Major home renovations are a great way to upgrade your living space or modernize it without physically moving locations. While there are plenty benefits to home renovations, there are also a lot of hurdles. For many, the entire process is filled with stress and disruptions to your daily routines. To help maintain some normalcy in your life, here’s how to renovate your home stress-free.
Begin with a Plan
While making a plan seems to be a recurring theme when it comes to home organization or design, it’s the best way to eliminate unnecessary stress and anxiety. Creating a plan ahead of time allows you to anticipate problems and brainstorm solutions before you’re in the heat of the moment. For the smoothest renovation, take some extra time to go over the specifics.
Make a Budget
Your finances are going to determine the majority of your renovations. If you have a large budget, you can make more changes, but smaller budgets still allow for progress. Sit down and go over your finances to determine what is and isn’t in your budget. Make a plan and then stick to it. Allot for emergency spending to plan for the unexpected and avoid unnecessary stress if something goes wrong.
Solidify Your Contract
Some families decide to take on the renovation work themselves, which can be both a fun and exciting new experience. If you do this, just make sure that everything is up to code to keep your house safe and avoid having to do it again later. For those who are going to hire an outside contractor, make sure that you get all of the details in writing. Using a contract often seems overwhelming, especially when discussing trivial details, but it’s a way to outline your project and make sure that you know exactly what’s going to happen. Without a contract, you could be facing a lot of problems. Include the specifics of your home address, the estimated start and completion date, and all of the details of what’s going into the work.
Determine Living Situations
Small renovations can be done while you’re still living at home, but if you’re doing something major it may be easier to stay with friends, family, or in an extended-stay hotel or Airbnb. When doing renovations on your own, you might choose to stay at home regardless of the project. For families that are going to have a lot of workers inside every day, you might not want to have to tip-toe around them. It’s really up to you and your budget on what you do but make a plan ahead of time so you can pack or rearrange functionality in your home prior to the start date. If you’re renovating your kitchen, consider planning ahead with stove-free meals, getting a small hotplate, or making a list of your favorite take-out places. If it’s your bedroom, temporarily move into the living room or basement. It is possible to stay at home during renovations if you’re creative.
Declutter and Store
Once you’ve finalized the details, start preparing your space by decluttering and moving things into a self storage unit at The Lock Up Self Storage. Getting things out of the house and therefore, out of the way, will make your life much easier—especially if you decide to stay home during the renovations. Go around the room and pack everything that you won’t need into boxes. During this time, evaluate each item. Will you really use it once your renovations are done? Will it be used frequently or only during certain times of the year? Use the three-box technique to throw things away that are old or degrading, donate things that you’ve grown out of or no longer use, and store things that you only use at certain times throughout the year. Create separate boxes for things that you’ll need to store only short-term and then head to a nearby self storage facility.
While this doesn’t seem like a necessary part of the remodel process, it will make a huge difference in both accessibility and safety. You could move everything from one room to another, but then you’ll lose two functional rooms and get frustrated when you have nowhere to sit down and relax. Storing them off-site will also reduce the risk of damage and excessive dust exposure.
The Stress-Free Approach to Renovating Your Home
Once you’ve gotten all of the planning details done, you’ll want to focus on protecting your home and staying sane during the entire process. The biggest advice to live by is to remain flexible and try to keep an open mind. Renovations don’t always go as planned and you should be ready and willing to go with the flow. There are some things that are out of your control and when you accept that, you’ll find that you approach the situation with a calm, level-headed manner.
- Protect Your Home
After getting all of the preliminary work out of the way, set some time to protect vulnerable areas of your home. Renovations create a lot of dust and debris in the air that can spread from room to room. Because of this, preparation is key. While many contractors offer prep work within their services, sometimes it only covers the bare minimum. To make sure that your home stays in good condition throughout construction, consider doing a little work on your own to go above and beyond. Go around your home and removed any cloth curtains, pillows, throw blankets, or anything else that easily collects dust. Cover furniture that’s near your renovation site with a protective tarp or furniture wrap and remove any fragile items. You may want to go the extra mile and declutter nearby rooms in addition to the one being worked on to make cleanup easier once things are done. Put anything you won’t be using regularly into your climate controlled self storage unit.
- Embrace the Chaos
When the renovations begin, it’s going to get a little chaotic. Embrace it. Understand that the mess and the dirt is temporary and eventually you’re going to be enjoying your new room or area. Try not to get annoyed with your contractors for leaving a mess, as it usually isn’t efficient to thoroughly clean the worksite each day. If the mess is unbearable, try to find a healthy balance and communicate concerns with your contractor.
- Keep an Open Line of Communication
With that being said, having an open line of communication is essential to avoiding stressful problems. Make sure that your workers know they should come to you with new or existing problems, so everyone is on the same page throughout the entire process. This eliminates any surprises and ensures that the project moves along smoothly.
- Get Out of the House
Even if you decide to continue living at home during the renovations, make sure that you schedule time away. Simply staring at a construction site every day can lead to heightened levels of anxiety. Go out to dinner, safely visit with friends or family, or enjoy the outdoors. Going on walks around the neighborhood or visiting parks nearby can help you rebalance and reset. If you’re doing the renovations yourself, give yourself some time off with activities you love.
- Find a Local Self Storage Facility
When storing your things during your home remodeling, make sure that you choose a self storage facility that’s in close proximity to your home. This way, if you need to access any of your belongings, you won’t have to drive far. However, if the closest self storage facility doesn’t have adequate features, a short drive may be worth it. Make sure that you choose a facility with climate controlled units to protect your things and reduce the accumulation of dust or possibility of pests. Your facility should also be accessible 24/7 with individual access codes and equipped with safety features. Even if you’re only using the storage unit for a short time, peace of mind and quality conditions are essential.
If you’re planning on redecorating, consider using a self storage unit to help make your home more manageable. The Lock Up Self Storage has multiple locations around the U.S. and offer flexible leasing options alongside a variety of storage sizes. All of our units are temperature controlled and climate controlled to keep your things in the best condition possible. To give you even more peace of mind, our locations are equipped with top-of-the-line security features. Our secure self storage facilities feature security-controlled gate access, motion-sensitive lighting, 24-hour camera monitoring, and perimeter alarms. Many of our locations offer electronic coded access specific to each tenant. To find a self storage unit, contact one of the representatives at The Lock Up Self Storage. Give us a call at 1-866-327-LOCK or find a unit online today!
