3 Easy Steps to Prepping Your Home for Summer

Summer comes with so many obstacles. Kids are out of school, the heat makes cooling costs astronomical, and there are always more guests to come by. So how can you make your home more welcoming, cooler, and more kid-friendly? Well, here are just a few simple things that you can do to prep your home.

Cooling Your Home

An easy way to cheaply cool your home is to add plants. Live plants can cool down a room by producing oxygen. For tips and tricks, check out our blog from Houseplant Appreciation Day. And if you're the type who can barely keep anything green alive, maybe plant some trees near your home to offer shade from that merciless sun. This site gives twelve examples of fast-growing shade trees. You can also paint your home in cooler-toned colors, such as grays, blues, or greens, which have a physiological effect of slowing your heart-rate and therefore cooling down the body. You can see some of our favorites here. If you're still feeling the heat, have your windows checked by an expert who can tell you if they're energy-efficient. You could be losing money because all of that cold air is seeping out from your windows or even doors.

Making Your Home Welcoming

We had a blog post a few weeks ago titled 5 Ways to Make Your Home More Guest Friendly where we pointed out a few ways to make your home more welcoming. But for an added punch, here are a few fun ideas that you can put in a basket on their bed. What about having a list of local attractions and eateries for your guests to possibly visit printed out and placed on their bed, along with some of their favorite snacks? Imagine feeling that welcome in someone else's home! Just because a guest is there to see you, doesn't mean that they can't find time for themselves, so why not give them a do-not-disturb sign in their basket, too?

Readying Your Home for Kids

School's out for summer! If you're like me, all of your cousins and nieces and nephews assume that because they have the summer off, so do all of their relatives. Well, on weekends when my family wants to come over, they've got to feel like my home is kid-friendly, even if I don't have children of my own. So what I tend to do is pull out all of the books I loved as a kid and put them up in either a mobile reading station or on the lower shelves of the bookcase. It's also a great idea to have games and crafts easily accessible. And if the kids in your life like to graze throughout the day, have a special section of your pantry or fridge just for their snacks.

As always, thank you so much for being readers on our blog! Check us out on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram in the links below where you can get more ideas, tips, tricks, and even see Debbie's show, Your Home. Thanks so much for reading and let us know what you think!