, like switching to fluorescent light bulbs, installing skylights in low light areas, or simply recycling more.
This is my personal favorite: Low Impact Living’s Environmental Impact Calculator. Designed well, easy to follow, and offering straight forward suggestions on how to lower your score, this calculator is a great place to start exploring your impact.
I’ve been avoiding it like every other sun worshipping summer lover, but after all the ‘fall this’, ‘autumn that,’ I suppose it’s in our best interests to concede that maybe it might be time for another season’s transition, possibly… maybe.
What the onslaught of back to school sales and plaid scarves does not have to mean however, is that we have to sacrifice our time outside. Not only do I refuse, but with a few cleverly crafted home ideas, you can eek out every last drop of valuable sunshine before you have to say good bye to it until spring or your next trip to a tropical location.
Get More From Every Ray
One of the best ways we know how to enjoy natural light all year long is by taking advantage of a sunroom addition or an enclosed patio. Not only are you gaining some livable square footage, you’re gaining it in an area that’s sure to qualify for some quality time. Think of barbeques long into October, cozying up with hot cocoa to watch the snow fall in 360 degrees. As much as I hate the thought now, when the season’s in full swing, I want to be as much a part of it as I can. After all, if you’ve got the space, why not use it as much as possible right? Photo Credit: Lindal Additions
Your options can also be as versatile as the climate. If you want your enclosure to be modifiable during the summer months to regulate heat, there are many options for modular enclosures that can change along with the seasons.
Factor in Some Sun Strategies
After a more budget friendly way to get your daily dose of vitamin D during the coming winter cold? Bay windows are a great place to soak in the December sunshine. Just make sure you choose well insulated and efficient windowsto keep your home’s heating costs down.
As for me, I’m not letting fall get me down just yet. There’s still plenty of sunshine left, and I plan on making every bit count until it absolutely gets too crisp. And then I’ll just have to console myself with some time on the slopes or some pumpkin pie. (I suppose every season has its perks!)
I don’t want to let myself admit it, but we’re slowly creeping towards fall. The weather will start to get a little crisper, and you might find yourself grabbing for blankets more than you used to.
Insulation = Energy Efficency
As the weather starts to shift, you’ll want to consider insulating your home so that it can be as snug and warm as possible this fall and winter. The better your insulation, the better your energy efficiency will be. And who doesn’t want that?
One place that often gets overlooked when it comes to insulating your home is the garage. Upgrading or replacing your garage door can make a big impact overall.
If you want to replace your garage door, you may want to look at models that are steel with a polyurethane core. Wood and fiberglass doors are generally considered to be less energy efficient than their steel counterpart.
It’s often popular to choose garage doors with windows in the door to allow for some natural light in your garage. If you choose this design, be sure to check that the windows are just as energy efficient as the rest of the door.
Easy Garage Door Maintenance Can Save You Money
Even if you’re not ready to do a full garage door replacement, you can check and replace your weatherstripping to ensure you’re not letting in any extra drafts. You’ll want to have proper weatherstripping around and between the door panels. This is an easy weekend project that can end up saving you money on energy bills.
As fall approaches we’ll have more tips on how to insulate your home, and get it ready for the colder season.
Fences these days aren’t all about keeping the neighbors out. Besides, what if you like your neighbors? There are a lot of new ideas for fencing, and we think they’re great ways to manage your yard and landscape. The right fence can set the stage for a great garden and an enticing entry to your home.
Take a peek at some of our favorite fencing ideas:
You don’t have to take your fencing all the way modern to enjoy the benefits of a new fence. Classic fences can have the same great effect on your landscape to give your home the face lift it needs to make the transition from summer to fall.
What we don’t like is chain link. This style of fence just has to go. In our opinion, no fence is better than a chain link fence. When there are so many other options available, you deserve better than to settle for a chain link fence. Look at wood, stone, iron, composite materials to start; you’d be surprised at how many choices you have to stay away from chain link to border your yard:
Owning your own home is a major milestone and a pretty fun undertaking. However, chances are your new home will also need continual work, especially if you live in an older home. The good news is, working on your house can be fun, provided you’ve got the right tools and you’ve taken the time to organize yourself.
So, whether you’ve just moved into your house, or even if you’ve been there a while, it’s never too late to get your go to home repair kit together. Key items you’ll need for this kit will include mostly tools, but you might want to have some first aid components close by as well in case you’re an accident prone repair person such as myself.
Get Organized to Get Going on Your House
What are the basic tools you’ll need as a homeowner? Take a look at our list to see what you’ve already got on hand, and what you might need to purchase:
This is just a place to start, and once you’ve got all these basics covered, it might be time to go over your house and make a list of the items you’ll need that will cover potential problems specific to your house. For example, if you’ve got a tile roof, think about the special materials and tools you might need to address any issues that come up with your roof.
Organizing all your tools and resources in one place will make handling the hiccups of homeownership that much easier, and if you’ve got the right mindset, pretty fun too.
