Guest Post - 7 Ways for Filling your Home with Positive Energy

Did you know that your home can have a big effect on your mood? Being in a place full of positive vibes and energy can benefit both your body and mind. When we and our children are surrounded by things that we find comforting and pleasing, we tend to feel happy about life. On the other hand, being in a home filled with negative vibes can trigger bad memories and easily bring you down. Instead of letting your home become a negative place, let’s take a look at 7 ways for filling your home with positive vibes.

De-Clutter

De-clutter your house today and get rid of various items that no longer have much use in your home. By doing this, you and your kids will feel much more comfortable and happier. The truth is that cluttered spaces create stress and nothing helps more to bring positive vibes in your home than reducing waste and clutter. There are many effective ways to de-clutter your home. For example, it is recommended to use multi-purpose products and always choose quality over quantity.

In those rare cases when you are just too busy to de-clutter your home yourself, you can always hire some help. If you have time, involve your family! Decluttering a house together might be a great bonding experience, bringing you all together and instilling a sense of duty in your children.

Create Happy Memories at Your Home

Creating happy memories at your house is one of the best strategies to fill your home with positive energy. If you and your family travel a lot, print out pictures from these vacations and hang them on your shelf or your wall. By doing this, you’ll remind yourself of all those happy times. Think of other items that bring back cheerful experiences and put them in your home.

Introduce More Plants

Introducing plants is one of the best ways to increase the oxygen levels in your home. Fill your living room with fresh flowers and potted plants to create more positive energy. Plants like jasmine, cactus, rosemary, orchids, and lavender in your home can help you experience nature indoors. Keep in mind that some plants require more attention than others. Therefore, it is important to choose something that you can look after on a regular basis.

Maintain an Organized Home

Maintaining an organized home is an important step in creating a positive atmosphere. Scrub off the greasy kitchen counters and dusty coffee tables. Get your kids to help by organizing books and accessories in a proper order. Repeating these actions at least once every two weeks will help preserve a positive interior atmosphere inside of your home.

Create a Space for Relaxation

Besides making your entire home an enjoyable place to live in, you and your family should also create a special space, room, or a corner just for relaxation. You can use this space for a variety of activities like practicing yoga, reading, meditation, or for anything else that can lift your spirits up and raise positive vibrations.

Let Fresh Air Flow in

Oxygen-deprived places can be really unpleasant and bring out all those negative vibes that you wish to avoid. The easiest way to increase the oxygen levels in your house is just to open your windows and let the fresh air flow in. Fresh air boosts energy levels, improves overall health and helps you sleep better.

Let There Be Light in Your Home

Artificial lighting is not that good for your home. It can cause insomnia, stress, and headaches. This is why it is important to open the curtains during the day and let in plenty of natural light. A home that is exposed to plenty of sunlight is a place you definitely want to live in.

The truth is that it’s really not that difficult to bring in positivity in your home and get rid of all the bad vibes. By following these simple steps, you and your kids will create a home packed with positive energy and awesome vibes.

Melanie Saunders is a blogger and content manager at 1300 Rubbish – experts in the field of rubbish and junk removal. Personally, a huge fan of sustainability and green living.

Guest Post - How To Keep Your Family Safe From Carbon Monoxide Poisoning From Your Heating System

There is no doubt about the warmth and comfort home heating systems provide us whenever winter comes. It’s hard to imagine living a life without the gas furnaces, water heaters, and boilers that keep us from freezing whenever temperatures take a steep dive. It’s even harder to imagine your heater breaking down in the middle of winter because getting heating system repair can get a bit tough in the middle of a blizzard.

Our heating systems, however, are not without risks. Since there is combustion involved in their operation, they produce carbon monoxide, a gas that is deadly to both humans and pets.

One scary thing about carbon monoxide is the fact that it’s odorless, tasteless, and colorless. In other words, it’s tough to detect. You could have a carbon monoxide leak inside your home and not know it.

The consequences of a carbon monoxide leak are unimaginable, and that’s why you have to take all possible measures to protect yourself and your loved ones from carbon monoxide poisoning from your heating system. Here are a few tips to do just that.

Install carbon monoxide detectors

A carbon monoxide detector is the best way to alert a household that there is, indeed, a CO leak at home. CO detectors are affordable, dependable, and widely available. No matter how small the leak, these CO detectors will pick it up and promptly raise the alarm, which should allow anyone at home to get out to safety.

The best CO alarms are those that you can plug into an outlet and has a battery backup.

Since carbon monoxide tends to stay near the ground, plug your CO detectors—which you should have on every floor and bedroom—into outlets closer to the floor.

Keep your vents clear

Your ventilation systems should be clear of debris so in case of a carbon monoxide leak, the CO can make its way outside and dissipate there. Make sure floor vents, dryer vents, and chimneys are free of any obstruction.

Know the symptoms

The better you know the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning, the faster you can act to get your loved ones to safety. Those symptoms include:

• dull headaches

• shortness of breath

• dizziness

• nausea

• confusion

• blurred vision

• physical weakness

Contact your local fire department as well to deal with the CO leak.

Conduct yearly inspection and maintenance

An annual inspection of your heating system by HVAC professionals should help ensure that it’s working perfectly and that there is no danger of a CO leak. If they find small issues that could lead to a carbon monoxide leak, they will immediately deal with it before anything untoward happens in the future.

Michelle West is the Senior Content Editor of Precision Air and Heating, a local AC repair company in sunny Arizona. Michelle enjoys writing about topics that help people all over the country make their homes more efficient and environmentally-friendly.

What Retirement Reveals

So you’re finally retired. Wonderful news! Now you can get to all those books you have been meaning to read, take a trip when and where you want, spend more time with friends, children and grandchildren, and volunteer at your favorite charity. Being retired gives you the freedom to make your own schedule, and also means you will be home a lot more than you were in the past.

However, spending more hours at home means having the time to actually look at your home. Often our retired clients will tell us that after a few months of being home they start noticing how much “stuff” accumulated over the years. Collections from no longer living relatives are in the attic, keepsakes from children are in the closets, a garage filled with old sporting equipment and a basement filled with boxes.

Retirees try to figure out how all these piles took over their space while they were at work. What to do? Where to even begin? Maybe it is time to call a professional organizer.

A professional organizer will come to your space and access the situation. You will get a clear understanding of the time and cost necessary to help you sort, review and organize the areas of your house which are cluttered and could benefit from finished organized systems. A professional can assist you in making hard decisions that can be challenging on your own, such as what to keep, where to donate and how to appraise items which may be of value. Many professional organizers will remove your smaller unwanted items at the end of the session, arrange for donation or junk pick up for larger items and set up a walk through with an auction house for possible sale items.

Organizers have knowledge of the best storage solution for your space.  In addition to containers you may benefit from shelves and other storage solutions. At House to Home Organizing, one of our popular services is our concierge shopping service that makes your life that much easier. Shopping in a crowded store overflowing with options can be stressful. Let us bring the solutions to you.

Retirement can be great for relaxing, but sometimes it can be hard to restart physical activities. It is really important to note that Professional Organizers provide manual labor and momentum which is something everyone needs when reducing clutter. It can be easy to start a project but many people get distracted easily and never finish. Organizing requires serious decision making, focus and energy.

Every job is different as to where to start and the time needed to complete. Having a no charge consult at is a great way to understand the process and the time commitment. Spending more time at home should be a pleasure not a burden. So if you are looking to enjoy retirement, want to spend your time doing the things you love as opposed to de-cluttering, do yourself a favor and call a professional organizer. You will not be sorry!

Guest Post - Smart Space-Saving Solutions for a Small Kitchen

Just because your kitchen is lacking space, it doesn’t mean that you can’t create a well-equipped and beautifully-decorated space. Style and function can be achieved even in the smallest of rooms with the help of just a few nifty tricks and hacks.

Listed below are some of the ways you can maximize the efficiency of your small kitchen without sacrificing its functionality, style or design.

Appliances

When choosing appliances, keep the available floor space in mind. It’s worth mentioning that, nowadays, finding the appliances of various unconventional sizes is much easier than it ever was. Therefore, consider the layout of your kitchen beforehand and explore your possibilities. Two-in-one appliances, such as ranges and combined refrigerators and freezers, are the best way to go when it comes to small kitchens.

Sink

Instead of trying to squeeze in a double bowl sink into your small kitchen, go for the single bowl one. This will not only save you a significant amount of counter space in your kitchen but, thanks to the versatility of such sinks, it will also allow you to completely adjust it to your personal preferences.

Furniture

Fitting all the necessary furniture pieces in a small kitchen, especially if you don’t have a separate dining room, can be a real challenge. That’s why you should go with multipurpose furniture pieces, such as a kitchen bench that can double as a storage space solution, as well as foldable furniture. This way, you can simply fold and store away the furniture pieces when you don’t need them, freeing up additional space you can use for something else.

Other elements

The fact that you have a small kitchen should never be used as an excuse not to include some other important elements. A range hood should definitely find its place in your kitchen and, again, when it comes to size, you’ll have plenty of options to choose from. Additionally, installing a reverse osmosis water filter under the sink will save you space but still provide your housemates with fresh drinking water. Finally, placing a recycle bin inside one of your bottom kitchen elements will make it easily accessible without taking up any additional floor space.

Pantry

Yes, creating a pantry in a small kitchen is probably the last thing you had in mind, but we’re here to tell you that it’s not only possible but practical as well. Instead of designating an entire area of your kitchen to create a pantry, you can make use of all the narrow – usually unused – space you have between, for example, your fridge and the wall. Create a slim, pull-out pantry, add a few wheels on the bottom to make pulling it out easier and fill it up with canned, dried and long-lasting food and other items you’d otherwise put in a regular pantry.

Dishes

In small kitchens, it all boils down to making the most out of the space you have and making everything in it serve as many purposes as possible. So, instead of cramping the space with various storage solutions, consider hanging all of your knives, pans and other kitchen utensils on the kitchen wall. This way, they will be both easily accessible and work as a great kitchen decor.

Lighting

Finally, by properly illuminating your kitchen, you can make it – at least – feel roomier. An overhead lighting fixture is an absolute must, but you should also add task lighting to make the meal prep easier, as well as accent lighting, to enhance and accentuate the wow effect your afore-mentioned kitchen decor is bound to evoke.

As you can see, the actual size of your kitchen is not that important when it comes to creating a beautiful and functional space; the way you use it plays a much bigger role.

Lillian Connors can’t resist the urge to embark on a myriad of green living/home improvement projects and spread the word about them. She cherishes the notion that sustainable housing and gardening will not only make us far less dependent on others regarding the dwellings we inhabit, but also contribute to our planet being a better place to live on. You can check her out on Twitter.