We’re taking stock of our home lives; balancing the dark times with light.
It’s something that we’d all love to do; Make our homes more valuable.
Regardless of whether that to sell it, for a long term investment or to make the most of it for us to enjoy living in it, adding value to your home has never been so important. The world shifted, and one way or another we are getting more time at home.
The look and feel of the space we dwell in is important, what worth is your home to you or a potential buyer. Is it something you take price in, take sanctuary in, enjoy living in. or is it a place endure through lack of other options?
What you feel about your home may be the same as your guest feel. A good way to judge if you like your home is to walk through the door the way a potential buyer does.
Make a note of your reactions for example “The house is dark” once your list is complete you can come up with solutions such as buy brighter lights, smarter looking lights? Paint the hall a different colour, get better window treatments. Some things are easy to solve once you know you’d value a different look, so why not give the issues a little attention.
If you don’t have the inspiration or budget look for resources. Most companies (and ours is no exception) have free guides and inspiring content in blogs. When you sign up for newsletters you are often given discount codes and early notification about deals and sales. Lack of budget doesn’t mean your wish for a brighter home goes off the list. Keep it on, but make it a longer term goal or be cheeky and ask for a discount. Sometimes you’ll get it.
It was always said the kitchen is the heart of the home. Yet now with home being our confinement in some cases for months during the lockdown is our heart really in it at all. Is it time to edit and audit our home and our lives. What do we value.
If you are embarking on a home makeover or renovation start with the bigger jobs. Basic requirements for any home is it offers shelter. A roof and guttering should be done first, replace missing slates and repair guttering. Are windows and doors secure and draft free.
Look for grants and help to get these things up to date and efficient.
Once all that’s done you can look at what is working well within the home practically and aesthetically. Congratulate yourself on the good things and look for the little area’s that are not working or bringing joy. We’ll all have a list of gripes, no-one has the perfect home, something is always wrong.
Many of the issues can be overcome with a little thought. A dark home can be brightened, great lighting is affordable and cheaper than adding another window or skylight. Lighting is very under rated which is a shame as it can bring so much to a space. It makes everything brighter, cleaner, and all together more stylish.
- Too dark
- Too small
- Too boring
- Too busy
- Too old
- Too new
If you have a dark home and need new lighting LightingCompany.co.uk is a great resource, shop by best price, style, type, room or even the latest trends. Good lighting can address many of the aforementioned issues.
Small rooms can appear larger when nicely lit.
Feature lighting can bring a dynamic new look to a space. Lighting can unify spaces. If the space is too busy, try to edit it down and just keep the things you love or that are so useful you can’t manage without them. Form and function are important – it’s no good having a pretty but impractical house.
Accept that you can’t buy new everything and adopt a transitional approach. Talking of transitional style it’s a thing! Transitional interior design takes the best of old and new, stitching together with key items that have elements of both.
I’m going to lump boring and new homes together here as often the thing that’s lacking is a feature or a personality. The same can be said for old homes, as if left unchecked they can look archaic.
Lifestyle
Homes should reflect our personality, work for how we live. If you eat informally as a family, you dining should be more relaxed rather than a formal dining room, or maybe a larger kitchen is the dream. If this isn’t possible, make the dining space close to the kitchen and punch a hole in the wall, making space in the adjacent room for a dining alcove.
Think about how you eat, socialise, work, celebrate, where can you indulge in you time a hobby or pastime. Don’t feel that everything about you should be hidden, our homes are not show homes; the style should reflect the occupants. Own your look (unless you are dressing your home to sell it), it can be personal – it should be personal!
Auditing how you live and making use of the space you inhabit is good for the soul. Which leads me nicely to the fact we should extend the living space into the garden and or the garden into the house.
The call of nature.
It’s proven that plants and gardening are great for metal wellbeing. To be immersed, or to touch and to see nature, brings an enormous sense of well being … park life! If you don’t have a garden you can still grow herbs on a window sill. If you are really not into nurturing plants just bring in natural elements such as wood, stone, pebbles or even faux plants can mimic that feeling of freedom. The boundaries between inside and outside have gone. Fluidity of moving between spaces is in. Walls come down, doors have become openings and movement around the home is more fluid. The great outdoors and the great indoors we live beyond our four walls. Now that home is, in essence, ‘our world’ we could do with re-imagining how we use the space. The garden can be used for more of the year. Have blankets to hand and seats around a cosy fire pit and star gaze. Live! Live and enjoy the moments.
Live like a local.
Many us have had travel plans squished and life has become localised. I pondered the trend for holidays where “live like a local” is urged when you visit a foreign land. Why can we do this for a fortnight but feel curtailed when we do this at home? Have a “staycation”, and enjoy all that your locality has to offer. One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned during the past few months is that people are amazing. We’ve craved personal contact and impersonal service is not what we want. Supporting local business is a must buy local or it’s bye bye local. Spending locally helps those business be able to afford even better choice, they’ll be able to expand. Maybe this will create more jobs in time, but most certainly, they will be able to grow in value to the neighbourhood.
If you value your local community efforts, it does the heart good to do what you know is right. The ‘shop local’ campaigns and supporting independent retailers campaigns are showing us that the ethical choice often rewards us with greater experiences.
Living and working in the same space, is not always idyllic… In fact, sometimes it’s very stressful. Going out to work can be the same. We all have light and shade in our lives, many of us can have very dark days indeed.
As JK Rowling famously wrote; “Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, when only one remembers to turn on the light”.
Life Audit, we’ve looked at clearing the clutter and refreshing your home with things that make you happy, worked out the way we want to live within a space, now you can do the same with your life too. This life audit is all about making time for the things that make you happy, value all that is amazing about yourself and your life. Accept that no-one is perfect, and what’s more, no-one expects that from you.