Thursday 26 April 2018

10 Top Tips for a Tidy Home

When you have children and/or pets, keeping your home tidy can be difficult. Within minutes of the living room being tidied, there are toys out again, the rug has been kicked aside by the dog and the cushions that you nicely placed along the couch are all messed up – it’s a nightmare.
There are, however, a few things you can do to help you keep your home neat and tidy for what will seem like a longer period of time. Let’s begin!

1. Make your bed


This may seem straight forward, but making your bed almost as soon as you get up can set up your entire day. Your bed takes up a lot of space in your bedroom, meaning it can look extremely unattractive if it is not made properly. Leaving your bed messy on a morning will mean that you come home to an untidy bedroom in the evening and get into a messy bed when it’s time to go to sleep. With that in mind, wouldn’t it make good sense to take an extra 60 seconds each morning to straighten out your duvet, fluff your pillows and tuck the edges in.

Following this tip will help to ensure your bedroom is a much calmer environment to be in from the start of the day, right through until it’s time to go to bed.

Make your Bed

2. Bathroom cleaning products


Rather than storing all bathroom cleaning products under the sink with all your other household cleaning items, try storing them in the bathroom itself. This takes away the chore of having to traipse to the kitchen when you realise the bathroom needs cleaning. If the products are there for you to use, you’ll feel more willing to give your bathroom a scrub when you notice the toilet or basin could use a clean.

Toothpaste marks in the bathroom sink can be really unattractive if left for a long time, but can be easily removed if your bathroom cleaning products are nearby!

3. Get rid of junk mail straight away


Allowing your junk mail to build up can be a real problem, so don’t let your junk mail build up your telephone table or hallway cabinet. Simply sort through it when you find a little pile on your floor, keeping what’s needed and binning/recycling what isn’t.

This quick tip will help to ensure you end up with little clusters of junk mail scattered about the entrance to your home. You could even consider some form of letter holder to organise your letters when you get them.

4. Do the dishes daily


There’s nothing worse than waking up to a huge pile of dishes in the morning from last night’s tea. A dishwasher can come in handy, but not all of us have space or funds available for a new dishwasher, so it’s important to keep on top of the dishes. If you don’t do them the night before, you’ll find yourself feeling depressed when you come home from work to them the following night. Next thing you know, you’ll need to cook again, and the mountain becomes even bigger. Washing up little and often will help to maintain your kitchen, providing you do each night when you have finished eating.

5. Clean the worktops


It takes seconds to wipe the worktops down after you have finished cooking and eating, yet this is one of the household duties that will often get neglected. Crumbs and food remnants left on the worktops is not only unsightly, but also very unhygienic as invisible bacteria can build up. Take the time to wipe the worktops down with an antibacterial spray each night and you will help to ensure your kitchen is clean and tidy all the time.

6. Tidy before bed


Before you go to bed each evening, take the time to do a quick tidy. No more than 2-5 minutes should be enough to straighten everything up, put any leftover cups in the sink and make sure everything is on order ready for a new day. Waking up the next day to a tidy home is a great feeling, helping you the start the day on a positive note.

7. Be strategic


Rather than going up and down the stairs a dozen times or back and forth between different rooms, get yourself a dedicated basket to carry stuff about. This can come in handy with kid’s toys, as they will usually find their way to weird and wonderful places throughout your home. Your new basket will help you to pick all things up in one go to take them back to their rightful home without zig zagging around the house over and over again.

8. Buy a portable vacuum


Portable vacuums can make one of the most tedious jobs around the home seem bearable. If you are someone that has kids and/or pets, you might find it difficult to keep your floors or carpets clean. Crumbs and pet hairs will mean you quite often have to hoover every day, but who would want to clart a big vacuum cleaner around the house every day. Instead, purchase a handheld vacuum, like a Dyson, and the chore of keeping the floors clean will become MUCH easier. Simply grab your handheld vaccum, take care of the messy bits, job done. What was once a time-consuming job, will now become much quicker and easier.

9. Teach the kids to tidy


Keeping the house clean and tidy when you live on your own is quite simple. When there are two of you to split the chores, it might be even easier still. But when you throw children into the mix, things become a lot tougher, as you probably already know. Once your children are at a suitable age (probably 6-7), teaching them to tidy up after themselves is entirely plausible. Trial it. They’re not allowed to play with another toy until they have put the first toy away. It might seem like a ball ache, but you’ll appreciate it in the long run when you have a squad of children tidying up after themselves.

Sliding Wardrobe

10. Think about your storage options


One of the best ways to keep your home tidy is with practical storage solutions. Having one or several places where you can store a lot of things out of sight can do wonders for the appearance of your home. It can be difficult to tidy up when everything has its own dedicated place, but a large storage solution, like a sliding wardrobe, can help you to keep everything neat and tidy in one place.

So there you have, our 10 top tips for tidier home in 2018. We hope you enjoyed reading and have fun putting some of these tips into practice.

Sunday 22 April 2018

How can a Hollywood Mirror Improve your Bedroom?

If you are in the process of re-decorating your home, eventually the time will come for you to redecorate your bedroom. You might opt for a new lick of paint, or you might prefer to replace your bedding / curtains. It might also be that you are looking for new furniture to replace what you currently have.

A lot of people will opt for IKEA, B&Q or Argos when looking for new furniture, though for more distinct furnishings, you might want to find a different company from the norm.

Reflections of Me, for example, is a company that specialises in Hollywood Mirrors, offering a range of fantastic mirrors and other beauty products to help you look your best.

Hollywood Mirrors


Hollywood mirrors are essentially mirrors with lights, expertly designed for professional or home-use to provide users with an opportunity to enhance their hair, make-up and overall beauty experience.
The lights work using 2700 kelvin lamp colour rendition and are operated using a dimmer switch. This enables the light levels to be adjusted, depending on your personal requirements and/or the setting you are in.


Light up your life with a Hollywood Mirror


A wide range of colour options and sizes are available to suit various tastes. Black Satin, Faux Leather, Gold Sparkle, Rose Gold and White Satin are among the different colours, with both portrait and landscape options available to purchase.

Light up your life with a Hollywood Mirror


A Hollywood Mirror can add new glamour to your bedroom, helping you to replace that dressing table you’ve had for too long with something new and unique.

If you’re a hair and beauty fanatic looking for the best products on the market, a Hollywood Mirror with Lights is one of the best things you can add to your collection. Poor lighting and normal mirrors will often mean that justice can’t be given to expensive make-up products, but with a Hollywood Mirror you don’t have this problem. The professional lighting means that you can apply your favourite products more effectively, like a pro!

Your new mirror will look sleek on your wall or can be placed elegantly on any horizontal surface for when you need to look your best.

If you are looking to improve your bedroom with new furniture in 2018, a Hollywood Mirror with Lights should be up there on your list of priorities. Visit: www.reflectionsofme.co.uk to view there delightful range of Broadway / Hollywood style mirrors.

Wednesday 18 April 2018

5 Practical Home Improvements

Ultra Convenient Home Improvement Tips to Improve the Functionality of your Home


Quite often, a homeowner’s emphasis will be on creating a home that looks nice – but what about the functionality?

How can you improve the ‘convenience’ of your home?


There are several ways you can improve the functionality of your home to make it more convenient. Whether you have a large family, a worn-out garden or a lack of space, we look at 5 home improvement tips that can help to make your home a more practical and convenient place to live.

1. Introducing a Sliding Wardrobe


Lack of storage space is a widespread problem for people with lots of ‘stuff’. A new sliding wardrobe can help to create more space in your bedroom, creating a dedicated area for more than just hanging clothes. Shoes, bedding, personal items, accessories, board games and a whole host of other things can live in your sliding wardrobe, in a neat and tidy fashion. Different internal storage can be considered too, with drawers, shelves and baskets all available to help you personalize your wardrobe’s interior.

If you are looking to create more space in your home by giving your possessions a place to live, a practical sliding wardrobe should definitely be considered.



(Image Credit: https://slidingrobes.com )

2. Installing Underfloor Heating


If radiators are causing you problems with your furniture positioning, underfloor heating can always be considered. Your local plumbing and heating company will be able to remove your current radiators and replace the main heat source of your home with an underfloor alternative.

Underfloor heating is a practical home improvement. Not only does it create extra wall space for cabinets, shelves and other pieces of furniture, it provides a more effective way to distribute heat throughout your home. With radiators, you will sometimes get little pockets of hot air around where the radiators are installed. With underfloor heating, heat can be dispersed evenly throughout each room of your home. This means less energy will need to be used to heat a room and you can potentially save money in the long-term.

3. Consider an Additional Bathroom


If you have a family of 4, 5 or even 6, the bathroom situation can be a real nuisance sometimes – especially if you only have one household bathroom for all to use. Waiting to use the loo when someone is in the shower or vice versa can cause sibling disputes and arguments between one another. Hold ups when you need to have a quick shower and go out can cause irritation whilst Dad occupies the toilet and reads the paper.

En-suites and additional bathrooms are a practical addition to your home, creating a secondary area to wash, get ready and you know, do your business. If the bathroom situation causes daily ruckus in your home, it might be worth having an additional bathroom installed in your home. After purchasing a new bathroom suite, you'll need to call your local plumber to install it for you.

4. A New Garden Patio


If your backyard is made up primarily of grass, then you may not be utilising your outdoor living space as best as you can be. The addition of a garden patio can mean you have space for BBQ’s, outdoor furniture, such as swings and seating, and in general more space to live outside.

A garden patio is an excellent way of adding practicality to your home. Your local paving and patio company will be able to provide you with any details regarding patio design and installation.


Patio Installation - Central Paving

5. Additional Plug Sockets


In older homes, you may only get one or two sockets per room, meaning extensions will often be required to let you plug all your electrical appliances in. Not only is this a fire hazard, it is highly inconvenient. Having to unplug one appliance to plug in another is time consuming, tedious and unnecessary.

Having additional sockets installed and evenly dispersed throughout each room means you don’t have to load up extensions or spend time swapping plugs about when you need to do the hoovering or charge your phone. Modern day sockets even come with USB ports, so you can plug your phones and tablets directly into the wall with a USB cable.

Your local electrician will usually be able to provide you with any additional plug sockets you require. They may even be able to discuss rewiring with you if your home is particularly old. Old and worn out wires are another fire hazard that can be avoided by replacing them with new wires – and what’s more inconvenient than a fire in your home?

Monday 16 April 2018

7 Space-Saving Ideas for Small Bedrooms

If you have a small bedroom to play with, it can be difficult to fit everything you need inside. There are, however, a range of things you can do to save space.

Check out our top 10 tips to help you save space when you don’t have much room!

1. Get a Bed with Built-in Drawers


Getting a bed with built-in drawers can be a real space saver. Any loose items that you don’t have room for can be stored safely underneath your bed in a neat and tidy fashion.

2. Introduce Space-Saving Furniture


Space saving furniture, such as corner desks, nesting tables and sliding wardrobe doors, are a wise idea - all of which have been designed to help save space where there is a distinct lack of.

7 Space-Saving Ideas for Small Bedrooms

3. Utilise Wall Space


Rather than using desk or table lamps, consider using lamps that fix to the wall. This will leave more space on your surface-tops for other things. Your TV can also be fixed to wall-bracket.

4. Add Mirrors


Mirrors on the wall can help to expand the sense of space. Sliding mirror wardrobes are also a smart idea, helping you to kill two birds in one stone.

5. Paint the Walls with Bright / Light Colours


Painting the walls with dark colours can make the room seem dull and dingy. Like mirrors, light colours will help to expand the sense of space.

6. Consider Wallpaper


Decorative wallpapers, such as bookshelf wallpaper, will create the illusion that there is more space in the room than there actually is.

7. Think about your Furniture


As well as space-saving furniture, you might want to consider using other smaller furnishings, such as micro lamps, mini book shelves, even a small-double bed instead of a double bed.


Made to Measure Sliding Wardrobes can be introduced to give you a practical storage solution for your small bedroom. If you are interested in a sliding wardrobe to help you save space and keep your possessions tidy, contact Sliding Robes Direct today for more information or use our online wardrobe builder to design your dream wardrobe.