There are lots of things a homeowner can do, improve, change or add to in terms of increasing the enjoyment of a personal home. However, one of the biggest challenges that tends to stop good ideas in their tracks tends to be the scale of what might be involved as well as the cost of the change as well. When folks start adding up the various expenses, they suddenly get gun shy with regards to moving forward. And that means really good ideas and motivation can go sideways, making a home frustrating.
However, folks are not left out in the cold. There are multiple ways a home can be changed and improved without the problem of big bills at the end or getting into deep in a project that can’t be finished properly. Here’s 25 ways your house can be turned from just a boring place to live to a fun place to anticipate getting back to every day.
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Tip 1 – Enjoy your outside area with seats and small tables
Getting some basic patio chairs and a small table don’t represent a big cost; many times these items tend to go on sale at hardware shops and seasonal big stores to make room for other items. Even if the color isn’t wonderful, outdoor furniture can be repainted to whatever color you want with a bit of spray-paint. And as soon as you have the items placed, you can sit back, relax and enjoy the outdoors in your backyard. It’s a simple but effective idea to create additional usage space at home.
Tip 2 – Think about Getting an Energy Audit
A home isn’t fully enjoyable if you’re losing the environmental benefits it’s supposed to have in the first place. If your home has air and temperature leaks all over the place, it’s just going to be miserable and frustrating to live in regularly. Loose windows, holes in the vent ducting, ill-fitting doors and similar all contribute to your home losing heat and cool air, depending on which one you need at the time. But if you don’t know where these issues are, all you have is a room or home you don’t like being in as the heat goes up or the cold goes down. An audit points out exactly where the problem is, and how simple fixes like sealing foam or sealant can provide a temporary fix until you’re ready to do more serious work.
Tip 3 – Don’t Like the Color of Room? Change It
Repainting a room or a home interior is a simple, easy way to dramatically change the feel and color of a room dramatically. Want more light in a room? Change it to a light color or go for maximum lightness with a full white-wash of the walls and ceiling. Want a darker, richer feel? Go for a thick, warm rich paint over to a room to give it a transformation where to curl up with a good book. Color has a dramatic feel and change to it when a room is redone, and the cost is minimal. The greatest resource one has to expend is just the time it takes to do the work.
Tip 4 – Resurrect your furniture with Paint Change As Well
Do you have an old cabinet that is showing its age and making your interior look a bit drab? Just like the house walls, the furniture inside can be changed as well. Simply sand down the furniture to as much as the bare wood as possible, clean it up of any dust, and then either stain the wood of cabinet or paint it with a new color. The results also only require mostly your time and elbow grease to make happen.
Tip 5 – Get Rid of Clutter
Over time we all have a bad habit of collecting stuff we want at here or there and pile up. Unfortunately, all that storage of stuff, even if organized, ends up creating clutter at home and, more importantly, it takes up space. Walk through your home and take an inventory of everything in your room that have. Then ask yourself a simple question: have you used the item in the last 12 months? If not, that item is a good candidate for removing and putting in storage, at least in your garage. You will always have it to pull back when needed, but you’ve just added a lot of usable space to the inside of your home to enjoy again.
Tip 6 – Light Things Up
As humans we respond to light. We need it naturally to keep our sleep cycle in order, and we need it emotionally to feel comfortable and relaxed. When we have dark rooms and hallways, it has an effect of triggering a lack of energy, even a bit of depression. Avoid this feeling and boost the positive feel of your home with a few strategically-placed lights. A few changes can produce a big shift in how your home feels.
Tip 7 – Change Out the Front Door
You can literally transform the look of the front of your house by simply changing the front door. For a moderate price, a new front door can be had at most local hardware stores. The trick is to size the door correctly and match the hinges. That’s the easiest way to remove the old door and hang the new one. The whole job only takes about an hour to complete, and the visual improvement will be noticed by everyone.
Tip 8 – Improve Your Water
Municipal water generally follows all the basic levels of quality expected by government standards. However, that doesn’t mean your water is enjoyable. This is the primary reason many folks choose to buy water even when they have it from the tap. However, by simply installing a water filter on your main faucets, you’ve just changed your main water supply and created a significant upgrade for what you need most in your home, drinking water.
Tip 9 – Change Your Flooring Quickly
Old time and carpet areas look bland after a while, especially areas that have high traffic. A complete flooring replacement can be costly and hard to achieve. But you can apply a simple fix very easily with rugs. Today’s rugs come in traditional large sizes as well as long runners for hallways and small ones for doorways. A few matching rugs improve the color of your flooring, brighten it up, and make the room warmer and inviting.
Tip 10 – Basement Improvements
If you have a basement, it’s very likely that the room and stairway down to it are unimproved. Most basements are intended for storage only. That means it’s up to the homeowner to figure out what to do with the basement after moving in. A simple improvement can be made with self-sticking tiles. Unlike regular tiles that need heavy duty adhesive applied to the floor first, self-sticking tiles are easy to install and don’t require a big production. Doing so changes the basement from a raw storage unit to a livable space, adding to the use of your home immediately.
Tip 11 – Go Up Into the Attic
The attic is very similar to the basement in that it’s typically not intended for regular use. But that can be changes very quickly. Similar to the basement, the attic just needs flooring finish. Unlike the basement, however, the attic tends to be farther along and requires less to improve. Simply adding in some drywall and basic carpet or rugs makes the space usable quickly and at very low cost. You just have to do the legwork getting the materials up to the top of the house.
Tip 12 – Add a Deck to the Outside Backyard
Adding a deckspace is a bit more of a project, but it can definitely recapture backyard space lost to uneven ground. Too often the backyard of homes might have a drop from the backyard door. A deck evens out this issue and provides the ability to create flat space, and that adds to patio space for sitting and BBQing among other ideas. Decks are easy to build if you understand how to build the frame first. The feet are typically sold as pre-cast cement blocks, and 4×4 timbers make perfect upright legs. Then you just connect the legs with 2x4s or 2x6s and lay the deck boards on top horizontally. If you’re good with a hammer, nails and a powersaw this is a doable backyard project.
Tip 13 – Add Some Trees, Get Some Shade
Trees are not very expensive if young or pre-mature. Don’t get the young ones as it will take years for them to grow. However, medium growth and pre-mature trees have some years already on them and size, which means it won’t take long for them to establish and expand in size quickly. And that means the addition of shade, protection from wind, and a far more natural approach to your home living space.
Tip 14 – Clean the Driveway
A home’s driveway takes a beating over the years and builds up stains and dirt. This makes the home look drab and unwelcoming. A cleaning has the same effects as cleaning inside the home. It gets rid of dirt, improves the look, and make the property far more enjoyable mentally. A driveway cleaning is a simple process of water, cleaning chemicals and bit of scrubbing. Done correctly, a driveway can go from a basic gray to a bright light cement color again.
Tip 15 – Place Lots of Outdoor Lighting
Both your front lawn and backyard are typically only lit by the home’s front and porch light. And that leaves a lot of dark places in the night. By adding simple landscape lighting, however, you can brighten up the backyard and frontyard, making both look a lot better and inviting. The installation is simple, and easy to do with basic instructions.
Tip 16 – Improve Your Lawn
Many times lawns grow dingy over time. They develop dry spots or unevenness due to the ground hardening over time. A lawn renovation can improve the look of a lawn systematically, and your overall home appeal will visually improve dramatically as a result. Both front and backyards can have the lawn renovated in a day or two with a few dedicated hands, removal of thatch and dry lawn, replanting, and fertilizing.
Tip 17 – Add Storage Space
Having sufficient place to move things out of the way is key to enjoying your home inside. Unfortunately, storage typically just involves closets and standard cabinets. And people accept that and often do no more. However, the addition of new shelves, suspending cabinets and closets where none exist helps you get things off the ground and stored properly. That in turn gives you more usable space as well as functional access where things can be found instead of all over the place.
Tip 18 – Have a Garage Sale
When you do an inventory, discussed earlier, your home is going to have a lot of items that are old and just taking up space. You don’t need them at all, and they just haven’t been removed. So, make it easier for yourself to clean out your home and sell them at a garage sale. Let people pay you to take away what you don’t want any more. You’d be surprised what people buy and pay for, and you no longer have to worry about what else do with the times.
Tip 19 – Charity is a Good House-Cleaning Tool as Well
If you don’t want to hassle with a garage sale but need to get rid of clutter that clogs up your home, give it away. Take any usable items to a local charity and donate the goods. Make sure to get a receipt for their value, and then claim the donations on your next tax return filing. Not only do you improve your home, you get a valuable deduction on your taxes if anything is owed.
Tip 20 – Add Blinds to Block Heat Movement
Windows blinds are amazingly simple to install in a window and have a powerful effect. They can block heat from leaving your home through glass and they can block some of the temperature from outside getting in and affecting your home, such as hot sun. Even better, many hardware stores can size your blinds right in the shop, matching your window areas exactly. They come with a low cost and can be installed as a set within a day with a few basic tools.
Tip 21 – Consider Cleaning Automation
Simple tools are now becoming automated to do their work without the need for your involvement. The most obvious one is the carpet and floor cleaner. A number of companies now make robot cleaners, which at first might seem a bit pricey. However, once you use one, you realize how much time you gain not focused on the task. In addition, the robot tools can be programed to work at night while you sleep. You wake to a cleaner home, and the robot tool does all the work. Anything about home enjoyment starts with you actively spending your time wisely instead of losing it.
Tip 22 – Change All the Senses of Your Home, Not Just the Visual Ones
Your senses all react to your home and how it is taken care of. Smell is a highly influential one. While you can clean and sanitize, some smells are just natural from the materials the home is made as well as from your living there. But you can change the smells with easy to use items and tools. Incense is a simple, effective way to change the aroma of a room or home. If smoky incense is offensive, however, then try fragrance emitters. You can get these in any store and plug them into your wall socket. The smells come in different choices as well.
Tip 23 – Consider Dust
Dust has a constant way of building up, and its major cause is from us. A lot of the dust that gets into a home is oftentimes produced by us and our living. Regular cleaning of dust however, reduces the risk of allergies as well as keeps surfaces a lot cleaner. So don’t overestimate the power of a simple wipe-down done regularly and vacuum cleaning.
Tip 24 – Upgrade Your Toilets
A common, over-looked item in a home is the lowly toilet. Hardly ever seen but used every day, the toilet often ends up being something homeowners get embarrassed about and try to keep behind closed doors. A changeout can be a simple but powerful way to increase the personal enjoyment of your home. And, toilets don’t cost much, depending on the model. If you can lift at least 50 lbs, you can do the job yourself in about an hour. Some really new models are actually pretty attractive with more than just basic flushing in the design. Take a look.
Tip 25 – Put in a Family Table
Get your home back to being what it’s supposed to be, a place where you and your family connect. A round or large family table brings everyone together. Even if just once a day, a chance for everyone to reconnect is essential for the health of your family. And what makes your home the most enjoyable involves whom you share it with every day and every night.
