Luxury Housing Trends & Home Improvement Ideas

If you’re like me, the laundry room isn’t your favorite place to hang out. Doing laundry isn’t fun, and to add insult, the washer and dryer add dollars onto your energy bill every month. If you’re looking to cut down on spending, it’s a good place to start. Here are five tips for saving money on this thankless household chore:

1. Avoid washers and dryers with lots of fancy features — If you’re shopping for a new washer and dryer, stick to the basics. More expensive machines may have extra cycles and electronic control panels, but these units don’t wash clothes any better and these features usually just add to the operating cost of the machine.

2. Wash with cold water — Hot water loads use four times as much energy as cold water loads. You may want to do your whites in hot, but towels and linens are fine in cold. In fact, experts say the majority of your clothes are fine done in cold water, unless they’re very dirty.
3. Don’t use warm-rinse cycles — Many of the washers on the market today have warm-rinse cycles, but studies show you never need warm water to rinse your clothes, and you can waste $50 or more a year on this feature.
4. Clean the lint trap after every load — Extra lint isn’t just a fire hazard. Your dryer actually has to work harder when the trap is full, thus using more energy and costing you more money.
5. Don’t use the maximum dryer setting — Unless you’re doing a load of towels or other hard-to-dry items, don’t use the dryer’s maximum setting. Medium settings works fine for most clothes and save you pennies a load. That adds up to hundreds of dollars over the life of your dryer.

More information: The Home Energy Diet: How to Save Money by Making Your House Energy-Smart

Outdoor furniture always looks good at the store, and for a while it looks good after you bring it home too. But invariably, nature strikes. Bird droppings, mildew colonies, pine needles and leaves, dirt and grime… they all love to cake up your outdoor furniture, from the patio table to the pool-side lounge chairs. What’s the best way to fight it? Well, here are a few maintenance tips to keep your furnishings looking good:

1. Get off to the right start by buying furniture made from easy-to-clean materials, such as aluminum or wrought iron.

2. Choose lighter colors because they maintain their color better than darker hues; also light colored fabrics are less vulnerable to fading in the sun (though this is less of a problem if the furniture will be used under an awning or roof).
3. You can prevent nature’s stains by keeping some distance between your furnishings and the surrounding trees and bushes. Also consider spending a little more for fade- and stain-resistant fabrics.
4. Choose cleaning tactics depending on the material. A pressure washer on a low setting works fine to get dirt and mildew off PVC or wrought-iron furniture. Just use a damp cloth to wipe the legs and bases down on metal chairs and tables. A soft brush dipped in a mixture of warm water and mild soap is best for cleaning seat and bench cushions. Avoid bleach, which can harm fabric.
5. Store your furniture in the garage or basement during the winter. If there’s no room, at least use waterproof outdoor furniture covers.

More ideas: The Outdoor Living Room: Stylish Ideas for Porches, Patios, and Pools

Want to keep your home safe? Of course, you do. Even if you–like me–probably don’t spend as much time thinking about safety and home security as you should. The ironic thing is that you don’t necessarily need to spend a lot on fancy alarm systems and high-tech video surveillance. Some very basic home improvements can go a long ways in keeping your family safe and protecting your belongings. Here’s a look at 10 low-cost solutions:

1. Install new locks on your doors and windows. Many older locks are flimsy, and sometimes people assume that burglars can’t get in second story windows, so they don’t even have locks there (here’s a tip: burglars are nimble climbers). Even if your locks are in good shape, it may be worth replacing them just for peace of mind. Remember, everyone who’s lived in your house previously had an opportunity to make copies of the keys…
2. Install motion- or heat-sensing floodlights in your front- and backyard to eliminate dark shadows where burglars could hide.
3. Install self-charging smoke detectors, such as the model we looked at from Dupont a few months ago. These alarms screw into your light fixtures and recharge whenever the light is on. It means no more dead batteries.
4. Don’t leave ladders or tools in your yard on in an unlocked shed. This just helps burglars, by giving them tools to get into your house.
5. Keep a fire extinguisher in the kitchen (even better if you have one on every floor), and make sure everybody in the house knows how to use it.
6. If mail theft is a problem in your neighborhood, consider a locking mailbox. (If someone gets your mail, it’s more than an inconvenience. They can use the information for identity theft.)
7. Join the neighborhood watch (or start one). This is absolutely free, and sometimes a neighborhood watch sign can be enough to convince a thief to go elsewhere.
8. If you have hollow-core outside doors, replace them with solid wood or steel doors. If there are windows in or beside your door, consider applying shatter-proof laminate to them, so burglars can’t break them to get at the door lock.
9. Check your landscaping: if bushes obscure doors, suffocate walkways, or otherwise provide nooks where burglars could hide, trim them back. (If you want to plant something, try thorny bushes under bedroom windows–an excellent deterrent to entry.)
10. Lastly, update your homeowner’s insurance, especially if your house has gone up in value or you’ve made improvements since you created the policy. If something does happen, you want to make sure you get the money you deserve to replace everything. You can use home inventory software to create a list of your belongings to help prove what you had to your insurer.

Sites with more information:

• Home security tips offers Common Home Security Mistakes

• How Stuff Works: Security Basics

The weather is nice. The days are long. It’s the perfect time to relax in the backyard. Or is it? When you look out there, do you see nothing but grass that needs mowing and moldy plastic lawn chairs from summers past? Maybe it’s time to give your outdoor space a face lift. Here are some ideas on how to make your backyard a relaxing oasis without spending a lot of money:

Add a fire pit

Remember those camping trips you went on as a kid where everyone bonded around the campfire, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows, and gazing at the stars? Why not bring that same atmosphere to your backyard? You can spend a lot on fancy built-in models, but for less than $100, you can find a portable fire pit at the local home improvement store. (Do check your town’s laws on the matter first; fire pits are illegal in some areas).

More information on outdoor fireplaces and fire pits.

Add a fountain

The gurgle of a fountain is a relaxing sound, and it has the added benefit of drowning out background noise from the street. You don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of money digging up the backyard to install plumbing and wiring. A lot of today’s outdoor fountains are self-sufficient units, using solar power to circulate the water.

Browse outdoor fountains at Amazon.com

Buy new patio furniture

If stackable chairs and flimsy plastic tables are the extent of your outdoor “furniture,” maybe it’s time to upgrade. New technology related to water-proof fabrics and weather-proof materials means you can get just about anything for the backyard that you can for the living room. Why not invest a couple hundred dollars in something that is comfortable and that will still look good several summers from now?

Upholstered outdoor furniture.

Get a misting fan

If you live in a hot climate and sitting out in the backyard in the middle of a scorching day doesn’t sound appealing, a misting fan (or even a misting cactus) can cool things down. These fans spray tiny droplets of water that make the temperature feel lower.

Buy a hammock

It’s hard to find anything more relaxing than lounging in a hammock in the shade on a warm day (lemonade close at hand, of course). If you’ve put off buying a hammock because you don’t have any suitable trees to support one, know that there are plenty of nice-looking stand-alone models available. Here’s one we looked at a couple months ago: freestanding hammock.

Looking for ways to save energy in the home this summer? Who isn’t? Here are a few tips to help you on your way to lower energy bills:

1. Take showers instead of baths–even long showers use half the water.

2. Install Energy-Star rated appliances.
3. Check for leaks around doors, windows, and chimneys, then seal them.
4. Plant shade trees around the house (well-placed trees can reduce air conditioning costs by 25%).
5. Only wash full loads of clothes.
6. Install a programmable thermostat that automatically adjusts the temperature.
7. Install motion detectors, dimmers, and occupancy sensors so light is provided only when it’s needed.
8. Do a “home energy audit” to see if your home is wasting energy it doesn’t need to be (available at http://www.powerhousetv.com)

For more ways to save energy in the home, try reading 10-Minute Energy-Saving Secrets : 250 Ways to Save Big Bucks Year Round

How do you save water at home without taking drastic steps (such as going to work with shampoo still in your hair or letting the dog’s tongue serve as the “dish washer”)? There are some simple home improvements you can make that will allow you to save money on water bills without inconveniencing you or your family.

1 — Dual-flush Toilets

Sometimes you do a big job… and sometimes you don’t. Most of the time you don’t need a major flush. Dual-flush toilets let you choose whether to use a normal flush (1.6 gallons) or a super-low flush (0.8 gallons).

2 — Low-flow Faucets and Showerheads

This is a simple (and inexpensive) home improvement that will significantly reduce your home’s water use. Low-flow kitchen and bathroom faucets use 2.5 gallons per minute (as compared to normal faucets, which waste 5 gpm). When shopping for a showerhead, find one that uses no more than 2.5 gpm–these can save you 20-25 gallons of water per shower.

3 — Hot Water Recirculating Pumps

You know that minute’s worth of water that goes down the drain while you wait for the shower to heat up? By installing a recirculating pump (a device that cycles hot water through the plumbing lines at certain programmed times of day), you can have instant hot water.

4 — Water-efficient Appliances

If you’ve been meaning to replace that leaking washer and that noisy dishwasher anyway, this can be the perfect excuse. Today’s appliances are likely to be more efficient than their predecessors, but make sure you look further than the Energy Star label (sometimes energy-efficient appliances aren’t all that water efficient; comparison shop to figure out which ones use the least water).

5 — Get Rid of the Grass

When was the last time you really enjoyed mowing the lawn? Would it make your life horrible if the grass just disappeared? Watering lawns is one of the biggest wasters of water that there is, and there are yard alternatives that look just as good. We’ve talked about no-maintenance, synthetic lawns before, but you can also look into xeriscaping. Especially popular in the Southwest, xeriscaping is landscaping to eliminate grass and replace it with hearty drought-tolerant plants, bark, rocks, etc. If you don’t want to get rid of the grass altogether, consider leaving a patch of grass for the kids to play on and xeriscaping the rest of the yard.

Source: July/August 2006 issue of Smart HomeOwner