When you’re off at work for sometimes 8 to 10 or even 12 hours a day, it’s hard to dedicate any time in your week to cleaning up little things around the house. While at first these things are fine and it only gets a little messy, things can really begin to add up over time, producing a stress-inducing level of mess that can affect your mood for the worse anytime you come home from work. At that point, it’s seemingly a day’s worth of work to clean everything, which you don’t have available to you with your workload already. But, if you’ve got kids in the ages of 10 to 18 at home, you’ve just found a way to maintain your stressful workload. Sure, you may have to give them an allowance or some sort of reward for doing chores for you, but it beats the heck out of you using your time off to clean when that’s the last thing you want to do. Clean out any light-colored basins in the bathroom This is quite an easy task for anyone, yet it makes a world of difference on how your bathroom ends up looking. If lighter colored things in your bathrooms are dirty, it shows more than anything (especially sinks and toilet bowls). Have your kids do a quick scrub of the sinks and shower and use the toilet wand to clean the bowl. It’s not much work, but it does a world of difference for the cleanliness (perceived and actual) of your bathroom. Clean the windows Another task that takes no time at all is washing the windows. While some may be too high to clean from the outside, your screen doors, french doors, and bay windows could all use some wiping down to rid any handprints or smudges that may be on them. Believe me, getting your windows completely transparent is a way to show that you’re on top of the cleaning at your house. Your kids won’t even complain, either, considering how simple and quick it is to do a great job at cleaning windows. They’ll be vying over who gets to tackle that chore when you write down the chores each day. Sweep and then mop the floors Your floor will look absolutely stunning once it’s swept and mopped. While this is a little more time consuming, it’s probably the one that makes the biggest difference in your house out of this list. Being able to see the sun glint off a freshly cleaned floor can really make your house just feel clean more than look clean, because your feet won’t be picking up any pet hair, dirt, or other particles that collect over time on the floor.
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If you’ve ever remembered a truly great home when you walked into one (whether it was on a tour, you were at a friend’s place, or otherwise), you can attest to the fact that a lot of what really makes or breaks a house is the natural lighting within. That doesn’t go to say that putting a lot of windows in a closed off old house will suddenly make it a gem. Rather, natural lighting is quite important on showing off the space a house has while also making a “bigger” house seem a lot more homey and welcoming. It’s a fine balance between opening up a place and making it approachable. But without some big picture windows, a bay window, or some french doors, your home is likely pretty gloomy. The thing is, most people don’t want to update their home’s lighting often enough to match their home’s theme and style. While lighting also comes a lot from the bulbs you use and the types of lamps in place, I still think that so much of it relies on the access to natural lighting, instead. Bay windows These are honestly my favorite types of windows because of their sheer versatility. And the thing is, the different “looks” you can go for with a bay window are never ill-advised or an eyesore for your house. You can go for a reading nook for you or the kids: just include a seat pad or two, some small shelves for books, and even an overhead dimming light for nighttime reading. Or, you can go for the plant display: get some shelves, place all sorts of house plants, herbs, or succulents in cute potting, and you’re good to go. No matter what you do with the bay window, though, it’s an absolutely timeless look that gives a lot of character to whatever room it’s in. French doors Maybe I’m biased because I grew up in a house that had not one but two sets of French doors. These are absolutely amazing at letting tons of light in the house while also functioning as a useable door. More often than not, French doors are better left to the back or sides of a house rather than the front, especially with how much visibility they let in. I remember the dog loving the spots of light that were on the floor when I grew up. He’d always bask in the sun and lay by the French doors for afternoon naps.
For my wife’s birthday this year, I decided to get her a few succulent planters and take her to the local nursery to pick out some succulents to pot them in. Though we have an apartment and few windows, it seemed to me like our apartment is a perfect setup for house-dwelling plants that need indirect sunlight and a few hours of direct. The problem is, our dining table is the closest thing to the back window that will provide most of the sun, so it wasn’t close enough for our liking to place the plants on. So, I enlisted my dad’s help to build us a longer, thinner table of sorts to rest just near the back window for our plants to sit on and bask in the sun. Basically, he’s taking an old metal end table that’s longer than it is wide. Its design makes it so that things don’t rest level on the surface, so he’s attaching a wood plank up top for a level surface (and some character, since it’s barnwood) and also putting a plank on the bottom part for a lower “shelf” of sorts. To me, this is the best way to really make some furniture for your plants. It needs to be homemade, rustic, and not too much of a project that’ll break the bank or your back in making it. Plants really are the star of the show on these sorts of focal pieces, so the furniture itself doesn’t have to be astounding by any means. In fact, I’d argue that it’s far more about creating a minimalistic place for your plants to rest so that they shine more. When you start making the furniture too nice, it takes away from the plants. To go along with the plants and potting jars, I got her a little book on raising succulents and best practices for different species and genera. I’m excited to get this little hobby going, especially because it’ll make our apartment a lot cleaner and help to filter some of the air out since we also have a pet. Even better, I can already envision putting my collection of tequila bottles on the bottom shelf to add to the desert look of the window piece. It should end up looking minimalistic enough to really tie together while also maintaining a very loose theme as well. I’m almost giddy at the thought knowing we’ll end up wanting to do more plant-based themes around the apartment afterwards!
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