Home Improvement Tips that Experts Won't Give You

chillibreeze writer — Anoo Kulkarni

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘home’ as: the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household. It adds another aspect, which is interesting in the context of this article: a place where something flourishes, is most typically found, or from which it originates. ‘Improvement’ is defined simply as: a thing that makes something better. Just for the fun of it, I combined a few keywords from these definitions and put down the essence of home improvement as: making things better in a place where one lives… and flourishes. Suddenly, ‘home improvement’ encompasses all the things you do to your home that increase your sense of well-being and help you flourish, including but not limited to renovation, remodeling, and re-decoration in the traditional sense.

Now consider this: our senses are constantly stimulated by our surroundings - colors, smells, sounds, textures, heat and cold, forms and shapes, light and darkness. Some stimuli make us feel good, some don’t, and some are just neutral. Cheerful, happy places are conducive to cheerful, happy thoughts; spaces that are clean and well-maintained impart a sense of wellness; things that function smoothly ensure comfort and inspire a sense of efficiency. If you were to combine this awareness with the new definition above, then home improvement would be all about maximizing stimuli that make you feel happy, peaceful, energized, confident and productive; and minimizing stimuli that make you feel irritable, sad, tense, helpless or agitated.

From this broad perspective, home improvement is an active, on-going process rather than a one-time project. If you look beyond the bricks and mortar, paint and wood around you; if you are able to feel the pulse of the space you’re in, you’ll discover that your home is alive, because it affects you and responds to you in subtle ways all the time. And anything that’s ‘alive’ needs attention and care in order to thrive. When you adopt this new attitude to home improvement, you’ll find yourself actively and passionately engaged in making your home look and feel great, consciously infusing it with freshness and vibrancy. You’ll soon realize that it goes far beyond mundane maintenance or mechanical house-keeping, simply because the end goal is not just a cleaner, more organized or better-looking home, but a happier and healthier you.

There are a million different things you could do under home improvement, but it’s very likely each will fit into one or the other of these four actionable areas: hygiene, efficiency, organization, and aesthetics.

Hygiene
Good hygiene is a treat for the senses and a tonic for the body and mind. Your senses are your best monitors of hygiene: sight, smell and touch can help you instantly spot areas that need attention. The more you train your senses, the more you’ll ‘feel’ your home and its subtle vibes. Much like a connoisseur of fine food and wine, you’ll begin to enjoy the sheer sensuality of dust-free floors, table tops and shelves; freshly laundered sheets and towels; gleaming cutlery, door handles and faucets; cupboards that are fresh-smelling and odor-free; window panes that are clear and unstained; sparkling bathrooms and spotless kitchens; carpets you can lie on without sneezing; and corners devoid of cobwebs. Dust, grime and staleness are always signs of neglect, and there can be no room for neglect in a place where you’re meant to flourish.

Efficiency
Imagine a home in which everything functions smoothly, and everything works well, especially when you need it the most: switches and sockets, latches and locks, handles and hinges, flushes and faucets, remotes and radios, clocks and computers, showers and shavers, and all the rest. Things that don’t work the way they ought to can be ignored for some time as minor irritants, but when left unattended too long they can cause annoyance, frustration and a vague sense of apathy. Efficiency involves taking care of all the cracks, creaks, breakdowns and leaks as soon as you discover them. Fixing these things quickly keeps your own efficiency levels high and rewards you with the happy self assurance that comes with taking charge and being effective.

Organization
Equally important is organization: how you allocate and use space, arrange things, manage storage and make things easy to access. By paying a little attention while doing various tasks or just moving around the house, you’ll begin to identify areas for improvement. For example, you might notice that some parts of the house look bare while others are too tightly packed; or that you frequently bump into a particular table because of the way it’s placed; or that the things you use most often are also the ones you’re always struggling to find; or that you never seem to have enough space for bed linen or shoes. These are relatively harmless matters that you can live with a little longer or much longer, but making these observations will help you ask the right questions. Identifying solutions and acting on them will make you more comfortable, your work easier, and your life less stressful.

Aesthetics
Aesthetics is about nice-looking things and making things look nice. It includes all the things you do to beautify your home, whether with the help of an expert or on your own. It’s the unique ways in which you express your personality, your creativity and imagination. It’s how you make your home a reflection of yourself using the colors, objects and materials you love, the furniture and knick-knacks that are so ‘you’. For a home to be beautiful it needn’t be filled up with pretty things. Sometimes, getting rid of things you don’t need can do more good. As you un-crowd your home, you’ll begin to savor the beauty and lightness of space. If there’s something you’ve forgotten about or not needed for a whole year, you’re unlikely to miss it when it’s gone. Retain or refurbish what is useful and unburden yourself of the rest: sell it, donate it or pass it on to a friend who needs it. When you clear out the clutter every now and then, you make space for newness, which is a great way to refresh your home and yourself.

If you choose to try out this new approach and attitude, look at your home afresh and list out all that you’re doing already in these four areas, and the things you’re not doing yet but would like to. If you’re doing too little in one area, you might want to give it more attention. If you’re doing way too much in another, maybe you can ease up there and use some of that time and energy on other things. Above all, take pride in nurturing your home. Don’t undermine the efforts you make – the little and big things you do around the house every day, every week, every month. And remind yourself, every now and then, that every act is an act of home improvement if it helps you make things better in the place where you live, and helps you flourish.

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Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in January, 2011. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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With a degree in Psychology and a crush on writing, I started my career as a copywriter. I spent the next decade in areas as diverse as retail, event management, marketing communication, and furniture design and now I’m back to writing as a freelancer. I’m fascinated by the craft of writing, flashes of insight, and transformation. When I’m not working, I enjoy reading, playing snooker, meeting people, and feeding my blog. I live in Mumbai.

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