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How to Find More Closet Space

Bedrooms, bathrooms, closets – these are the top concerns for potential homeowners on the hunt. If you’re a homeowner pining for more room to stock your clothes, read on for these helpful hints.

Reduce. This is the first step to making more room in your closet. We’re all guilty of hanging on to things we don’t use. Make a habit of reducing your wardrobe seasonally. Ask yourself if you wore this in the past six months. If the answer is no, donate it to a charity, bring it to a consignment shop, or have yourself a yard sale.

Get creative with storage. Don’t settle for simple shelves. Cubbies, bins and wire racks can offer storage solutions to streamline your space. Adding rods or racks to the back of your closet door or the sides of your closet can offer extra stash space.

Stagger. There’s no need to have only one or two hanging rods. Stagger your rods at different heights and lengths and arrange garments accordingly.

Look to the ceiling. Does your shelving reach all the way to the ceiling? If not, you could be missing out on several feet of storage space. Add another shelf (or three!) to the top of your closet and store out-of-season clothes or things you don’t reach for on a daily basis.

Repair or Replace? How to Tell

When an appliance or tool breaks, it can often be difficult to decide whether you should repair it or get a new one. The difference in expense can be hard to figure out and the decision can be a struggle. In the following article, Consumer Reports tells us how we can make a more educated decision, and hopefully save some money along the way.

“Repairing broken items or keeping them going as long as possible isn’t always the best way to save money,” says Celia Kuperszmid-Lehrman, Deputy Content Editor of Home and Appliances for Consumer Reports. “Our report spells out how much repairs usually cost, brands that breakdown and those that don’t, and cheap fixes you can handle to save money.”

Tips on How to Save

Consumer Reports surveyed 29,281 subscribers about their product experiences as part of its 2013 Online Annual Questionnaire. Here’s what consumers need to know:

• Products aren’t breaking faster. The repair rates of most products in the latest survey are similar to the 2010 survey results. Some products are breaking less often. For example, laptops had a repair rate of 24 percent, down from 36 percent in 2010.
• Avoiding a lemon. Check Consumer Reports’ “What Breaks and What Doesn’t” lists for the most temperamental product types and – from repair-history surveys – the most and least reliable brands for each. GE electric ranges were reliable, for example, while Jenn-Air and KitchenAid were both repair-prone brands, according to the survey. 
• Save money on repairs. People who used independent repair shops were more satisfied with the repairs than those who used factory service. No matter who does the repair, don’t spend more than 50 percent of the cost of a new product on repairing an old one.
• Warranties don’t improve satisfaction. People who had a service contract or an extended warranty weren’t any happier with their repairs. They were actually more likely to have had repairs done incorrectly the first time around than people without those contracts and waited at least two weeks for repairs.

Source: Consumer Reports

 

6 Ways to Make Your Home More Energy Efficient

These days, it seems everyone is improving their efforts to be more sustainable. From ride sharing to recycling, “green” is on the tip of nearly everyone’s tongue. But how green is your home? There are some easy steps you can take to improve the energy efficiency of your home, which not only helps the environment—it saves you big bucks.

Below are six ways you can make your home more energy efficient.

1. Begin by focusing on those small cracks and crevices around doors and windows. According to Lowe’s, a 1/8-in. space between a standard exterior door and its threshold is equivalent to a 2 sq.-in. hole in the wall. Close those gaps to save up to 15 percent in heating and cooling costs and also reduce the demand on your heating and cooling system.  

2. Lower your water heater’s thermostat setting; less heat means less fuel, and you likely don’t need your shower scalding.

 

3. Blanket or insulate the water heater to reduce the amount of heat lost by the unit, particularly if it is located in an unheated area.4. Insulate water pipes, at least the hot water pipes, to prevent heat loss that can cause your water heater to work harder.

   5. Change furnace filters to prevent reduced airflow through the heating/cooling system and overheating that can lead to premature compressor damage in the A/C systems.

   6. Install water-saving shower heads, and, if possible, purchase a water-saving toilet.

Building a Basement Garden

Have you always dreamed of having your own vegetable garden, but are sparse on space? You may want to consider building a basement garden. But before you get started, peruse the recent advice from thesimpledollar.com on collecting the highest return on investment for your veggie patch.

First, note that a single industrial grow light retailing for about $300 would be required to convert a clear 80 square foot basement area into a greenhouse space. A grow light that size uses 1,000 watts of energy – so running it 12 hours a day for 3 months equates to 1,080 hours of use.  That will cost you between $120 and $150 per season.

Seeds could be as cheap as $3 per growing session, assuming that you’re not using heirlooms, in which case there would be a one-time cost of $4 or $5, according to thesimpledollar.com. All told the space, energy and supplies are estimated to run $1,640, or $164 per season for the first 10 years.

 

To give some perspective, that means each season if you just grow one item – say 800 pounds of tomatoes – this would yield a cost per pound of about 20 cents, compared to the retail cost of about $3 a pound.

Now comes the clincher – time. It could take as much as 100 hours per season to maintain this type of garden, or more based on the diversity of your plantings.

And if you don’t have an outlet for your harvests, you may incur more time and costs for canning supplies or other types of processing.

 

Incorporate Exercise Into Your Day-to-Day Routine

As our schedules continue to become increasingly busy, one of the first things that tends to fall off our to-do lists is finding the time to exercise. While we all know that exercise is an important aspect of a healthy lifestyle, it’s easy to come up with numerous reasons to avoid the gym after a long day at the office. If you find yourself skipping your after-work gym sessions more often than not, incorporating physical activity into your day-to-day routine may be the motivation you need to get moving again.

One way to do this is to park far away. Whether you’re going to the grocery store or to work, parking in a spot far away from the entrance can help you lose up to 10 calories more a day. Do this for a year and you can lose up to 18,000 calories or five pounds!

You could also take the stairs. Skipping the elevator can help add physical activity to your daily lifestyle without having to work out too hard.

Another way to incorporate physical activity is to take advantage of your lunch break. During your break, walk ten minutes away from your job and back. This will add 20 minutes of exercise to your daily routine. Do this every other day for a year and you could lose up to 15 lbs.

 

You can also incorporate exercise into your day when you aren’t at work. When you are home you can either play with the kids, or do small exercises when you have time. For example, if you’re watching your favorite TV show, take advantage of the commercials. During those 2-3 minute breaks, do some jumping jacks or sit ups. If you aren’t sweating by the end of the show, you aren’t doing it right.

Now that you know these helpful exercise tips, you won’t have to feel bad about skipping the gym every once in a while. 

Source: lifehacker.com

 

Trending: Weird Baby Names

With celebrities these days naming their kids things like Blue Ivy and Bronx Mowglie, it’s no surprise that all sorts of baby names are popping up. My personal favorite celeb baby name? Pilot Inspektor, the son of Jason Lee. While Jason Lee is a funny dude, ensuring his son is going to get beat up on the playground may not be so funny in the long run. 

But with the new national roster weighing in at over 33,000 baby names — 50 percent more than were in common use a quarter century ago – you would expect there to be some weird ones thrown in the batch. According to the roster, five girls in 2011 were named Sundae, Moo, Evening and Psalms, while six baby boys were named Treasure and Cougar. 

What’s worse than naming your baby something you are unenthusiastic about? Naming them something unenthusiastic—literally. More than 7 baby girls in 2011 were named Eh. Ehhhh. 

And naming your son Brilliant (as 6 sets of parents did in 2011) or Famous (as 7 did) is setting a pretty high standard from the get-go! But I guess that’s better than naming your son Maxi, which more than seven sets of parents in 2011did…. 

Other weird names to mull over? Tomorrow, Tiger, Law, Benjerman, Island, Graceland and Comfort.