New Year Resolutions for Your Home
This year, instead of making resolutions for yourself, here are some resolutions you can put into practice for a beautiful, energy efficient and comfortable home.
01/01/2019
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2019 is upon us and many are making a list of resolutions for the New Year. A new year is always brimming with possibilities and this year, instead of making personal resolutions, why not make a list of New Year Resolutions for your home. After all, this is where you spend most of your time, surrounded by family and friends and those you love.
1. Keep Clutter to a Minimum
Clearing out the clutter that tends to pile up over the year is definitely top of the list. Before you know it, clutter starts to accumulate in rooms and makes them look untidy and claustrophobic. Taking the time to do a monthly clutter cleanse will ensure that your rooms - and your home - will feel spacious and organised.
If you have not done a good cleaning for a long time, a good purge will be a great place to start. And you don't have to feel overwhelmed by this project - just take it one room at a time and toss out or donate items you don't need or haven't used for a long time.
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Pick a room to start in and work your way around the house from room to room. Set aside a day or days, either per week or per month, to truly clean out each room. This is also a great way to refresh a home for the new year ahead, so be ruthless and get rid of useless stuff.
2. Bring the Outdoors into your Living Spaces
Plants are excellent at improving indoor air quality and an arrangement of fresh flowers in a home instantly imparts personality and bright colour into any room. And it doesn't even matter if you don't have a green thumb.
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All the rooms in a home can benefit from a dose of greenery, or a bold pop of colour, and both of which can be achieved without spending a lot of money. Even a small pot plant will instantly make a room pop with colour and personality, and there are plenty of house plants that require very little attention to keep them alive and flourishing.
An even easier method of bringing a touch of nature to a home is to fill up a vase with fresh flowers cut from the garden. We all know how expensive bought flowers can be, but planting a few flowering shrubs in a garden will supply you with an everlasting source of blossoms or foliage that you can bring into the home.
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If you live life constantly on the go and there's no time to care for plants, you can bring a touch of nature indoors with wall art, a small terrarium, or even one of two cushions printed with botanical art designs.
3. Light Up a Home
Every home should feel light and airy and it's easy to do this with the right window treatments. Make a resolution to keep window treatments updated and fresh, room by room, for a house that is instantly on trend and feels like a home.
You can also use window treatments to add a splash of colour and pattern in a plain room, or to bring in a touch of style and unique personality. Roman blinds are excellent for all types of windows and you can easily make your own, or have experts at a fabric or curtain store make them up for you.
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And don't think that you have to fill your home with busy floral print patterns. There are plenty of modern fabric designs that incorporate subtle patterns taken from nature that look fantastic as window treatments.
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4. Add More Living Space
If you have been making promises to spend more time in the garden, or are looking at adding more living space to your home, make this year the year to get started.
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Don't keep putting off things that need to be done to your home. Before you know it another year will have passed you by. Large projects tend to feel a bit daunting and get pushed aside purely for a fear of how to go about starting a project. If this is the case, our advice is to look at each project and break it down into separate - smaller - projects. In this way it becomes a series of smaller do-able projects rather than a scary huge one.
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In 2019, make a promise to yourself to tackle projects head-on and not let them get pushed aside.
5. Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
2019 is the year to make a difference and improve your lifestyle by cutting down your carbon footprint. Reducing your energy consumption, active recycling, and implementing water savings in a home are a way for you to truly make a difference.
If everyone made an effort to notice small things - it would have a huge impact as a whole. Think about things like insulating your home to cut down on heating and cooling bills, fitting a rainwater harvesting system to care for your garden and fill up the swimming pool, and everyday things like switching off lights when you're not using rooms.
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If you are planning any improvements in the near future, look at how you can incorporate green or recycled materials, update old appliances with energy-saving models, and install LED lighting and water-saving measures throughout. Swapping out old fittings with modern, energy efficient alternatives will not only save you money on your monthly bills, it will also help reduce your carbon footprint and you will know that you are doing 'your bit' towards conserving our environment.
Putting into effect all or just one of the resolutions looked at above are not something you have to do immediately, but if you keep them in mind and start with small steps you will be making a start towards improving your home and your lifestyle.