5 Household Hacks You Didn’t Know About

Taking care of your home takes a lot of time and effort. But when you employ a few helpful hacks around the house, you can make your life a little easier every day. If you’d like to spend less time on chores and enjoy more time for yourself, try these simple household hacks that may come as a surprise to you.

Use a Smart Thermostat

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Image via Flickr by grantsewell

Even if you already have a traditional thermostat, you might be missing out on some great benefits by not upgrading to a more tech-savvy model. Today’s smart thermostats are made with extra features that make it easier to keep tabs on your home’s temperature. Smart thermostats are more energy-efficient because they’re able to learn your schedule and detect when you’re gone, raising or dropping the temperature appropriately in response. In addition to energy and cost savings, smart thermostats also offer more control, since you can adjust the temperature in your home remotely using an app.

Repel Bugs With Your Garden

Gardens boost your home’s curb appeal, but that’s not all they can do. You can plan your garden so that each plant has another purpose: keeping bugs out of sight and out of mind. For example, planting basil repels mosquitos from your yard, making those warm summer nights a lot less itchy. Lavender is great for keeping moths, fleas, and flies away, while chrysanthemums repel roaches, ants, lice, and bedbugs. There are plenty of other lovely plants that keep pests away so you can enjoy your outdoor space and keep your home bug-free.

Stop Taking Out the Trash

Instead of letting smelly trash sit under your sink or taking up precious floor space with a kitchen trash bin, create a chute that takes your waste out of the way. In many homes, the kitchen shares a wall with the garage. Cut a hole into the shared wall and install a pull-down chute cover over it. Place a bin under the trash chute in the garage, and you’ll have a hassle-free way to get trash out of the kitchen.

Make Any Room Brighter

When a room in your home feels too dark, you don’t have to spend lots of money buying and installing new light fixtures. Skip the call to the electrician and buy a mirror or two instead. Mirrors are known for making rooms appear bigger, but when you place them near lamps or light fixtures, they mirrors make the room significantly brighter. If you don’t have many lamps to bounce the light off of, face your mirrors toward the windows to achieve the brightening effect.

Use Vinegar to Save on Cleaning Costs

Specialized cleaning products can really eat into your budget over time. If you want a multipurpose cleaning solution that makes your home easier to tidy up, just combine water and vinegar. This versatile combo cleans all kinds of surfaces and items in your home, from the toilet to the fridge to paintbrushes. It even offers some surprising benefits, like removing gum from fabric and erasing crayon marks from walls.

Rethink your routine at home and get household tasks done faster with these five simple hacks.