Family homes can become landfill sites in the blink of an eye. You spend hours cleaning up after your little ones only for them to make a mess again. Soon, that mess becomes part of the aesthetic. What’s the point in even making improvements to the house? There are too many people living there and it’s putting the whole property under too much strain.
You’ll just have to accept that you’re never going to be one of those big families with a nice house, right? Wrong. All it takes is some determination and clever planning to make your home family-proof (and family-friendly, for that matter). If your home’s cramped then it’s time for a revamp, and here are some tips to get you started.
Assess the damage.
Before you make any rash decisions with regards to the renovation of your home, you need to assess the damage. You know that you’re not comfortable in your house and it feels smaller than it once did, but what’s the source of the problem? Perhaps your house is just cluttered and needs a more minimalistic feel (we’ll discuss that in the next point). Perhaps a poor layout and aesthetic decisions simply make the house “feel” smaller than it is when, in actual fact, there’s a lot of space available and the potential to make your home bigger if you’re smarter with regards to storage.
Of course, there’s every chance the house is no longer big enough for the family; perhaps you’ve had another child and you didn’t plan for such a big family when you bought the property. It might be time to move home if there’s no potential to increase the space available; you could head to The House Plan Shop to find potential new houses that could house your large family more comfortably. Whatever the solution, there’s always a way to create a cozier family household. If you’re willing to give your current home one last shot, however, then here are some tips to make the place feel more spacious.
Make the interior minimalistic.
As discussed above, you really need to assess the damage when it comes to revamping a cramped home. Go from room to room and figure out what needs fixing. Above all else, you need to strive to have a big clear-out. Decluttering and cleaning can do a lot to improve the aesthetic of the interior of your home. It might reveal which parts of your house simply felt cramped because they were overloaded with an unhealthy amount of possessions and which parts of the house are failing to effectively utilize space.
Essentially, your goal is to strip the house down to its bare essentials by throwing out unnecessary belongings for a “less is more” approach. Once that’s done, you’ll see where the real problems lie in the house. Cramped kitchen space? Most of your kitchen utensils are likely essential but they don’t have to clutter up your cooking area. You could put up new shelving units to increase storage space. As for other cluttered rooms in the house, you could find unused space to create new storage zones; what about the space beneath the stairs? The point is that minimalism is never out of reach. You just have to become smarter about the way in which you store items around your home (and which items you keep in the first place).
Spruce up the exterior.
Remember the outside of your house? Whilst you may be concerned primarily with sprucing up the interior design of your humble abode, you shouldn’t neglect the exterior of your property. It makes a solid first impression on both your family and visitors, but it’s also a potential extension to your home if you utilize the space available. Your garden, for example, could be an outdoor living room if you put a little more effort into keeping it clean and tidy.
You just need to turn the garden into a place which is actually visually appealing. Planting a few trees and plants can make the garden more vibrant and also make you more invested in looking after this outdoor space. Dining room too cramped? Well, if you set up a patio with a gazebo and dining area then the outdoor world could be your dining room. The point is that there’s the potential to grow your home through your own backyard.
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