Each year, most of us come up with New Year resolutions and vow to stick to them. The feeling of a fresh start can be inspiring and lead us to take steps toward self improvement or achieving new goals.
But, as a homeowner or even a renter, it can also be a great idea to make resolutions that revolve around your home. We all get caught up in crazy, day-to-day tasks, and sometimes keeping our homes happy and healthy can feel challenging.
Below are seven resolutions that we think will help you feel prepared to take on the year, inside and out of your home. Don’t forget to share your resolutions in the comments!
No one wants to spend their entire weekend cleaning the house from top to bottom. Instead of saving all your chores for one or two days, set a daily, weekly, and monthly schedule that you can realistically keep to. It’s easy to tackle small tasks like dusting or washing dish towels on weeknights when you get home from work.
First, make a list of all the cleaning tasks you do on a frequent basis and assign them each a day of the week, or alternate every other week. Split them up so you may have two or three small tasks on one day, and a bigger, more time-consuming task on another. Next, look at tasks that you might only do once or twice a month or less, like scrubbing kitchen cabinets and doors in your home or cleaning windows and window treatments, and assign an appropriate frequency for those tasks. Last, document your calendar! Using a paper calendar, your phone calendar, or even a smart home device like Google or Alexa, you can set reminders to help you adopt these new habits.
Instead of all your cleaning tasks building up at once, you will now have a home that constantly feels clean and stress-free. And, if you have kids, don’t forget to enlist them with some of the smaller tasks so you’re not taking on every chore yourself.
This small, but effective, new rule can make a huge difference, especially in a home that houses lots of family members or hosts guests frequently. Shoes track in dirt and germs from the outdoors, making your job of keeping floors clean and residents healthy even harder.
Some places you can add a shoe rack to create a makeshift mud room would be your entryway, a hall closet, the laundry room, or the garage. Try and place your “shoe hub” near an entry that most of your guests and family members enter and exit through. Use door mats and runners in places you know shoe traffic cannot be avoided.
Single-use plastics are something that California especially has been moving away from, such as the single-use plastic bag ban placed on grocery stores in 2018. Take it a step further by swapping out a few of these items in your home:
Not only will cutting out single-use items make a difference on our planet, it will help out your wallet! Here are even more ways to create an eco-friendly lifestyle and home.
Even if the majority of your mess and clutter is stored behind a door or tucked into a drawer, you will feel instant relief once you tackle that unseen mess. We all get busy, and that sometimes results in a catch-all location for random odds and ends. Spending just a couple hours to sort through everything and determine what’s needed, what’s not, and what needs a new home can make a huge difference.
If you notice there are several items in there that don’t have a place in your home but should, create that space for them so you don’t run into this problem again. And, who knows, you may find a treasure that you thought was lost forever!
Once you have everything neatly sorted, avoid falling into the same habits or, at the very least, set aside time once a month to organize it again.
It’s easy to get caught up in the same routines when it comes to cooking dinner. Challenge yourself and your family members to come up with a new recipe that you can try each week. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy or difficult, though. Choose something easy, healthy, and delicious that you can all make together. Plus, at the end of the year, you’ll have 52 new recipes to choose from!
If you’re not sure where to start, ask friends, family members, and coworkers what their favorite meals are and where they get their recipes. You can also use social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest to search for and follow specific accounts and hashtags like #healthyrecipes, #veganfoodie, or #comfortfood.
First, check out our emergency preparedness checklist. Then, sit down with your family to go over your plan and take action on each item. It’s also smart to start thinking about setting aside savings, or making sure you can easily access savings, in case of an emergency. Emergencies are not something we like to think can happen, but just having the conversation once a year and setting a plan in place can bring you and your whole household peace of mind.
If you’re not already a homeowner, start making a plan to become one! Whether you’re close to buying or just want to learn more about the process, you can connect with one of our real estate agents in Southern California to find out what the first steps are to owning your own home. Step one? Sign up for our newsletter and weekly open house reminders.
All resolutions can be hard to keep unless you’re committed to seeing them through. Set dates and times that you would like to complete your goals to keep you on track. Remember, resolutions don’t need to be finished or tackled in January in order for you to keep them. Good luck!
What resolutions have you made this year?
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January 8th, 2020 at 11:00 am