Saturday 23 February 2019

A Top Tip for Freeing Up Space in your Home

Freeing Up Space in your Home
If your home is cramped and there is little room to move around, it can be incredibly frustrating and stressful. This can make it difficult to relax and also challenging when you have people over. When you have a family, any spare space seems to immediately get taken up by clutter and this only contributes to your stress. This is why it is important to look for ways to maximise your space and create a cleaner and tidier looking home.

A Smart Switch
One top tip is to replace your traditional doors with sliding doors. These doors slide in on themselves instead of outwards, consequently freeing up a huge amount of space. The doors are an often overlooked part of a room, but their arc takes up a large area when opening/shutting and this contributes to the cramped feeling.

The Benefits
When you have sliding doors throughout the home, it can look fantastic and create an open plan and minimalistic feeling. Not just this, but this also allows for easy access as they can be gently pushed open. Using them to access the garden can bring the outdoors in and create a flow between indoor and outdoor spaces. If you use glass sliding doors, this will also allow plenty of natural light to cascade through.

In addition this, these doors can also be efficient insulators when fitted with composite gaskets. When they also have aluminium seals and fixed leaves, they can also offer great security when used as a door between your garden and home.

Primarily, it is the space saving that makes these doors worthwhile and particularly if you have limited space or a large family. You could use the extra space for storage or for a piece of furniture, but it is also worthwhile leaving it empty as this will really have a positive impact on how the room and entire home looks and feels.

Elsewhere in the Home
In addition to internal sliding doors and glass sliding doors to your garden, you could also consider sliding cupboards and wardrobes; these are a great way to free up space in the bedroom. To find the widest range of sliding doors, as well as all the accessories and hardware you need, you will need to visit hardware stores like Barrier Components.


If you have limited space in the home and find that it makes it difficult to relax, switching to sliding doors could have an enormous impact on both your mood and property.

Friday 1 February 2019

#WorkSpaceWonder

Work Space

Working from home was a dream come true for me at one point in time, it was something that I had wished I was in a position to do for a long time, and as amazing as it was, it turns out working from home can sometimes be harder than you may think.

Much harder.

First of all your hobby becomes your full time job.

It's something that you go from doing in your spare time, to actively full on working on, setting goals and really developing a brand. Everything has to be consistent, and you have to make sure that your brand is exactly how you want to be perceived.

I made the decision years ago to have my entire brand over hauled, it gave it a fresh new look and was something that made me really happy, the only thing it was really missing was a few mascot costumes! I guess you could say that Lux filled that role.


When you're working from home people don't really seem to consider it as working, because you are not going out to work in the conventional way (and let's face it blogging and freelance writing is a new age sort of job, especially when you are your own boss!). 

People call upon you for a favour that hinders your bottomless to do list, the dog decides he needs a 2 hour walk because he quite simply won't settle when he knows you're in the house, or you have to go and pick your poorly child up from school.

So yes, on a good day working from home is a dream come true, but there are so many things that can and do go wrong. This chain of thought got me thinking about my ideal work space, and I have to admit that I do have a pretty good setup (now that I have managed to invest in a desk chair!), and not to mention that I can work in my dressing gown and slippers if I so desire (and do when the weather gets colder!). 

There is no fighting over the office temperature, no freezing under the air conditioner, and I can quite simply revel in the cosy warmth that I covet. As I type this I am wearing the thickest fluffiest cardigan that I own, and I have matched that with a rather nice pair of slipper socks. At least this way when the doorbell sounds and I am face to face with yet another delivery driver, I won't have to look quite so embarrassed. 

At home office

So what would my #WorkSpaceWonder be?

Ideally I would like a dedicated office space, right now I have my desk setup in the front room, but ideally to have my very own office with a door I can shut on the world would make life so much easier. Right now that is not an option, but this means that my two other family members are forever placing paperwork, toys and everything else onto my desk. It's not ideal, it can be rather annoying... And I have to clean my work space off most mornings before I can even sit down at it. It feels like I am forever having to sort through paperwork that isn't mine, I try and leave only my to do list and essential work load on the desktop, but they of course have other ideas...

I had a pretty good setup all in all, it's a constructive place to work and above all else I can be flexible, flexible for friends, for family, for the pup. Working here, working from home allowed me to go and visit my Granddad in the care home on a weekly basis, it meant that I got some special extra time with him, it might not always be an ideal circumstance working from home, but how lucky am I to have been able to take that time out of my working day to spend with my Granddad.

I am now back in an employed position, and I have to say that I love being back in an office environment, but it is nice to know that my home set up is still here whenever I want to dust my self employed hat off.