Some houses get lightly lived in, and then there are those abodes that weather the perfect storms of kids and pets and indoor floor sock hockey. Among other things. Do you have a house that works hard? Ok maybe you don’t exactly have floor hockey tournaments going down on the kitchen tiles, but your house is definitely well lived in.
Maybe the kids are rough on it or you’ve got a favorite furry friend who likes to be every bit a member of the family as the two legged ones. These kinds of houses sometimes end up needing some special attention, especially in the kinds of paints and coatings we choose to live our lives around. Paying a little attention to surfaces and other aspects of hard lived homes also means homes will wear better for the long run. And you’ll feel better living in a home you know is ready to be truly lived in.
There are many products and ideas out there you to help you get started protecting the places that see the most wear and tear in your house. The first place to look might be your floors. Protecting your floors with a durable coating will do wonders for the longevity of your flooring, and might even mean you’ll have less work to do in maintaining it. I don’t know any homeowner who wants to spend more time mopping or sweeping.
Walls are another big ticket feature of your house that are bound to show wear more than other places. Durable paints and protective coatings do wonders here too. It might be worth it to you to take a little action now, rather than making a much bigger and potentially costly investment down the road.
We liked looking around General Polymers and Sherwin Williamsfor some ideas and advice. Check it out and you can get started. What else do you worry about in your home? Maybe we can look into how you can solve those problems too? Let us know!
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.
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.
What would it be like to live in world that was completely self sustainable? How would life be different for us if we were completely free of our dependency on fossil fuels and foreign oil?
Well, some intrepid architects are out to get some very real answers to those questions. In what will be the nation’s first net-zero (emission free) community, a little place called Geos will be making its debut in Colorado in late 2008.
Entirely solar and geothermally powered, this experimental city should prove quite the study in green design and eco conscious building practices. And it may just be a jumping off point for increased interest in development and implementation of the strategies and products we’ll need if we want to cut our energy bills more efficiently.
Will it be, as some nay-sayers predict, a disappointing, low grade disaster that fails to make a clear case for the enviro-movement? Or will it be a 25 acre window into the future?
Transitional spaces tend to be the places in our homes that get left behind. Mud rooms, entry ways, even hallways, it seems like they get neglected until they malfunction, which isn’t very often.
If you’re like me, you focus your energies on the more pivotal parts of your habitat: the kitchen, bedrooms, the spaces where you spend the most time, but what if there were a way to do more with these forgotten, left over spaces?
Depending on how creative you’re willing to get, you can makeover these spaces into areas that enhance your life even more than your kitchen. What about transforming the entry way into a command center? Imagine having everything organized and in one place. Imagine leaving your house every morning with all the necessary essentials, getting to work on time, and returning home in the evenings to order? With the right space set up, you too can enjoy a blissful orchestration of each and every day.
Personalize these spaces to your needs as well so they’re fun and functional for what kind of work you need the space to do for you. For example, I like hooks. Big ones, little ones, stick-ons, over the door hooks…I haven’t yet found a hook I can’t get behind. Hooks are a great way to start using entry way space too, house your keys, your dog’s leash, your favorite sweater…the list goes on and on. More on why I love hooks so much later, but for now, take a peek at some transitional spaces gone very, very right:
It seems in this country, we like our houses big. The bigger the better. Bigness seems almost inextricably linked to our very happiness. But what does the size of our places really mean to us? How much of that size is complicating our lives rather than enhancing them? Is bigger really the answer we need?
In response this question, I thought about the concept of ‘bigness’ and our attitudes towards it: what it means and weather or not we can feel trapped by the big things in our lives.
If you’re feeling like your life might be getting a little too big, there are a lot of ways to go bigger by getting smaller. Smaller houses. Take a look at some of the new mini-homes we found:
The best part about mini homes is that creative design and innovations have made them just as comfortable, and in some cases even more luxurious than their much bigger counterparts.
The added bonus? Imagine living without the clutter, the hassle, the ‘bigness!’ Part of me can’t help but think how incredibly liberating that would be. Maybe we need to get away from big and rediscover simple, small, happy.
What do you really need to be happy? Sure we all have basic, universal needs, but what do you personally need to be happy? When was the last time you thought about it? I know it’s been a while so I sat down and made a list to help me:
• Family
• Friends
• Food
• Shelter
• Water
• Coffee
• A new pair of Asics every 4-6 months and a trail for running
• Free time
• Tunes
• Books
• My bicycle
• A comfy bed
• A laptop with internet access
• Paper and pencils
• My cell phone
• Meaningful work
• Balance
• To go camping every once in a while
• Train tickets to Seattle every couple months
• Frozen yogurt
• A sustainable schedule
My first thought was that this list could be longer, but I’m not sure that it can. Maybe it’s not what’s on the list that we need to think about, but what’s not.
To hire a professional home stager, or do it yourself?
These are just some of the questions that plague the minds of individuals in the market to sell their homes. Just how worth it is home staging though? Before you spend the money, it would be nice to know if you could count on a return on your investment, right?
The trouble is, home staging is a loosely defined art at best. There are some common sense tips floating around out there, but what kind of measurable result will forking over the cash for the professional contribute towards your home’s resale value? The answer to this question is subject to debate naturally, but if you ask this blogger, if you’ve got even a bit of the do-it-yourself-ing spirit, this is one area where you can save yourself some money.
Where should you start to stage it yourself? Think in terms of marketability: what colors, patterns, features etc. are going to appeal to the widest possible audience while still making your place seem ‘homey?’
You don’t have to be afraid anymore, here are some tips to get you started:
• Get curb appeal: clean up the yard, put down new sod, new house numbers, welcome mat etc.
• Fresh Color: Paint to make your home feel newer and more open and inviting
• Purge: 86 anything old or worn out, this includes carpeting, furniture, tile etc. This also applies to anything that personalizes your house. For example, family photos and fridge magnets should be out in hurry. Potential buyers won’t be able to visualize themselves living in your home if you’re still there.
• Naked Windows: get rid of window treatments. All of them. You want your home to seem bigger and more open. Nothing shrinks a room more than giant valances and heavy drapery.
• Smell the sell: Seriously, bake some chocolate chip cookies and let the warm fuzzies do the selling for you. Ok, so maybe your place dosen’t have to smell like freshly baking cookies, but it couldn’t hurt, and it certainly shouldn’t smell bad. Double check that everything is clean and fresh, and keep Fido outside. As much as we may love our furry friends, buyers may not dig the dander, or the odor that comes along with them.
• Size matters: The furniture you use should appropriately fit the space without overwhelming it.
• Lighten up: Never underestimate the power of good lighting. This might bring out the warm fuzzies even more than the cookies. For a really simple way to apply this tip, just turn on all the lights, even if you’re showing your house during the day.
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