Mindzle

Posts Tagged ‘living’

You can still visit the huge homes and castles built and occupied by royalty worldwide. Today, though, it is not just kings and queens who line in castle size home, it is people just like you and me. However, there are also more and more people who not only live in small homes but choose to live in very very small homes.

And, it is not only in urban areas like Tokyo or New York City, where people are forced to sometimes live in smaller places, you can find tiny homes all around nowadays. Yes, it is not always a choice, especially, as I mentioned, if you live in big cities like the ones mentioned but, more and more people are making the choice to live in tiny houses for various reasons like being more green.

A recent news story talks about a college student who decided to live in a van throughout grad school in order to save money and be able to completely support himself. Tumbleweed Tiny House Company makes and sells minute homes. They start as small as 65 square feet and go as large as 837 square feet. Of course in large urban areas, you can find apartments and home that compare in size to that as well.

There are many advantages to these homes. The main benefits are cost savings, low carbon footprint and easy maintenance and upkeep. You don’t have to spend nearly what you would to take care of a larger home and you save time as well when you clean. Spend a little more on some top of the line equipment like the Dyson upright vacuum cleaner and you’ll have your place cleaned in no time and never have to worry about buying another vacuum.

Little homes can be made very comfortable and even made to seem more spacious than they actually are. Interior design experts an advice you on the best use of your space. A quick browse online will also come up with many tips and ideas for you to utilize the space you have. One idea is to hire a furniture maker to create multi-purpose pieces like sticking book shelves right into the frame of your sofa. You can also save money by not getting central heating or central air. Once again, purchase a nice heater, a Delonghi space heater is a good choice, and your home will be toasty without the large bill associated with a central unit.

You can not only save money by buying top of the line but, sometimes, you can save by not buying necessarily the best things. It is doubtful that you will have many dinner guests if your home is tiny so, why spend on fine china or even steel pots and pans. You can get really nice stuff like an anodized cookware set that doesn’t cost as much but does the job.

No, not everyone can or would want to live in a minute home. There are those it would drive up a wall, so to speak. But, if you can and are willing, now is the time to get yourself into a tiny home. You may even find it is an experience that you will truly enjoy.

There are many books & websites with more than enough advices on how to live green. Albeit being a Toronto real estate professional gives me plenty of changes to talk about the many ways of eco-friendly living with my clients, my topic today will be a bit more specific. Most people have already read the most important eco-tips, so we are not going to try to summarize them here again. Our today’s topic will be the three everyday items that we usually don’t even consider to be a problem: food, water and electricity.

Food

As I suppose that most people don’t just dump paper, glass and metal waste but recycle it, the rest of your household waste will be mainly food. Most of this food would usually be in very good condition, sometimes not even out of its wrapper or container. The shocking fact is that between 20 and 30% of all groceries bought by Canadian families is thrown out later. Together with the food thrown out in stores and restaurants, it makes between 7 and 14 billion tonnes of food wasted annually. In Canadian dollars, that’s $3 to 5 billion per year.

These numbers are quite surprising, aren’t they? The main paradox is that we throw out so much food daily and at the same time so many charity organizations are working hard, trying to help people who don’t have enough to eat. But wait before you start packing the groceries you are not going to use and sending it to places full of hungry people. There are some other methods you might want to try instead of throwing the food away. 1. Do you have any food left from yesterday? Try to use it for today’s lunch. For example you can stuff some peppers with some remaining rice. 2. A good way of preventing groceries going past the expiry date is arranging your food cabinet by this criteria: older food, that is going to expire soon, is stored in the front, while the longer lasting products can stay in the back of the shelves. 3. If you know you will not eat food that’s just about to expire and would consequently throw it out, just bring it to your local charity or soup kitchen or similar place while the food is still in good state. If you cannot use up all the groceries you have purchased, there are enough people even in your community who will be grateful to eat it – hunger is not limited to Africa. 4. Do not waste leftovers – mulch it. If you do not own a garden, find somebody who does. Food simply doesn’t belong to dumping grounds.

Water

You probably already know many advices on how to prevent using more water than necessary in your home. One thing that occurs to me when thinking about reasonable water usage is the way we manage human waste: toilets. Nowadays, toilets are absolutely inherent – when they are working alright, we don’t even need to pay any attention to them. However, have you tried to calculate how much water your household needs every month for flushing the toilet? You might be shocked by the big number you get out of this. And has it ever occurred to you that this quantity is not essential, that flushing your lavatory can be done using less water? You can try these two methods to using less water for flushing: 1. Replace your old lavatory by a new type that has been designed to use as little water as possible. Go and check out the selection in your local shop, it is amazing how wide it is nowadays! 2. If you put a couple of plastic bottles full of water into the tank of your lavatory, it will help you to save some water for flushing as well. It may take some time to find out just how much is the minimum amount of water for your lavatory to keep working.

Electricity

You have probably already read a lot of tips and tricks on how to save electric energy. What I personally regard as being the biggest electricity waster is the often used tumble dryer. We got used to having anything we like or need immediately, that we no longer care how much superfluous resources are wasted just because we don’t want to wait. It is quite obvious that in our current lifestyle, there is not enough time for washing our clothes manually, and that dishwashers do really save some water. Though the advantages of a tumble dryer might be less obvious. Would it be such a great problem if we just waited 1 – 2 days for our laundry to get dry? In case your green ambitions are serious, try to think about turning your tumble dryer on in urgent cases only, or even think about saying goodbye to it at all – you can sell it or give it to someone else. In addition to the environment, you will save some money on your electricity bills as well.

If you want to a more environmentally concious or green home to help protect the earth, it might not be as expensive or difficult as you believe. With just a couple of small changes to your daily routines, you can easily make a positive environmental impact. One of the best areas to start is your own home. Try to get your hands on an efficient shower head. Unfortunately, old shower head use twice the amount of water than newer efficient ones. Another good idea is to get a dishwasher or washing machine with a four or five star energy rating. This rating means the machine does a great job of minimizing water and power use.

Anyone who wants to become more environmentally and ‘go green’ only needs to follow a few simple steps. The first thing to do is look at improving the efficiency of your household appliances. If you are able to get a more efficient shower head then you should definitely do so. New shower heads use less than half the amount of water as old ones, and this is a great saving. Also it is a good idea to purchase energy efficient whitegoods like dishwashers and washing machines. There is a star rating in most countries that will tell you how energy efficient an appliance is.

Trying to go green and improve your environmental footprint really is not too hard. All you have to do is look around your house and change a few simple everyday appliances. The first thing that needs to be changed in most houses is the shower head. In the old days shower heads wasted a lot of water, but their modern equivalents have the amount lost. This is a great saving and the first thing you should do. Next, you should try to upgrade your washing machine and dishwasher to the most energy efficient models on the market. You can normally judge the efficiency of a model by a star rating on the side of the unit, five stars being the most efficient.