Remember that time when you’d get up early and travel about an hour to get to work? Yeah, no one does. Thanks to stay-at-home orders, more people have switched to working from home, and moving from your bed to the room across the hall is a whole commute.
You’ve probably seen all the memes about working from home while you were procrastinating working from home. No judgment, it happens to the best of us. If the memes are anything to go by, adjusting to this new normal has been difficult. The hardest part? Finding something productive to fill all the free time you now have.
While for the most part, being at home all day, every day feels like you’re on the inside looking out, there are a lot of bright sides to it such as: ● Spending more time with your family ● Getting to try those DIY projects you’ve had on your Pinterest board for years ● Not stressing over what to wear because pajamas are the new formal
With more free time on their hands, more people are taking a closer look at their homes and finding home improvement projects to do. We’ve noticed that more people are shopping from home improvement companies like Lowes, Home Depot, and Build.com, a testament to the increased spending on home renovations. Lowes especially saw an 11.2% increase in sales of home improvement essentials.
So, let’s take a look at a few things you can do around the house to lock down savings on home improvements while you’re locked down.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
The first step to having a better home is getting rid of all the clutter. Whether it’s a stack of books you never got around to reading or some other random odds and ends that stick out like a sore thumb, putting those away will make your home look a lot better.
For this purpose, you can get bookshelves, tables, and other storage solutions. Whatever you choose, try to select something that matches the furniture you already have in the room.
If that’s not possible, you can go with furniture from Alabama Sawyer for a modern, minimalist look that fits anywhere. All the products are designed from fallen trees, giving you environmentally sustainable products at a good deal. You can also use the promo codes and coupons we have to get more pieces for the rest of the house at a discount and have a matching, clean look throughout.
Now that you’re also working from home, you probably have a lot of devices plugged in, which means cables and extension cords all over the place. Rather than resigning yourself to hop-scotching the cables and occasionally getting tangled, there are lots of creative ways to hide them.
You can use cord management furniture like the media chests from Hayneedle to get everything out of sight and out of mind. Make sure you check out the popular Hayneedle offers we have for coupons and promo codes that will help you save. Alternatively, you can keep it simple with cable ties or use a wooden box cable organizer that blends in with the rest of your furniture.
The Paint Adventures
Now that trips to places like Space Adventures and Disney World aren’t an option, it’s time to look a little closer to home for your explorations. Nothing says “revamp” like a fresh coat of paint on your walls. Besides adding some brilliant new color into your home, painting is a fun way to spend time with your whole family. In this strange new world, you can think of painting as the new Water World. Except there’s paint instead of water, and splashing around in it is probably not a good idea.
While holding a brush and slathering some paint on a wall seems like a pretty easy task, choosing a color isn’t. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a set color scheme for your whole house so picking one won’t be a problem.
If you want to be adventurous, there’s plenty of room for that through houzz, a community of homeowners like you, and the professionals who know a thing or two about paint jobs and house remodels. Using coupons and discount codes, you can get wall art stencils to paint trendy designs like a pro, or some artsy wallpaper if you don’t feel like dealing with messy paint.
Make the Outdoors Great Again
Most people focus on making sure the indoors is as perfect as possible, which is good because your home should be comfortable since you spend most of your time there. Now that you’ve had several weeks of staying indoors all the time, however, your backyard is starting to look pretty good and enticing. Although, it probably isn’t because you never bothered to fix it up before. Well, now’s your chance!
If you have a nice space outdoors, you can get outdoor dining sets like the ones from Overstock, so you and your family can dine out while staying in. There are also some great deals on outdoor decor and patio furniture if you want to go the extra mile. Add a firepit to warm up the chilly nights and an outdoor kitchen island like the savvy ones from Wayfair, and you’ll never want to go back inside again.
The Bottom Line
Staying indoors doesn’t have to feel like a prison sentence. It’s a great opportunity to spend time with family, doing a lot of things you never had time to do before. With little projects like the ones given here, you can count down the stay-at-home days, one home improvement at a time.