These Small Home Improvements Can Also Improve Your Quality of Life
We invest a lot of time and money into renovating and improving our homes, spending over $400 billion every year on renovation projects. When considering renovating your home, it’s natural to focus on money—the initial cost of materials and labor, as well as your expected return on investment (ROI) if and when you decide to sell the home. This focus on finances often overlooks another key aspect of home renovations: its impact on your quality of life.
Some repairs are purely aesthetic. A brand new kitchen that updates all the finishes but keeps an annoying or ineffective layout may provide a solid return on investment, but at the same time, it won’t make your life much better. And some repairs and renovations are practical, like a new roof, but they just set you back to square one with no additional benefit. But home renovations shouldn’t be done because of the return on investment or the solution to a problem, but because it will improve your life.
Natural light
Natural light is good for you . Like, very good for you. Unfortunately, some homes are designed in a way that limits, rather than maximizes, the amount of natural light entering your home. Lack of natural light can lead to depression, sleep problems and other negative consequences. So, any home renovation that increases natural light will not only make your home brighter and more attractive, but it will also improve your mental and physical health. Skylights, new or larger windows, and window coverings that can be easily opened to let in more light are just a few ways to bring more sun into your home, and they are all worth the time and money.
Noise reduction
Noise can have a real impact on your mental health, and your home may be noisier than you think. Noise from appliances, devices, heating and cooling systems, and other sources can combine into a continuous hum that you may not be consciously aware of, but still drives you crazy. Home should be a peaceful place where you can relax, not a place that reminds you of living inside a speaker cabinet.
Luckily, there are many simple and easy home improvements that can help eliminate or reduce much of the background noise. Installing soft close cabinets is a great idea, but if that’s too ambitious at the moment, you can install simple cabinet bumpers to stop them rattling. They can also be placed on doors to prevent slamming. While you’re at it, replace your toilet seats with soft-close versions to eliminate another source of background noise. And installing a rug or even large area rugs on the floor (and not wearing shoes in the house) can further muffle all that nervous noise.
Ceiling fans
Ceiling fans can have a huge impact on your quality of life, providing the added benefit of lower heating and cooling costs in both hot and cold weather. Ceiling fans will also improve the overall air quality in your home simply by circulating the air. For just a few hundred dollars, you can make your home a much more comfortable place to live.
Programmable thermostat
Thermostats, which can be programmed to raise and lower the indoor temperature of your home on a specific schedule, are usually rated in terms of their impact on your utility bills . But they also have another aspect: being able to adjust the temperature of your home according to your personal biorhythms means feeling more comfortable in your home. If you’re the type of person whose body temperature fluctuates throughout the day, or you like to sleep hot and sweat all night long, a programmable thermostat is worth it.
Privacy fencing
The phrase “good fences make good neighbors” is a cliché, but an accurate one. Even if you like your neighbors, they may not always be your neighbors, and having private, defined outdoor space has benefits in terms of aesthetics, safety and comfort. What many people miss about privacy fencing is that it gives you control over your space: you only have to interact with your neighbors if you choose to.
Laundry room on the ground floor
This may be a matter of personal opinion, but if you have a home where the laundry room is in the basement, you know how much time you spend running up and down the stairs, often carrying baskets of clothes. Having your laundry room on the main floor will make doing laundry much easier, saving you time and effort (not to mention making it harder for you to forget that you turned on the washer yesterday morning but never put your clothes in the dryer). ).
Covered veranda or terrace
Open space is great, and access to it is beneficial in almost every way. But if your outdoor space is only used when the weather is sunny and clear, you won’t get all the benefits it can. Even if all you do outside is grill dinner, adding a cover to your deck or patio instantly makes it much more useful and increases the amount of time you can spend outside breathing fresh air.
Drawing
One of the cheapest and easiest remodeling projects is painting, which can also improve your quality of life by uplifting your mood. Color has a powerful impact on your emotional and mental state, and moving from a builder’s beige to a custom wall color also provides a sense of true ownership and control that can make a space truly “yours.” Anyone who has lived in the institutionally white-walled world of rental apartments will understand the joy of being able to paint the walls any color you like.
Add storage
Cleaning up your living space is often the first step people take when recovering from depression, and for good reason: choosing and organizing your living space improves your mood , clears your thinking, and reduces anxiety. However, to achieve that organizational nirvana, you’ll need a place to put all that crap. This makes any project that adds storage to your home a potential improvement for your mental health and quality of life.