How to Increase Your Living Space Without Paying More Rent?

With a few exceptions, every person wants to live in a spacious home. Unfortunately, however, it is not always an option, especially if you are renting a place. If this is the case for you, then you've come to the right place. Below are several tips on how to increase the size of your home without paying more rent. 

The Pareto Principle

Also known as the 80/20 rule or the law of the vital few, the Pareto principle dictates that 80% of effects are a direct result of 20% of the causes. The truly fascinating part about this principle is that it can be found everywhere in nature, but it also applies in areas of human activity equally as well. It's a sort of natural law if you will. 

In this context, the Pareto principle applies to how we move around the house. If we take a moment to examine a room, we'll quickly come to realize that most of the time (about 80%) we walk on the same parts of the floor, roughly the same 20%. By doing this simple exercise, you may even notice areas that you never set your foot on. 

Anyway, by keeping this principle in mind, you can rearrange your furniture and belongings in such a way so that you'll never have to bump into anything ever again. By improving the traffic flow around the house, you've inherently optimized everything, thus allowing you to maximize the use of your space more effectively. 

Striking a Balance

If and when you rearrange your furniture, keep in mind to have everything in balance. Rooms that are too furniture-heavy on one side will give off the impression of a tight space, even if this is not necessarily the case.

Don't let too many pieces of furniture be the first thing you see when you enter a room and, instead, try to balance things out a bit more - but also keeping the aforementioned Pareto principle in mind. Also, don't be afraid to rearrange furniture from different rooms together if it means that it will offer you a better visual balance. 

Mind Your Storage

If it's a small space we're talking about, every square inch counts. Scan your home and look for things out in the open that you don't use on a daily basis. If, for instance, you make toast roughly twice a month, keeping that toaster on the counter will only take up much-needed space. Make the countertop hold items that you use on a daily basis and try putting everything else away. 

Storage may be tight in a small apartment, but it's an opportunity for you to become creative. It's a great idea to declutter any storage space that you might have, and try increasing the number of shelves. You can also place smaller pieces of furniture under larger ones. Hanging things can also be an option. Now, given your unique circumstance, your imagination will play a huge role here.  

Conclusion

In the end, everything boils down to how you manage to do more with less. Keep in mind the Pareto principle as well as the size of your furniture in every room, and you'll be fine.

Home Habits You Didn't Realize are Bad for the Environment

Though it might not seem like it, the average North American spends roughly 87% of their time indoors and an additional 6% in their cars. Given these statistics, it's important to realize what our most-common habits are and which of them can be harmful to the environment. 

And as we've gotten more used to the idea that humans have a tremendously adverse effect on the environment, we also need to understand the consequences of our actions. Small as they may be, little by little, things begin to add up, bringing us to our current predicament. In other words, we can either be part of the problem or the solution, tipping the balance ever so slightly. 

These habits presented here may be things that you do on a daily basis without even realizing it. But with a few tweaks to your behavior, changing these habits can make the difference between being a positive or a negative influence on the environment. 

Shopping Online and Ordering In

Both of these habits are relatively common in households all across Canada. The convenience they provide makes them in high demand. But according to the numbers, these two activities have a significant toll on the environment.

As you've may have guessed, it's not necessarily the packages or the food per se, but transporting them to your front door that does the real damage. And before you say anything about the environmental cost of you having to go out and buy these things yourself, it's important to remember the frequency. How often do you go out to buy something instead of ordering it from Amazon? 

Keeping Chargers Plugged In

Who would have thought that keeping your chargers plugged in, even if you're not charging anything, is a drain on electricity and, thus, an adverse effect on the environment. The energy consumption of your charger alone is not significant, but the chances are that you have more than one charger plugged in, already. And when we consider that there are millions of chargers plugged in all around the globe, the cumulative energy waste could power an entire city. Unplugging them not only reduces the effect on the environment but also eases your energy consumption.

Big Fridges and Misleading Expiration Dates

Food waste is considered by some to be the world's dumbest problem. On average, North Americans and Europeans throw away roughly 230 pounds of perfectly edible food every year, or about a quarter of all the food they buy. This food waste accounts for anywhere in between $1,365 to $2,275, annually. On a global scale, if food waste were a country, it would be the second most significant greenhouse gas emitter after China and the US. 

Food waste is also facilitated by two habits most people have. For starters, they buy large fridges - above 25 cubic feet. But as it turns out, people do not like to see empty refrigerators and tend to pack them full with food whenever they get the chance. It also means that much of that food will inevitably go to waste, driven in large part by a second trend - taking expiration dates literally. 

It may come as a surprise to many, but expiration dates are not something official. Baby formula is the only one that has a law-required best-by date, while the rest are either an approximation or a means for manufacturers to try and convince people to throw away perfectly excellent food, then go out and buy more. And as one might have guessed, this strategy is working.

Statistics show that 54% of people consider it a health risk to eat food past their best-by date. The food is good to consume; dates only indicate the freshness of the product. Furthermore, 91% of consumers occasionally throw away food past their sell-by date, and 37% always do so. 

Conclusion

These are a few examples of everyday habits that have a tremendously adverse effect on the environment. But by changing them, each us can lower our carbon footprint and make this world a better place. 

How to Make your Apartment Smart

The development and sophistication of smart technologies give people increased control and convenience over their domestic lives.  While many of these technologies require more in-depth and permanent installations—the kind that might make more sense for property owners—there are many adaptable, lighter weight smart-home technologies that can greatly improve the daily lives of renters as well.  Here are a few ways renters can harness the power of smart technology for their apartments.

Integrate your Streaming

Gone are the days of having your content fixed in the separate silos of your television, computer, device, or stereo.  The emergence of streaming services, from Netflix to Spotify, to your local public library’s streaming service, gives us access to an almost infinite amount of content, without having to hold it in any one particular place.  You can unlock this new mobility of content by picking up a wifi-enabled stereo or speaker set to broadcast music directly from your device.  Similarly, the magic of dongles and screen mirroring allows you to screen videos, television shows, or films from your laptop, tablet, or phone directly onto your television screen. 

Smart Lighting and Smart Sleeping

While there are full lighting solutions that link to an all-encompassing smart solution like Google home, basic white light bulbs controlled by remote are available for lamps or other stand alone lighting, and require no rewiring.  These smart bulbs give you greater control over levels of brightness, and allow you to turn everything off from bed!  And speaking of beds, there are also technologies that let you remotely control both the warmth and coolness of your bed.  Technologies like BedJet incorporate heating and cooling into a hollow top sheet, which you can then regulate from an app on your device.  If you live in an apartment that can swing from being either a little too cold or a little too hot depending upon the season, technologies like these ensure a good night’s rest.

Get a Digital Personal Assistant

Almost every big company has their own version of a digital personal assistant these days, and while these technologies can be fully integrated into homes, for tasks ranging from security, to climate control, to household inventories, renters can still make good use of them.  These digital assistants are voice-activated, and allow you to do everything from finding and playing content, to making orders or reservations, to taking notes and scheduling, to calling, texting, or email contacts.