With 2020 winding down at a rapid pace, most people worldwide are looking forward to putting one of the most tumultuous and crazy years any of us have seen behind us and launch into 2021 with hope and vigor for better days. Fortunately, regardless of how 2020 treated you, 2021 can be a great year for making new resolutions for your home.
We’ve put together 5 effective new year resolutions to improve your home in 2021.
1. Declutter
Perhaps one of the best places to start improving your home in the new year is to start by decluttering. Over the course of 2020 (and especially amid a global pandemic), things may have accumulated at a more-than-manageable pace leaving you with more things than you could get grips with.
Start your year by decluttering. The process is simple: start with one area of a room and separate items into three piles: keep, donate, and throw away. From there, you can start to organize the things you’re keeping and categorize them into storage and spaces that work. Be ruthless about decluttering and be diligent about reorganizing!
2. Optimize Your Floor Plan
Along with decluttering the things in your home, your New Year new home should be re-optimized for your existing floor plan. Once you declutter and can see clearly in your home or space, consider optimizing your floor plan by moving furniture, adding or adjusting shelving, and using wall space for storage.
If it helps, you can use graph paper or online tools to help you visualize where furniture can go and find ways to install or move cabinets or other methods of storage to better use the space in your home. Pinterest can be a huge help for inexpensive yet effective ways to plan and organize.
3. Touch Up Paint and Caulk
Early in the year, you’ll likely want to steer clear of too much outdoor work but your indoor space is primed for some touchups or outright repainting.
Use the slower colder winter months to touch up paint, re-caulk separated sheetrock, and cover up any cracks or blemishes that may have been uncovered as your home shifted during the change of the seasons. This is also a great time to evaluate any damage from weather or critters and make repairs as needed.
4. Prepare Your Outdoor Space
Spring and summer outdoor activities may be a far off hope for those settling in for a cold winter, but these cold months are a great time to evaluate and prepare your outdoor space for the better weather to come. Instead of putting outdoor projects off until better weather, consider doing some of it to get a jump on 2021.
If finishing out your outdoor patio or backyard areas, doing so without foliage to deal with could be opportune. Furthermore, if you work now to get your outdoor areas ready, then you can spend far less time working and more time enjoying when the weather allows.
5. Find Ways to Lower Your Energy Bills
For most of us, the wintertime will reveal just how drafty, poorly insulated, or poorly sealed parts of our homes are. Start 2021 by finding ways to seal your house, lower your energy bills, and generally become more earth-friendly by lessening your dependence on dirty energy sources.
In addition to sealing up your home, you can find ways to save electricity elsewhere by evaluating where vampire appliances are robbing your electricity, lowering your thermostat in the colder months, and finding ways to better insulate your home to further reduce the need to run air conditioning and heat.
