Category Archives: For the Home

5 Simple Ways to Declutter Your Living Room This Holiday Season

The holidays are just around the corner, and you now have plenty to time to celebrate, relax, and most of all, catch up on all the cleaning you missed in the past few months. Yes, cleaning. You have to do a bit of cleaning to prepare for the holiday unless you want to lump your decorations with all that’s cluttering your home.

You don’t have to tidy your entire home in one go. Prioritize your living room for now since its where the decoration will be put up and where you’ll be entertaining guests. That said, here are some simple tips for decluttering your living room this holiday season.

Sort Items

Another year has passed by, and it’s only natural that you’ve accumulated a number of items, which are probably cramping your living room. Now, it’s time to sort them out and determine which ones have to go.

Before you start, prepare four boxes or bags for things you’re going to keep, donate, throw, or sell. Go through all areas of your living, from the shelves to the coffee table, and get rid of everything that you don’t have a use for.

You can throw away old magazines with outdated content, but books can still be donated. Your nonholiday decor pieces may be out of season now, but you will have to take them out after the holidays, so keep them for later. There may be some item in good condition but don’t want to keep, so you can earn some extra cash by selling these things online.

Your living room deserves a new look for the new year. Why not try a different vibe like a relaxing nautical home decor to freshen up your home and keep things interesting?

Clear Out Damaged Furniture

It’s not just small items that you need to remove from your living room. Broken furniture also needs to go unless they can be fully restored. It’s not just a matter of being clutter-free, but it’s also for your safety that you need to remove defective furniture in your living space.

You never know when a wonky cabinet or shelf will collapse or a defective glass table will fully crack. Better be safe than sorry, and clear out damaged items from your living room.

However, you don’t have to throw out your furniture if the problem is superficial like dull paint or minor scratches. Restore an old piece’s shine with a new polish or paint job.

Get Smart on Storage

Organization is key to a clutter-free space. That said, you should have a system to organize your living room. Books, magazines, decor pieces, and remote controls—everything must have their place while maximizing whatever space you have.

Use chairs that double up as organizers, such as an ottoman that’s also a storage box or a bench with shelves under the seat. Instead of a regular coffee table, you can use a large chest as a centerpiece in your living and store your extra throw pillows and blankets inside.

Cabinet, drawer, and shelf space can also be optimized by using dividers to organize the items inside. Add hooks on open walls to store coats, jackets, hats, and scarves.

Take advantage of open wall space by install floating shelves to replace cabinets and table. If you want to expand your living area without doing a renovation, embrace vertical storage to clear more floor space.

Clean from Top to Bottom

Once you’ve gotten rid of all the litter in your living room, the next and final step to make the room tidy and clutter-free is to clean everything from top to bottom. Take your favorite cleaning supplies and start dusting, wiping, vacuuming, and mopping.

Gather all supplies, and place them in one area. Prepare the basics in a caddy, including microfiber cloth, all-purpose cleaner, and disinfectant spray. Start with the ceiling, but don’t forget to cover your couch or move it back to avoid getting dust on it. Then proceed to wipe windows, shelves, cabinets, and tables.

When wiping away dust, use a damp cloth as a dry one will not remove the dust but only move it along. Make sure to dry the surfaces and remove residue to avoid stubborn watermarks. Use the right products for different surfaces, and make sure that they don’t contain chemicals that are harmful to your health and the environment.

You can follow these helpful cleaning tips from professional cleaners to declutter your living room like a pro.

Let Natural Light In

Sunshine is not just for giving you that much-needed dose of vitamin D, but it’s also essential for sanitizing your home. A new study published in the journal Microbiome has found out that sunlight can eliminate germs in your home. It also helps clean the air indoors and relieve symptoms of seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

Sunlight is also necessary for houseplants to stay alive and work in improving the indoor air quality. Plus, it helps warm up your home this cold season and gives you the perfect lighting for an Instagram-worthy picture of your home. So why not open those curtains, keep them parted with fancy curtain holders, and let all the warm and germ-killing sunshine in?

Last Thoughts

Don’t wait for spring to get your living room all cleaned up. The holidays are the perfect time to tidy the space and be confident in displaying your holiday decors and entertain guests. In the spirit of the season, you can donate your used items that still in good condition to people who are in need and greet the coming year with at least one major part of the house clean and clutter-free.

For the Home

Creative Ways to Decorate Your Bathroom

Anne Younger Leave a comment

A bathroom is an essential place of a house. You probably can’t imagine living in a place without a bathroom. You use it every day to do your hygiene and grooming routine. But having the same bathroom for years can get boring, and a dark, shabby bathroom is not at all conducive for relaxing baths.

If you haven’t upgraded your bathroom in a long time, now is the right time to freshen up the place. Get inspired by these creative ways to decorate your bathroom.

Repaint Your Walls

If you’re tired of looking at the same old walls, freshen up your bathroom with a new paint job. Color is a game changer in decorating any space. For example, you can make a tiny bathroom look spacious and airy by using soft colors—like white, taupe, powder blue, or serene green—on the walls. You can also add colorful geometric patterns for a playful design.

Unleash your artistic skills, and paint a mural on an entire wall. You can create your own design or follow a theme, like nature, retro, or galaxy. There’s nothing like original art to express your creativity.

Add Lighting Fixtures

Lighting can dictate the mood of a room. Replace or add new lighting to brighten up your bathroom and make it feel large and airy. Bright lighting is also more convenient for shaving and doing makeup. Update old lighting with modern options and add style and personality to your bathroom.

Add a chandelier or sconces to make your bathroom feel luxurious and spa-like. Direct lighting can cast an unflattering shadow on the room and on your face in the mirror. Try indirect lighting or recessed lighting for a softer and more flattering glow.

Opt for LED (light emitting diodes) lamps when you change your old lighting fixture. LED lamps use lesser energy than standard incandescent light bulbs do while producing the same brightness. Plus, they last thousands of hours longer than your average incandescent light bulbs do.

For example, a LED lamp can produce 850 lumens using 10 watts and lasts for about 25,000 hours, while a standard incandescent light bulb needs 60 watts to produce the same lumens and only lasts for 1,200 hours. In short, LED lamps are the eco-friendly and budget-friendly choice.

Create a Wall Gallery

Get creative, and build a wall gallery in your bathroom. Find the perfect spot to build that will perfectly showcase the art pieces you’re including in your gallery, as well as keep them from getting wet. Choose paintings or photographs that have a cohesive design element yet have enough differences to be interesting.

The color, texture, and design of the art pieces should also go well with the overall theme of your bathroom. For the frame, you can use basic solid black or white frames for cohesion, but if you can, also mix and match different designs that go along with each other and the interior.

Use your own art to make your decor personal, but if you can’t do that, choose pieces that you love or ones that have significance to you.

Accessorize Your Bathroom

Who says you can only have toiletries and hygiene essentials in your bathroom? If you want to level up your bathroom decor, then you should add in some stunning accessories. Every bathroom should have a should huge mirror. Your bathroom is not just for doing your skincare routine, shaving, or doing your makeup, but it’s also for making your bathroom appear brighter and more spacious.

A mirror is a vital centerpiece that can dictate the overall feel of your bathroom. Depending on the mirror you use, you can make your bathroom look sleek, luxurious, or retro.

Other than a mirror, you can also use plants and flowers to enhance your bathroom’s look. Display a vase of lifelike silk flowers to add color and loveliness in the decor. Unlike real flowers, silk flowers can fare better in the hot and humid bathroom environment. Or you can also use real plants that can survive in such environments to improve the air quality inside and liven up your bathroom.

Upgrade Fixtures

Take the opportunity to upgrade your bathroom fixtures while you’re freshening up the room’s decoration. Over time, even stainless steel fixtures can rust when exposed to corrosive elements (like chlorine, which many bathroom cleaners have) and when the chromium (which protect the steel from corrosion) concentration falls below the 12 percent threshold.

Sure, you can clean off the rust, but that doesn’t solve the problem all the time. Rust affects the quality of water flowing out of your fixtures and puts you at risk of certain health effects and injury. Save yourself the trouble, and replace your old bathroom fixtures.

Upgrading your fixtures has an added benefit of saving water and getting long-term savings on water bills. If you switch to low-flow faucets, you can reduce the use of water from 2.2 gallons per minute (gpm) to 0.5 gpm. Similarly, low-flow showerheads also use less water, 2 gpm, as compared to standard ones, which use 2.5 gpm.

If you want to take saving further, consider switching your old toilet (consumes about 3 to 7 gallons of water per flush) to a water-efficient model (uses about 1 to 1.3 gallons) with an upflush system and its own macerating pump, like the SaniPlus toilet. The upflush system makes it unnecessary to break ground to connect the toilet to your sewage system since the upflush toilet has an external discharge tank. The macerating pump grinds wastewater to facilitate a smoother flow to the sewage system or septic tank.

Final Word

Your interior design is crucial in creating a good and conducive home environment. And that applies to your bathroom too. It’s not just a place where you shower and do your business; it’s also a place for relaxation and introspection. Having a visually pleasing bathroom environment can make doing your daily routine more enjoyable and peaceful.

You don’t have to completely renovate to spruce up your bathroom interior unless it’s irredeemably worn-down. Sometimes, a few cosmetic interior upgrades will do just the job.

For the Home

Factors That Make Furniture Antique

Anne Younger Leave a comment

Image Source: Pixabay

Vintage and antique furniture is a wonderful investment and item to own. It can bring so much character into the room and lift the ambience as you showcase an item that has its own history. It’s no wonder that collecting and purchasing antique items such as furniture is such a commodity.

When it comes to differentiating between both vintage and antique however, often the lines get blurred. Also, many don’t exactly know the distinguishing signs of an antique piece of furniture. This article will help clearly differentiate the two so you can confidently get researching and walk away with the product you want.

Image Source: Pixabay

Sometimes, the starting point can be the hardest thing. Antique dealers Brisbane residents trust like Wallrocks aregreat places to start as it has an array of antique items from a reputable source. Another crucial element to the process is ensuring you buy from someone who is credible and knows their stuff.

For now, let’s look deeper into the signs of spotting antique furniture.

How To Tell You Are Dealing With Antique Furniture

Antique furniture achieves its status from being 100 years old or more. Vintage, on the other hand, can be anywhere between 30-100 years old so shops can feature much newer pieces. Whereas vintage is often considered to be more retro items, antique originates well within history.

The bottom line is, you can ask many experts what they consider to be antique and you can get several different perspectives. Going by this time frame is a general consensus however so will help you class something clearly as an antique item.

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Here are some other things that could suggest your furniture is antique:

• An expert may spot more high style within the design and composition of the furniture. The techniques used to make the piece will be outdated and therefore make the item even rarer and potentially increase investment value.

• The materials in an antique piece of furniture may be considered highly rare.

• The style of the furniture will be much older fashioned compared to their contemporary counterparts.

• You will be able to spot significant features embedded in the furniture from certain eras.

Whether it’s colonial or something more Victorian, your item will have a deeper history if it is antique. Due to the time they come from, there’s probably lots to uncover about who it was owned by, created by and the story behind it.

Even though these are great signs to look out for, it’s always worth doing your homework. Antique items can come with a high investment and risk factor so finding the right supplier is crucial.

Even though a seller can be honest and have great intentions, they could be describing their product as antique when that’s not the case. So, a little detective work on your side plus keeping these signs in mind will keep you clued up.

For the Home

Simple Troubleshooting for Everyone: Learn How to Recognize These 8 Common Air Conditioning Problems

Anne Younger Leave a comment

If you live in an area that is warm all year round, then you know how important it is to have an air conditioner in the house. So when your air conditioner begins to develop problems, you have no option but to get it fixed…fast!

If you consider that such repairs might be costly, then it makes more sense to prevent the problem before it develops. This means you have to know what to look out for so that you can then keep your air conditioner in good shape.

Here are 8 of the most common problems that are likely to affect the functioning of your AC unit:

Clogged Drains

The AC is supposed to remove moisture from the air and drain it via a drain line. However, the drain ducts may get clogged with dust and dirt, thus causing the water to back up. This may damage the system. It may also cause condensation on walls and furniture, thus triggering mold growth.

Low Refrigerant/Leaks

Refrigerant is the coolant that the AC uses to eliminate heat from the building. If there are leaks in your refrigerant ducts, there won’t be enough refrigerant to keep the air cool. This kind of problem may require a technician to resolve. It’s always advisable to work with a qualified HVAC professional, and you can contact Swift Services for more details on how to fix such a problem.

Corroded or Frozen Evaporator Coils

These coils are designed to absorb heat from the air and release cooler air through the air ducts. But if the coils become corroded or too cold, the AC will produce warm air or no air at all.

Clogged Filter

A dirty filter minimizes air flow and may also cause your AC to freeze. To check if your filter is clogged, try to shine a light through it. Depending on the type of AC you have, you may be able to clean the filter yourself or change it either monthly or every three months.

Leaky Ducts

The AC ducts that run through the ceiling and walls are supposed to carry cooled air throughout the room. However, these ducts can get punctured by careless workers or rodents, thus causing the cool air to go to waste inside the walls.

Dirty Condenser Coils

Condenser coils are located on the outside of the AC and are responsible for expelling heat from the building. Since they are exposed to the elements, they can easily get covered in dirt or soot and may need to be cleaned by an HVAC technician.

Thermostat Problems

Make sure that your thermostat is in the correct setting. If you have the old type of thermostat, ensure that it’s calibrated properly or simply replace it with one of the new programmable ones.

Fan Problems

An AC has two fans – one blows over the evaporator coils and the other helps the condenser coils to expel heat outside the building. Sometimes due to a faulty motor or debris, the fans stop working properly. If the problem isn’t resolved, the compressor will fail and your AC will need to be replaced.

You need to have scheduled maintenance to ensure your AC is in good working order. Take some time to troubleshoot for potential problems and if necessary, get your air conditioning repaired as soon as possible. You will save a lot more money that way.

For the Home

Keeping Mice at Bay: Preventing Bedroom Infestations

Anne Younger Leave a comment

Image Source: Unsplash

Midnight Snacks

As there are more and more people across the United States today that like to have a TV in every room of their home, it is not surprising that snacking in the bedroom is on the increase. However, if we are to significantly decrease the chances of a mouse infestation in our bedroom, we should try to refrain from eating whilst watching one of our favourite TV series whilst in bed. Of course, apart from the danger of having an army of hungry ants taking over our sleeping quarters due to devouring midnight snacks when binging on our latest TV drama, we could end up inadvertently inviting unscrupulous rodents to take up residence in our home. Having said that, folks who choose to look on the internet for blogs about how to prevent mice or rat infestations should be more than aware of what they need to do if they are going to stay rodent-free.

There are articles you can find from websites that should turn out to be very useful sources of information for people determined to prevent their home from becoming a popular place for rodents such as mice. Indeed, if we are serious about being able to stop mice or rats from entering our place of residence, we will need to roll up our sleeves and get stuck into a bit of online research.

Pet Food

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Although most people who have a dog or cat will keep their pet’s food in the kitchen or pantry, some U.S. homeowners will have a bowl of food for their canine companion or feline friend in their bedroom. Of course, if we do let our pet sleep in our bedroom and therefore feel obliged to supply food in case they get hungry, we should be aware that we could be encouraging rodents such as mice to come into the bedroom.

Smart people who are aware of the fact that Pest Free USA offers Plug In Pest Repeller should already be clued in to the fact that they have a tried and tested solution at hand with regards to preventing home infestations of mice. Indeed, it goes without saying that it is best to think of ways of actually stopping any interest from rodents regarding getting comfortable in the place we call home.

Apart from it being really important to keep all pet food properly sealed in suitable containers in order to prevent the attention from mice, it is best not to leave any kind of food out – not only in the bedroom, but anywhere in the house.

Space Invaders

Most people who have their own computer and access to the internet will be aware of how easy it is to source almost any kind of information that they may need on a daily basis or when they have an emergency. Of course, U.S. folks who are trying to prevent another mice infestation after recently overcoming their last rodent invasion may want to consider some of the points set out by experts in how to prevent mice infestation in the home including:

Image Source: Unsplash

Block all holes that could allow entry to mice
Take out garbage on a regular basis
Avoid eating late-night snacks in the bedroom
Take in a young and lively cat
Keep all rooms clean at all times

Homeowners that happen to have a very alert and quite scary looking cat who sleeps in their bedroom could be able to keep out mice just by the presence of their intimidating feline friend.