Home and Garden Diva

You are here: Home / Archives for living room

How To Keep Your Home Pristine While Still Enjoying Living There

by

Family homes as a rule can roughly be divided into two categories. You have those that are absolutely pristine with not a spot of dirt to be seen and with everything in precise order, and then you have those that look as though they’ve actually been lived in – with children’s toys scattered around the floor, mud trampled across the carpet, and a faintly ‘doggy’ smell still hanging in the air.

Of course neither of these scenarios are exactly perfect. While it may be nice to have a pristine home that looks like it belongs in a catalogue, that’s not really going to be very fun for the children who live there who will likely be forbidden from really enjoying themselves in their rooms in anyway, and who will probably be too scared to so much as sneeze on the carpet. Likewise, having a house that looks like a tip isn’t ideal either – it will not only send the wrong message when you have guests, but it could also be unhygienic and potentially lead to an accident if you aren’t careful.

So how do you walk that fine balance? How do you find the ‘middle way’ that will allow you to keep your home looking the way you want it without boarding on psychotic? Read on for a little advice.

Design Your Home Smartly


The first thing to bear in mind, is that designing your home well can greatly reduce the amount of work that you might have to do. If you design your property in such a way that it is less likely to become untidy easily, then you will be able to do what you like in the home and let your children do likewise, without worrying too much about your property getting ruined in the process.

For example, putting rugs down in the living room can help you to protect your carpet and these are easy to put in the wash when they do need a clean. Likewise, if you give your children a play room to keep their things in, then they’ll be able to play in there to their hearts’ content without it affecting the rest of the house. Limiting the number of items in your home likewise will mean there is less to get dirty and broken, and will help your home to look minimal and organised. Patterned carpets are great at hiding stains and dirt – so just think ahead like this and give yourself a helping hand with your décor choices.

Bring In the Big Guns


Sometimes though, your home is still going to get untidy and unclean and it’s at this point that you need to know how to give your home a proper reset. If you’re constantly vacuuming and dusting, then you’ll find that you gradually lose the battle against your kids no matter how vigilant you are.

Instead of stressing then, opt to use a professional carpet cleaning company a few times a year, and maybe to use the services of a professional cleaner occasionally. That way you can relax a little about the mess getting made, because you’ll know that it will all get ‘reset’ in a matter of months anyway.

Attached Images:

Today’s featured writer, Malcolm Hall, runs a maid service in Toronto. An avid blogger, he likes to write about the various ways which can help you keep your home clean and tidy.

5 Common Problems Of A Living Room And How To Deal With Them

by



Let’s just admit that fact that the living room is the most attacked room in the house. Even the most efficient of living rooms, come with their own set of seemingly minor, but surprisingly nerve-wracking problems. Like they say, knowledge is power. Therefore, power lies in knowing what problems you are likely to encounter in your-otherwise-tastefully-done living area. We give you five common problems of the living room and of course, simple ways to deal with each of them.


1)   Overflowing everything!

It’s only for so long that you can go on being clinical, before you finally learn to desensitize yourself to the living area turned dumpster. However, a bit of a system is important, it makes existence simpler. For clothes, go for a built in walk-in closet, they eliminate the need to fold clothes at the same time allow you to keep things organized and within your reach. As for books and toys, use big shoe boxes or cartons, and since you have the suggested walk-in closet, you know where to put these boxes. Or, you can intelligently fill up the little spaces all over your house, like the space between two stairs (if you have an indoor staircase), the inside of a coffee or a dining table, etc.

2)   Old furniture with sentimental value

Be it your husband’s beloved cabinet from his FRAT days, or your grandma’s favorite chair from an era long forgotten, if it’s ugly and falling apart, it HAS TO get out. There’s one simple solution that lets you keep the nostalgic mementos yet doesn’t mock your exquisite taste. Recycle. That’s right; it’s eco-friendly, cheap and very intelligent. Recycle the old, chipped, wobbly stuff and reshape it to something more stylish and acceptable. Such an efficiently achieved win-win, no?

3)   A sofa that’s falling apart

It’s fun to see the kids perform circus-like antics on your sofa in the moment of it. But much later, you can almost hear hindsight laugh at you, right in your face. That exotic looking sofa, looks anything but exotic now; thanks to the frayed ends, dulled upholstery, weirdly clumped padding and whatnot. If you know that there’s a great likelihood of you walking down that lane, simply use some dark colored, weather- resistant covers to conceal the dirty sofas. Or, if you’re up for a little extra expense, go for a good quality dark colored leather sofa. It’s easy to clean, long-lasting and works with almost any home décor style.

4)   Bad lighting

Dull, boring white lights do nothing except remind you of a hospital corridor, thus making you feel equally hopeless. Shift to ambient lights, which can be adjusted to go with the mood, be it a quiet relaxed evening, or a classy dinner party, or a home transformed into a club! Use elegant chandeliers or vintage lamps or quirky fixtures to add some more style. Also, ensure that your house allows as much natural light to enter as possible. This helps you not only cut down your electricity consumption during the day, but also feel less guilty about spending on something more creative.

5)   Wrong flooring

Flooring is the one thing in the house that goes through maximum strain. Not to mention, replacing flooring takes quite a toll on the pockets too. Thus, we are left with only two viable options, carpeting the whole area or room specific flooring. Before you consider redoing the flooring of your house, try to consider what goes best for which room. The living room faces maximum foot traffic. Thus, laminates and hardwood flooring form excellent choices. Thanks to their elegant appearance, stain resistance, low-maintenance and durability, they look good even after aging, thus serving as a good long-term investment.

Attached Images:
  •  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://www.andertoons.com/cat/cartoon/4121/do-you-like-it-i-made-it-from-scratch/

Guest blogger Sophia Easton works for Leather Creations as a blogger and likes writing articles focusing on various aspects of a home’s interiors.

Transform Your Room Into The Greatest Place Even With An Extension

by

Everybody always has one special room in the house where they love to spend all their time. If you love watching sports then it’s probably the living room. Cooking fanatics never seem to be out of the kitchen. But everyone always wants more. They want bigger. It’s just who we are. Once you have had something for a certain amount of time it gets boring. Mom wants all those big fancy appliances in her kitchen. The ones you can’t fit in at the moment and probably won’t use anyway. Dad wants somewhere more than a tiny corner of the living room to work.

Why don’t you just admit it. You need more room in the house. And the last thing you probably want to do is move to a different neighborhood. You don’t need to. Not if you add an extension onto the side of your house. Apart from the hassle of getting planning permission it’s quite a smooth process. As long as you use a reputable company they can have it finished quite quick. It will cost you a bit money, but just imagine all the things you could do with it. Let’s have a look now at a few things you might be interested in.

Have your very own office space

The trouble with working from home is that it’s hard to get anything done if you don’t have your own office. It’s unfortunate if you don’t have any free rooms in the house. You have to work where there will always be people around. Maybe you are scared of leaving stuff on your tiny desk in case someone moves it and you have a heart attack. That all changes when you have somewhere to call your own. You get more done and the business improves drastically. That’s why an extension onto your living room would be great.

Entertaining guests

Everyone loves to entertain guests in their home. It’s a great way to socialize with friends when you become older, because it’s just not the same hitting the bars anymore. You need somewhere to feed people and have a good drink. If you only have a small dining room then it can be a problem. It can get a bit squashed when you try and fit everyone around a small table. If you add an extension onto the dining room that all changes. You finally have somewhere that’s perfect for entertaining and your social life definitely improves.

Keep the kids happy

It is really annoying when you want to relax in the living room and the whole place is a tip because the kids have left their toys lying around. A solution could be adding an extension to the living room to turn into a playroom. Somewhere dedicated to the kids where they can keep all their toys. You will have a lot of space and the living room will be much nicer. You can have a partition so the kids can play in their room and you can play in yours. And they are right next door so it’s always easy to keep an eye on them.

Give your kitchen a Michelin Star

If anyone in the household likes to cook then you would love an extension onto the kitchen. Just imagine all those wonderful appliances you can install. You’d have room for anything you wanted and would have the space to leave it lying out. Turn your kitchen into Starbucks by having an amazing coffee machine. The kind that makes coffee so good you think you’re in heaven. Add a stone baked oven and make better pizzas than Domino’s. The possibilities are endless.

Julia Watson often blogs and provides suggestions on various home improvement techniques. She is the proud owner of lean to conservatories – a firm excelling in providing instant price comparision quotes.

Turn Your House Into A Home By Making It As Comfortable As Possible To Live In

by

Sometimes it feels like you’ve been living in your house for years and it’s never felt like a home. From the moment you unpacked the boxes and found your belongings somewhere new to stay, there was just something different about the way you felt. In your old home you would feel more relaxed than anywhere on earth. Times have changed and even though you can relax it’s just missing that spark. It’s not uncommon for that to happen to a huge percentage of people who move house. For some people, everything falls into place. For some it doesn’t.

It doesn’t always have to be like this. Your new house will never be the same as your old place and you shouldn’t try to force it. Instead you should look around and see what changes you can make that will turn the new place into somewhere you can love. There’s 3 main places you should start. The 3 places where you should feel more comfortable than anywhere else. The bedroom, living room and the bathroom. We can take a look at some things you can do to each of them to turn your house into a home.

You should look forward to bedtime

For some reason that’s unknown, people are prepared to spend their whole life sleeping on an uncomfortable mattress just so they can save themselves a little money. Think about how much time you spend in your bed. Unless you have insomnia it will be more than any other place in the world. 7-8 hours per night is a lot of time. That’s why you should buy the best mattress you can possibly afford. This won’t seem like a terrible idea after the first night you lie down. You won’t want to get up.

It’s the same with sheets and pillows. Have you even thought about buying new ones? Even if you were to spend a lot of money on expensive sheets it still wouldn’t come close to the amount you spend on crap. If you skip a few cinema nights you will have the money to buy silk sheets. The kind that makes you feel like heaven when they touch your skin. And you want pillows that instantly relax you as soon as your head hits them. You won’t regret it.

Living rooms should be luxurious

It’s the same idea with your living room furniture. You can pick up a nice couch for cheap, but if you spend a few extra hundred dollars you could have something that is a pleasure to sit on. The kind that makes you fall asleep when you’re watching TV. You’ll probably have the same one for a good few years. Wouldn’t it be great if you spent a bit more money on the best one you could afford?

Who cares about a nice little hardwood cabinet to keep your ornaments on? You don’t sit on that. Just buy a cheap one and spend the extra money on what you will really get the use out of. It’s nice to have a living room that looks beautiful, but you don’t want to sacrifice your comfort for a nice bookshelf. Spend that little bit extra on curtains that don’t let any light in. When you close them and settle down to watch TV it’s a lot easier to get cozy.

A bathroom is not for going to the toilet

Yeah, you go to the bathroom to use the toilet, but then you close the door and don’t bother going back in again. It’s easy to turn the bathroom into somewhere you’ll love. Firstly, it depends if you use a bath or shower to wash. If you use a shower you should have a lovely powerful one that could potentially rip your skin off when the water touches it. It feels so much better. I mean a powerful shower; not when you’re skin gets ripped off.

And if you use a bathtub it should be one that you can sink right into. A big deep one like the ones you see in 5-star hotels. They don’t cost 10x the price. Not if you look for a good deal, but it’s somewhere you can relax to your hearts content. If you love using the hot-tub when you go to a health club, you have to ask yourself why you don’t have a bathtub with a jet stream built in. Always aim for maximum comfort before anything else.

Christina Appleworth is an expert interior designer who suggests the liberal use of  web blinds  for home improvement purposes.

Redecorating and refurnishing

by

Do you ever feel like just redecorating? I get that urge every once in a while. Certainly more often than I’m able to afford to redecorate I’m sure.

My brother and his wife apparently are going through redecorating mode. They just sent an email full of photos of their new living room. I guess over the last few weeks they repainted the living room, got new curtains or window dressings and replaced their old furnishings with some very nice looking French furniture.

Their living room has a very formal look now, but then it always did have a formal look. They use their den for more informal gatherings or for watching TV, their living room is for getting together with visitors and entertaining.

I can’t wait to go and see their new furniture in person.

Meta

Tags

basement bed bedroom clean cleaning clutter dog exercise family fitness flowers friends Furniture garden Health help home house husband ideas Kitchen laptop Lighting money Music neighborhood neighbors party plants room Shopping sick skin spring summer tips tired Toronto Travel tv Vacation walking warm winter work

Pages