Could Your Home Be Taking Your For A Ride?

For the vast majority of men, it isn’t until we pass certain life milestones that we start taking an interest in our homes. The general lifespan of male accommodation tends to go a little something like this: childhood bedroom, college dorm, back to the childhood bedroom and then bachelor pad. This won’t be true for everyone, of course – just in the same way that not all men are typically as messy as society would have us believe! However, as most of these types of properties are rented rather than bought, not all of us take a great deal of pride in them. Even if you managed to find a pretty nice apartment to rent while you work in the city, it still isn’t YOUR’S, so you probably don’t care a great deal about how well it works for you. When you buy your home, however, things start to change. The property does not come cheap, and when you are spending that amount of money (on both the deposit and your subsequent mortgage repayments), you will naturally want to make sure that you are getting your money’s worth. Running headfirst into a haphazard sale can potentially end in disaster – but equally, you will still always need to keep on top of your home maintenance to make sure you are running your home, and not the other way around. If you aren’t careful, your home could be costing you money and effort in ways that you could easily avoid. Here are a few common examples of that, and what you can do to get back in control of your home.

Lack of storage

As previously mentioned, us guys aren’t always famed for our ability to keep a home clean and tidy. When you’re living in a rental, you might not care about any mess seeing as it’s only temporary, and if you live with your parents – well, let’s just say that maybe you rely on your mom a little too much! In a home of your own, however, a lack of storage space can easily get tiresome. How many times have you been on your way out the door to an important meeting or heading for a date, only to realize you’re missing something? We tend to panic when we’re in a rush anyway, and therefore rummaging around in piles of miscellaneous stuff will do nothing but stress us out. Plus, buying your home should be treated as a catalyst for change. If you’ve never been a particularly organized person up until now, who knows – taking some action in this area could allow your life to run a lot more smoothly. Having a dresser or cabinet in your hallway can be an excellent way to organize any post you have that comes through your front door, and a dish for your keys never goes amiss. Install some hooks or a coat rack, so your jackets aren’t always littering up your stairs. As far as the other rooms in your home go, look for necessary storage facilities like boxes for your living room (ones that can fit easily under your coffee table) and mason jars and trays for your kitchen. When everything has its place, you’ll begin to wonder how on earth you ever managed before.

Wasted energy

If there’s one thing that drives most homeowners mad, it’s spending money they don’t need to. But the harsh reality is that most of us could be shelling out cash every single month on wasted energy usage. Sure, working out where your energy goes and how you pay for it isn’t the most exciting thing on the planet – but if it can make your home more efficient, and save you some money too, it can be worth learning about. Before you call the professionals in, however, see what you can do yourself. Sites such as Tool Nerds offer homeowners gadgets and tools that enable them to track the quality of the electricity being supplied to their homes. So, if you suspect you may be getting a bad service for what you pay for, you can use one of these monitors and then take your findings to your energy company. In a similar way, work out if your heating system is providing you with the best service it can do. Many older properties feature a heat-only boiler rather than the modern combi boiler, which can typically be more expensive to run. Of course, replacing your heating system does cost time and money, but it is likely to be better for both you and your home in the long run.

Cleanliness

Feel as though you’ve reached the pinnacle of manhood, and are now ready to be the proud owner of a clean and chic home? A lot of us feel this way when we’ve made that first property purchase, but it can be all too easy to slip back into old habits. But did you know that your home’s uncleanliness can have as much to do with how it is designed as it does with your housework abilities? For example, if you only have one bin in your whole home, you can pretty much guarantee that old carrier bags filled with rubbish are going to start appearing in every room (old habits die hard, right?). Remove the temptation to just drop your trash in any old bag by placing small bins in every single room, and get into the habit of taking them all out once a week. Find that dust and grime in seem to build up in your home no matter what you do? Well, if you have stacks of books, trinkets and decorations everywhere, they are inevitably going to get dirty after a while. Cut out the need to clean so frequently by stripping your home back to a minimalist kind of style; it looks classy, and it’s easier to maintain too, so everyone’s a winner!