Your Home Can Affect Your Mood: How to Make the Most of Your Space

These days, our day-to-day lives are based around our homes. Whether you’re working, schooling or home-making you want your space to also feel like a retreat and not just associated with work or stress. This is especially more difficult in our current climate but there are steps you can take to help make your house feel like home again.

Below you’ll see nine tips to help you improve your environment and specifically, spaces where you do work, schoolwork or any other computer activities:

1. Organize and declutter your space as well as your desktop and other virtual spaces

2. Physically separate your workspace with dividers or use a different room if possible

3. Make sure you’re getting plenty of natural light in your space, use white curtains to soften the light if it’s too bright

4. Fill your space with plants and other greenery to help relax your mind

5. Face your work station towards a nice view, preferably one with nature 

6. Incorporate aspects of nature through visuals (art, waterfalls) and scents (candles, diffusers)

7. Play music that helps you stay motivated or white noise if that helps you focus

8. Make sure the temperature in your space is ideal (68-76℉) and doesn’t make you feel tired

9. Invest in making your space comfortable with a standing desk and ergonomic accessories

To help improve your home environment you can’t just focus on the space but also your relationships within the space. It doesn’t matter how optimized your space is if you don’t have harmonious relationships as well. Here are some tips to improve your relationships:

1. Take care of yourself before expecting yourself to be the best parent or partner

2. Know that not everything will go to plan and accept that

3. Work on compromising better, whether that’s sharing the TV or splitting chores

4. Encourage your partner and children to share how they feel and communicate

5. Fight fairly: Don’t rub salt in wounds especially since outside factors are so tumultuous

See some additional tips to improve your home environment in the visual below (provided by Rocket Mortgage):

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.