Home Keeping Links - Simple Home Improvements

Apple Dumplings, by George Leslie Dunlop

It’s been awhile since I did a link post, so here is one for you today.  These relate to making your house a more pleasant place, but don’t deal exclusively with the kitchen.  As always, I put a disclaimer on my links.

New Uses for Mismatched Dishes – What to do with some of the odd cooking and dining items that don’t match or don’t work in your kitchen?

Old Ladder = Kitchen Shelving Solution – If you have room for more shelving, but don’t want to spend the money on new cabinets, here’s a solution that might just tide you over till you can find something else.  Maybe you’ll like it so well you’ll just go with it.  Now to find an old wooden ladder…

14 Living and Dining Room Makeovers – Makeovers interest me, though sometimes I honestly think that the “before” picture is better than the “after” when the designer happens to have wild tastes. (Seriously, who would  paint a bedroom vivid, excitable orange? People are supposed to rest there.)  These particular re-dos I found to be pretty much improvements and there are some good pointers about painting colors on the walls and/or furniture to make a room look more spacious or friendly. Paint can be an easy fix, especially if you have friends that enjoy painting and are willing to help.  (Trade help if you need to.)

From OK to Great with A Little Paint (and other changes) Before and After – Here is a kitchen makeover that shows pretty drastically what some paint and a few changes can do for a kitchen without re-doing the whole thing!  I’m all for simple changes that make a big improvement.  As the Mexicans say, “Cheap, pretty and good”.  That’s the way to go.  :-)   This is quite inspiring to me as I have a very brown kitchen, thanks to the cupboards and paneling. 

By the way, you may be able to dress up your dishwasher without ordering an expensive new front for it.  You might consider getting a large decorative magnet to cover the front. (Test the front of your dishwasher with a magnet first to make sure it will hold one.)  This catalog store carries an assortment of magnetic dishwasher covers at reasonable prices (compared to others I found).  I have ordered two from them – one for myself and one for my sister-in-law.  We were both pleased with the results.  Do be sure to measure you dishwasher first, though, so you order the right size.  My husband did have to trim about a 1/4” off of the one I got so that it would fit my dishwasher without being “scraped” off whenever I opened it.  If your dishwasher is slightly too small, try ordering one that does not have an edge border so that it can be trimmed without distorting the picture.

Before:

After:

Another aspect of these home decorating ideas that I find challenging to think about is to use things that I already have to make our house more  pleasant.  In the decluttering process that I’ve been working on, I not only want to get rid of useless and excess things, I’d also like to find things that are not being put to good use and use them to improve our rooms.  I have already worked on this some.  This would be a good focus for a future post perhaps. :-)