Designer: Kenji Abe for ifuki
As we usher into 2023, it’s time to carry forward the tradition of making customary New Year’s resolutions. Some common resolutions include weight loss goals, financial goals, eating clean, self-improvement, working out, following our passion, and so on. This year, let’s focus on home improvement and make some achievable resolutions for our abodes as we are spending a lot of time indoors. We must ensure that our homes are clean, well-organized, and comfortable to use. Maintaining the house requires hard work and effort, and these tips can help us organize better. So let’s celebrate 2023 with hope and positivity, as these resolutions can easily fit a busy lifestyle.
1. Decluttering
Decluttering is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to bring a sense of clarity and positivity into your home.
- Adopt the minimalist lifestyle. It is not about getting rid of everything but just keeping what you need. We tend to accumulate and hoard many things that we do not require. It takes a little effort to eliminate and donate the extra things. Check whatever you have before you buy more.
- Take some inspiration from the Marie Kondo style of organizing so that whatever product you possess sparks joy. This is a great way to make space for what matters and a Zen vibe.
Designer: Radha Sotomayor
2. Deep clean
It is time to pack all your Christmas decorations as the holiday season is over. Deep clean the rooms and create a maintenance routine to make the home a better and brighter place.
- Device a daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning routine which is easy to adhere to. Various checklists are available online. Choose the one that is best suited for your working style.
- Always keep a basic cleaning kit in each bathroom and kitchen for easier accessibility, quicker cleaning, and keeping the home more organized.
3. Organize your storage
Small habits that we practice every day will help us to stay organized and create a tidy home.
- It is highly recommended to store items of one category together. Demarcate different sections for keeping the toys, electronic chargers, books, clothes, craft supplies, papers, stationary, wrapping paper, and so on. It will become easier to search for things.
- Store your items in boxes, trays, and baskets. Labeling the baskets and containers makes it easier to find them amidst the chaos. Try to store vertically so that all the objects are visible in one go.
- Stop the paper clutter, as envelopes, catalogs, and documents tend to create a lot of chaos.
- Don’t forget to periodically organize the digital clutter of your phone, laptop, and tablet, keep deleting extra emails, photographs and unsubscribing to emails, to name a few.
Designer: Leydi Rofman
4. Clean and Organize the Kitchen
Your kitchen has worked hard during the holidays, so it is time for some deep cleaning and organizing.
- The first step is to empty all the kitchen ingredients and check what you need to keep, discard or donate. Check the expiry date of the non-perishable items and canned tins before buying and adding new grocery items to the kitchen.
- Empty the contents of the kitchen cabinets and divide the storage into items that we use frequently and rarely used items.
- Give a spring clean to all the drawers and cabinets and organize them in a grouping technique that suits your lifestyle. Place the items closest to where their function is performed.
- Neatly organized containers and tins make cooking easier and more efficient.
- Purchase additional storage and organization tools like roll-out shelves, baskets, storage containers, cabinet risers, and drop-downs to improve the kitchen’s efficiency.
Designer: Nancy Eaton
5. Organize your Home Office
Many of us are into hybrid models and work-from-home models, so we must ensure that the home office helps to improve focus and productivity. Also, we must prevent frequent clutter from building up.
- Don’t let the pile of papers and documents create chaos. Create a mail station for incoming and outgoing mail. Categorize the papers into different files, place them alphabetically, or the best way is to go paperless.
- Designate an area for keeping the printer and all the printing supplies. Use the vertical wall space to keep filing systems, hangers, shelving, and whiteboards.
- Organize all the office supplies in containers, drawers, and baskets and keep them out of view so that it imparts a decluttered look.
- Organize the books according to size and color, and genre.
Designer: norse.keeb
6. Invest in Smart and Energy-efficient Appliances
Here is how you can conserve energy and recurring electricity costs.
- Invest in programmable thermostats, smart appliances, and smart lighting to save electricity costs. One can control the heating or cooling of the house via the smartphone application.
- In case you need to replace white goods like refrigerators, air conditioners, and dishwashers, they should be replaced with Energy Star or energy-efficient appliances.
- Replace all incandescent bulbs and CFL lights with LED lights because these lights are highly durable, they are long-lasting, and come with superior energy—efficiency.
Designer: Samsung
7. Healthy Habits and Sustainable Lifestyle
We should be mindful of protecting our climate, and sustainable habits should be the core of our home décor. Some of the best ways to go green and reduce the carbon footprint are as follows:
- Create a clean and restful environment by tidying up your clothes every day instead of throwing them on the chair.
- Make it a point to switch off the lights when you leave any room — turning off the lights when not in use reduces the electricity bills and extends the bulb’s life.
- Reduce disposables, avoid single-use packaging, shop with reusable bags, and avoid prepackaged food by buying from the local farmer’s market.
- Air-drying clothes is more eco-friendly than using a dryer. It not only saves electricity costs but also reduces wrinkles and increases the lifespan of the clothes.
- Improve the thermal insulation of the house by caulking around the doors and windows and weather-stripping. This is one of the best ways to reduce air leakage and a cost-effective way to reduce heating and cooling costs.
- Seal and insulate the heat ducts to improve the heating and cooling efficiency of the home.
- Improve the water efficiency of your home with low-flow showerheads, as they can reduce water consumption by nearly 40% and result in significant savings on annual heating costs.
- Invest in low-maintenance and highly durable materials, as they can reduce the wear and tear of your home and enable long-term cost savings.
- Try composting at home, as it is a process in which organic kitchen and garden waste, like food scrap and leaves, break down into the soil. This is a perfect way to recycle waste from the kitchen and garden and convert it into nutrient-rich fertilizer for the garden.
- Segregate your wet waste from dry waste and place it in bins and bags in places that are easy to access. This segregation makes it easy to further segregate dry waste into different categories.
Designer: Katie Maris
8. Decorate with Plants
Plants are a great way to add beauty and color, it allows us to distress and lower anxiety levels.
- They come with air-purifying qualities that eliminate toxins and maintain good humidity levels indoors.
- Some of the common pollutants include mold spores, bacteria, and VOCs (volatile organic compounds) like benzene, xylene, toluene, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene that are usually emitted from chemical cleaners and household products.
Designer: TerraLiving