Change starts at home: New Year’s resolutions for your home

The dawning of a new year is the perfect excuse for a fresh start, a time for self-improvement and a chance to steer yourself onto the path to a more productive future. Change starts at home and these New Year’s resolutions for your household are among the simplest ways to save money, live greener and become more storage savvy in 2018.

Words by Mark Langshaw

Leaner and greener

Reducing the carbon footprint isn’t just for smug eco warrior sorts – householders stand to make substantial savings by living a little greener.

Government figures suggest air sealing an old or particularly drafty house could help residents reduce heating and cooling bills by up to 20%. You’ve probably heard similar figures cited before but may not realise how little time and effort it takes to up your insulation game.

In many cases a roll of weatherstripping will suffice to patch up doors, windows and other movable building components. This will set you back little more than £5, which will be recouped in no time through the monetary benefits of a draft-free home.

Sourcing extra insulation is a good start but it isn’t the only new year’s resolution to consider if a more eco friendly home is on your list of goals for 2017. Turning off the lights when leaving a room and replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent or LED alternatives is another straightforward, yet cost-effective solution to carbon footprint reduction.

Finally, be mindful of your thermostat’s setting and make sure it isn’t on too high or too low. Installing a programmable model to turn off the heating when you’re not home is also a must.
And whilst learning how to programme your central heating might seem like hard work, as new year’s resolutions go it’s easier and less expensive than fulfilling your gym vows.

Top billing tips

The average household spends £3,329 yearly on council tax, utility and phone bills, but with a few painless lifestyle changes you can undercut that figure.

Although switching water supplier isn’t an option, there’s no need to go with the flow if you feel you’re paying too much – consider having a free water meter installed. Taking showers instead of baths and swapping to a more efficient showerhead will also help you reduce the amount of water you’re wasting and make long-term savings.

Figures from Ofgem suggest households could save around £200 per year by switching energy tariff, so make a new year’s resolution to regularly shop around and keep tabs on the latest deals from other suppliers.

We’ve already touched on thermostats, but it’s worth pointing out that turning yours down by just 1°C could cut your heating bill by up to 10% in the long run. In addition, the telecoms industry is highly competitive and operators are often willing to negotiate if you tell them you’ve found cheaper tariffs elsewhere.

Contact your service provider and request a different deal if you feel you’re shelling out too much on phone and internet bills. At the very least they’ll conduct a short review to ensure you’re on the tariff which best suits your lifestyle.

Council tax is unavoidable in most cases, but up to 400,000 homes in the UK have been assigned the wrong tax band. Contact your local authority if you feel you’re being overcharged – a banding challenge takes no more than 10 minutes and a significant rebate could be yours by the end of it.

Raising the dough

Research suggests four out of five Britons would rather own a home than rent, and if you’re among them, why not take those first steps towards the property ladder in 2017?

You don’t need a diploma in finance and mortgage broking to realise that buying a house requires serious capital. For many of us that isn’t easy to come by, but shrewd saving habits are a good start. The first step is establishing how much you’ll need to save so there’s a defined target to aim for. Carry out thorough research into the areas you could realistically afford to live in and the types of properties within your budget.

Next, establish when you’re looking to buy and use this timeframe to calculate how much to squirrel away each month. Having clear numbers to work with creates a solid foundation to build on and sets a realistic goal to stick to through the year. The old ‘no time like the present’ adage certainly applies here as you should begin saving as soon as possible.

Once you’ve made this commitment, you’ll need a place to stash those savings. If you don’t have an online bank account with a separate pot for your deposit in progress, open a savings account – a service which ties up your funds but offers a superior interest rate may be preferable to an instant access account as it may be some years before you’re in a position to buy.

Set up a regular payment to enter your savings each month by direct debit or standing order, rather than transferring funds across sporadically, and be sure to review your savings at least once a year to make sure you’re getting the best rate of interest. Consult price comparison websites to find out which service providers are offering the top rates.

If yours is falling short, jump ship to another – superior interest could shave precious time off your arduous journey towards home ownership.

Combat the clutter

No doubt tackling the mountains of clutter your home has been accumulating over the years is high on the 2017 to-do list – and this doesn’t necessarily have to be a daunting task. There are a number of creative strategies you can adopt to make the process as stress free as possible.

Why not start by drawing up a list of the charity shops in your area? They’ll gladly take those unwanted clothes, entertainment products and other space-hogging goods off your hands. Breaking your decluttering mission down into bite-sized tasks is the key.

Some have found success giving away or discarding one unwanted item a day – that way there will be 365 less things competing for space in your home by the end of the year. Others take the 12-12-12 challenge, which involves identifying 12 items to bin, 12 items to donate and 12 items to be returned to the place they’re usually stored.

Successfully decluttering is only half the battle, as returning to your hoarding ways will only see you end up with the same congestion woes come the end of 2017. This is why it’s important to be more storage savvy going forward, and solutions to your space conundrums can be found lying dormant around the house or at the bottom of the recycle bin – these handy life hacks will help you discover them.

Most households will have a mess of carrier bags stashed away haphazardly, an ever-growing ball of plastic that lowers the tone of the cupboard under the sink. Reclaim that space by stuffing those carrier bags in empty tissue boxes, the design of which allows you to extract them one at a time when the need arises.

Is the back of your television looking like a spider’s web of tangled cables? Velcro tape is a quick, easy and cost-effective way to keep those unruly chords in check.

Onto the bedroom, and every inch of free space counts when the inside of your wardrobe is a scene of thread-based chaos – you can free up more by adding shower curtain hooks to the equation. It may sound unorthodox, but clipping these fixtures onto hangers or directly to the clothes rail will solve that age old problem of how to tidily store items like hats, scarves and handbags.

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