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If 2020 has you spending a lot of time at home, you may be in the mood to make some changes. However, if your budget or your children are small, big renovations can turn out to be big hassles. Instead, consider small upgrades to make life better.
Paint
Pulling everything off the walls, patching all the holes and repainting a space is a low-cost, fairly simple way to really brighten a room. If your patching and painting project works out well, you can move a lot of things around and enjoy the fresh feel of a new home without the hassle of moving.
Clean
While you’re painting, make sure you clean. You’ll have to wipe down the walls, so when the painting is done and the tape is pulled off the baseboards, make sure you also clean the floor along the wall before putting furniture back so you can clean the center of the room as well. Dust down the ceiling fans and light fixtures and consider getting the carpets cleaned.
Repurpose
In addition to rearranging, consider repurposing some things. If you have a nice chest of drawers tucked in the basement because there’s just no space in your bedrooms, consider adding a wheeled tray or casters to it and turning it into a kitchen island.
Rearrange
While you’re moving things, consider rearranging. Simple change can make a huge difference in the enjoyment of your home. If your favorite chair doesn’t have a side table or a reading lamp, rearrange an overcrowded bedroom and free up one unused nightstand so you have storage, a spot for a light, and a space for a beverage beside your chair.
Upgrade
Even if you can’t have water and ice in your refrigerator door, you can add a nice faucet water filter to your kitchen sink and upgrade your drinking water. Invest in quality stainless steel water bottles and fill them up at the end of the day so you can enjoy cool, filtered water out of your refrigerator as you start your day.
Redefine
For those whose skills don’t include building a wheeled tray, consider setting the old dresser in your dining area and using it as a sideboard. Use the drawers to store all your table linens, games, puzzles, and school supplies. Do you have an old file cabinet that can hold a lot of weight but may not be all that pretty? Put it in the garage and use it as a pantry for canned goods. Buy things on sale and store them, date up, in flat rows in your file cabinet. When you need veggies or soup, skip the store run and look in the garage.
Customize
Take a standard particle board bookcase from Ikea and turn it into a built-in. The very easiest way to do this is to build a box that fits over your baseboard so the bookcase will fit snugly to the wall. However, you can add trim to your bookcase edge to cover up the gap left by where the bookcase hits the baseboard.
Add Pull-Outs
If your kitchen is small and you’re struggling to make room for everything, add pull-outs to your bottom cabinets. These tools make it easy to stack and nest your pots, pans, mixing and serving bowls, and many other items to increase your storage area without having to empty the cupboard to find your kitchen gear again.
Think Outside the Space
If you have a storage ottoman in the living room but don’t have a linen cabinet, put your bedding in the living room. For those who are really short on kitchen space, a pretty picnic basket can be turned into both an accent piece and a place to store your kitchen towels, cloth napkins, and table cloths. Should you have to share a bathroom and don’t want to leave your makeup in the way, use the freebie overnight case you’ve got stashed in the bottom of your closet to transport your stuff easily and without fuss.
Final Thoughts
Updating your home should require much more thinking time than doing time. What really bothers you about space? Do you need more storage, or less stuff? When you’ve really thought about it, the updates you make will truly work for your needs.
