January 11, 2013

Make Home Improvement Your Resolution for 2013!

Every New Year we all make a number of resolutions to improve ourselves. These include the standard “lose weight, get a better job, be a better parent,” character-changing resolutions. Although they often can be life changing, they also very often are left incomplete. This year, why not be a little more pragmatic and make some New Year’s resolutions to better our homes?

Our homes are the places where spend most our time. In the end, making some big changes within the house could actually lead to some personal lifestyle alterations. So, without further ado, here is a list of potential New Year’s home improvement resolutions for you to make:

Make Your Home Eco-Friendly

It’s not just about jumping on the environmental ‘green-craze’ wagon. Making your home more eco-friendly not only helps the environment but also can save you a bundle. There are a number of ways to retro-fit your home to be green. A small and easy change is switching all your standard light bulbs out for longer lasting compact fluorescent or LED bulbs. These bulbs are environmentally friendly and also can save a homeowner around $50 per bulb throughout their lifetime. Another small change that can make a big difference is installing a few low cost solar panels for outdoor lighting.

For those with homes in cold weather climates, a big eco-friendly change might involve retrofitting your house for better insulation, which will save you a ton in heating bills in the long run.

Designate an Exercise Room

We all have a room in our house for relaxation – a couch potato heaven that has the big screen TV, plush arm chair, and table to kick your feet up on. That’s all swell, but what about when you need to get some physical activity? It’s often difficult to build up the motivation to keep up with a gym membership – we’re always making excuses like ‘the gym is too far,’ and ‘I’m too tired before or after work.’

It’s time to throw out those excuses and designate one room in your house as an ‘exercise room.’ It could be making a simple modification to that room by adding just one machine like a treadmill, Stairmaster, or Bowflex. Or maybe it could be the addition of mats for aerobics or yoga as well as a set of weights for strength training. Either way, simply calling a room in your home ‘an exercise room’ can often be enough motivation to get you off the couch and into a physical workout.

Get Rid of Your Junk, Finally

We also all have rooms in our homes that are filled with useless clutter and junk. For many of us this room is the basement or garage, which serves as the graveyard for old boxes of toys, broken down appliances and torn up pieces of furniture. Not only does this junk take up unnecessary room that could be put to better use, but it also takes up room in your head – leading to elevated stress that could be alleviated.