After you’ve lived somewhere for a while, you might get an “itch”.
It’s a feeling that starts to creep into the mind of a lot of homeowners. It’s the idea that after a few years, you’ve gotten everything you can out of your home and it’s time to start over. Granted, there are some genuine reasons why you might want to move to a new home. You might be starting a family and need more space. Or your income might have increased, and you want to move to a nicer neighborhood. However, if you’re not careful, you’re just going to end up doing the same thing every few years.
As the old saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side.
If you spend your life going from place to place trying to find that one perfect home, you’re never going to be satisfied. Instead, make an effort to make the most of the home that you have. You will often find that doing that will make a huge difference to the way your home feels. It will also save you a lot of time, money and stress. Here are some ways to make the most of your home if you find yourself dissatisfied.
Maximize space
Space is probably the biggest issue that a lot of people have with their homes. People often feel that their homes are cramped with no room to move around. They feel that going somewhere new with more space is the answer to their problems. However, the reality is that, unless your finances have changed dramatically, most homes that you can afford will be the same size with only slight differences. It’s a much better idea to take the time to maximize the space that you have in your home.
There are a lot of different ways to do this, but the first thing that you do should be to reevaluate the layout of the rooms in your house. If a room feels too small, then that’s probably because there are too many things encroaching on the floor space. Perhaps your couch is in the center of the living room, and you could free up space by having it pushed up against a wall. Or maybe your dining room table is larger than it needs to be and just ends up completely dominating the room. By thinking about the way in which a room is laid out more carefully, you can often add a surprising amount of space throughout your home.
Clear out the clutter
Even the nicest, most spacious home in the world can end up feeling untidy and unpleasant if it’s full of junk. It’s all too easy to end up letting your home become a mess because you spend so much time there that things blend into the background more easily than they would anywhere else. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have an impact on how your home feels. You might consciously take in the pile of papers on the kitchen countertop, but it’s still going to make the room feel untidy. Keeping the place clean and free of junk and clutter is going to make it feel like a much brighter, more enjoyable place to be for you and your family.
Don’t forget your yard
Even if people stay on top of keeping their homes well organized and tidy, it’s incredibly easy to end up neglecting your backyard. This is because a yard often takes a fair bit more work to get up to a high standard than your home might. Even if your home is totally clean and perfect, looking out the window to see an overgrown and untidy garden can sour the whole thing for you. Plus, you want your yard to be the kind of space that you can actually use and enjoy. Because of that, you don’t want to spend your time wading through knee high grass and tripping over weeds poking up through the patios. Luckily, if you make working on your garden a part of your everyday routine, you’re going to be able to keep it a pleasant space for as long as possible.
Use every room
If you really feel like your home doesn’t have enough to offer you, ask yourself this question: are you using every room properly? There’s a decent chance that the answer to that question will be no. Take the office for example. A lot of people tend to use their offices as a place to dump things that they haven’t found a place for but still want to be able to access at a moment’s notice. This turns an office into a glorified closet very quickly. The same goes for your attic. Instead of just having it be the place where you store boxes of old junk, why not turn it into a fully functioning room. It doesn’t take that much work, and it will be a perfect playroom for the kids or a spare room for guests to sleep in.
Use light carefully
Light is one of those things that a lot of homeowners tend to ignore because it’s a lot harder to put your finger on than things like layout or furniture. It’s a more vague and nebulous idea that has more of an impact on how a room feels than anything else. But the reality is that light can be your secret weapon. Light turns a depressing home into a vibrant place that you want to spend your time.
We’ve all had those moments where you walk into a room, and it just feels dark and small. Even though you have plenty of space to move around, it’s claustrophobic. If this has happened to you, it’s likely the room simply wasn’t well lit. Natural light is, of course, the best way to make a room feel more spacious. But you can also use lamps to help a room feel cozy without feeling cramped.
There may come a time when you decide that you need to move on to somewhere new.
But it’s not a decision that you should make lightly. Make sure that you take the time to figure out exactly what it is that you want to change about your environment. If they are changes that you can make without moving, you’re going to be able to save yourself a whole lot of both time and money.
