Top places to buy furniture, home goods and decor online…

Buying furniture online always holds that extra risk, are you buying from a real site? Is it going to be reliable, and are you going to receive the correct product and is it going to be what you expect? So I have trawled through the internet looking at reviews and products of online furniture shops and found the best 5…

 

H&M Home

I must be honest before I started looking I didn’t even know H&M did a home range! But then I realised its actually in America, so now they have an awesome website for it online us people here in the UK can order from it! Already a trusted retailer in the UK for clothing it is obvious they’re going to have great furniture.

 

 

 

Zara Home

Again, just like H&M home I had no clue they did a furniture range, but with a website full of beautiful furniture and decor for your home as well as a huge promotions section this definitely has to be in the top 5!

 

 

Room & Board

Fancy customising your own sofa? Well now you can, you can choose from more than 300 fabrics and leathers to create the perfect customised sofa for you and your home.

 

 

 

Urban Outfitters

Here you can find cool furniture, bedding and everything you need for your home at surprisingly affordable prices!

 

 

Furniture Countrywide

For affordable furniture for every home style Furniture Countrywide is definitely the place to go. With furniture suited to any interior there will definitely be something suitable for your interior.

Cozy Places…

Getting home from work after a long you just want to come home and flop down into the most comfiest position on the comfiest piece of furniture right? Well BuzzFeed have come up with a list of the most coziest places ‘you could die happy in’. So to shorten the list I have picked the 10 coziest looking…

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Selfie

If you haven’t yet heard the massive craze of the “selfie” then you must have been living in a hole! They even created a song all about the almighty “selfie” check it out here…

 

 

“selfie

ˈsɛlfi/

noun

informal

1. a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.”

Now the selfie has been taken to a whole new level, people are starting to take ‘Home Selfies’. As you know now what selfie means you can probably figure out exactly what this means. Don’t enjoy taking selfies of yourself but want to join in the craze why not start taking selfies of your home!?

 

How to take the perfect selfie of your home…

 

1. You don’t need to take a picture of everything. If a certain moment looks great capture it. Don’t wake up in the morning and think you’re going to have to try and find something to take a picture of, just let it come naturally.

2. Take lots of pictures until you have the perfect one. The first one is not likely to be the one you end up posting, if you take several you’ll find that after going through them all you’ll have your perfect one.

3. When going to post your selfie on social media, e.g. instagram, it is best to use a frame instead of a filter.

4. It’s not all about likes. Yes it is great to get a few likes on your photo, but post for yourself. Eventually you’ll find people start finding your photos and you’ll start getting people liking your photos because they actually like them, not because you have forced them to using a load of random hashtags.

So now you’ve got these tips you’ll be able to take the perfect selfie of your home! Enjoy selfie taking.

Essentials for Your First Property

When it comes to your first ever property it is likely you’re going to be clueless as to what you’re going to need. But don’t panic. Plenty of people have been through and are going through the exact same thing. A lot of people tend to over buy when it comes to their first property, you see lots of pretty things and think that will look great in your new place. However, eventually you’ll find yourselves cluttering up the house! So for your first home just go for buying the essentials. But what are the essentials?

Depending on whether you’re going into a furnished or unfurnished property will depends on what essentials you will need.

Furnished property – this usually means that white goods have been left/ supplied in the property for you so you won’t need to go shopping for a bed, washing machine, fridge, freezer. But you won’t be left with the things to put within the rooms. Unfurnished will obviously have none of these things and so you will have to buy all these and furniture.

Obviously there is so much you can buy for your house, but you should start with the bare essentials, especially if you’re on a small budget.. So from room to room…

 

Kitchen 

 

Cutlery

Plates

Bowls

Glasses

Mugs

 

Livingroom

 

Seating

TV (not very essential though)

Telephone

 

Bedroom

 

Bed

Curtains

Wardrobe

Drawers

This doesn’t seem like much, and remember these are just the main essentials, there are so many more things you need/can get, but it all amounts to a lot of money depending what you’re buying and where you’re buying your products from!

For a little more information visit: Property Essentials

 

Buying a Bed

Buying a bed takes a lot more thinking about than most think, I mean it is the place you’ll want to be comfiest, it is where you spend your evenings getting the well deserved rest from the day you’ve had to prepare yourself for the next day ahead. So when buying a bed there are a few things to consider.

There are SO many beds, frames and mattresses you can get your hands on so you’ll need to do some research first. You’ll need to know what kind of bed you’re looking for, do you want a memory foam mattress? Which is the best? Do you want a bed in which has a lot of storage space? There is a lot more to consider than you may think. 

You may see a bed you like but you’ll need to consider whether it will actually suit your room. If you have a large room a big four poster bed will look great! If you have a smaller room then you’ll have to opt for something smaller, but nonetheless there are some amazing beds in which you can choose from.

Once you have decided what bedframe you want you’ll then need to decide what kind of mattress you are looking for, this is the fun part. Go to a mattress shop and try out every mattress available, which is the most comfortable, which do you find best to lie on? You will have to think about all this, don’t rush into buying a mattress if you’re not dead set on the comfort as remember you’ll be having to sleep on this every night.

 

How to get your Kids to Clean their Room

Getting your kids to tidy their room will never be the easiest thing and to be fair do you enjoy the thought of tidying up? So you can understand why children may throw a tantrum when you tell them to tidy their room, so you need to be clever about it, think of things that will motivate them to clean their room or ways in which you can make it fun.

I remember when my Mum used to get me to tidy my room she would threaten me with the “you won’t be able to go out all weekend if you don’t tidy your room”, and at this point I was verging on teenage years so the thought of spending the weekend at home indoors with my parents really wasn’t fun! So it motivated me to clean my job and do a bloody good job! And then I got to spend the weekend with my friends.

Obviously with younger children it is a little different, but simple things like if you give your child a little bit of pocket money at the weekend to go and spend round the corner shop on sweets or if you take them with you grocery shopping and you buy them a toy or some sweets, tell them that they can’t have it until they clean and tidy their room. Trust me it works. Every child wants to get stuck into playing with their new toy so they will get straight into cleaning their room.

Another way to improve with your kids getting their chores done is to set a good example, show them that you clean and tidy up often and this will show them that it is the normal thing to do. If you don’t tidy up and don’t take pride in the way your home looks then it isn’t likely you’re going to be able to motivate your child to take pride in cleaning their room.

You could even make it a game, if you have several children, get a timer and tell them to have a race. The first person to have the perfectly cleaned room wins (perhaps offer a prize), every child loves bit of competition. You could also pretend to be judges and once the children have cleaned their rooms they have to be scored out of 10 and again whoever gets the highest score out of 10 wins.

There is so much you can do to motivate your children to clean their room, so fear not if they don’t seem to be cooperating at the moment, try a few of these tips out and hopefully in no time there will be no strops or tantrums just because you mentioned the “cleaning” word.

Decluttering your Home

Decluttering your home is never a fun thing to do, and when you tell the kids to declutter their rooms you know exactly why they groan and moan about it, because just like them you really don’t want to do it, do you? But it has to be done, over time we begin to gain things or buy things in which we needed at the time but no longer need, or we just buy something because we like the look of it. However, this begins to clutter up the house leaving you with no extra storage or makes your home a nightmare to keep tidy. So this is why you need to declutter.

It doesn’t have to be one of them things you keep putting off, there are ways to make it easier. Pick a starting point. Don’t start in one place and not finish but move on to the next space because this will just cause extra clutter everywhere and make your life so much more stressful. So maybe, pick a room you’re going to start with? You don’t have to do the whole house in one day, so maybe dedicate a room a week, or a room a day? Which ever takes your fancy.

For example, if you decide to start with the kitchen, go through one cupboard at a time, and have a black sack at the ready for anything you decide you want to throw away. During this process you need to be tough, don’t look at something and think just because you haven’t used it since you bought it, bearing in mind you bought it over a year ago, doesn’t mean you won’t use it. Because it is likely you won’t use it, and if you ever do randomly need something you decided to throw away you have friends and neighbours right? Borrow.

If you don’t feel like decluttering this week or this weekend, plan a weekend or a day in which you’re going to do it, and schedule it in. Knowing you have to do it and it is something that is scheduled in is likely to make you do it, plus the sooner you get it done the better, then you can stop worrying about it.

For items you aren’t so certain on create a “maybe” box or bag and pop everything in there. Pop this box or bag in a hidden place and in a few weeks or months go through it again and see what you actually need out of it, by this time you’ll have realised you don’t actually need any of it and it will be simple and easy for you to just get rid of it, thus creating more space in your home, and remember, some of the stuff you’re thinking of getting rid of you could donate to charity? This whole decluttering thing really does turn out to be good, and giving stuff to a good cause will make you feel great! 

Finally, don’t leave it to get to the point where you have to do a WHOLE long process of decluttering, perhaps every month set a day in which you’re going to have a little bit of a more thorough clean through, this will stop you from having to do so much work in one period of time.

 

Simple and Quick Decorating Ideas

Fancy a change in the house but nothing that is going to cause too much disruption to the home? Well I have found some simple and quick decorating ideas for you, that will help you make that change in your home.

Kitchen – a very simple change to your kitchen could be hanging an interior curtain, not only will this give you a little change but it will make your kitchen look that little bit more stylish.

Bedroom – mix and match your bedding, you don’t have to constantly have the same bedsheets and you don’t have to constantly use the same sheets that go with each set. Why not use a different case for your pillow and another for your bedding. A simple but effective change.

Hallway – add a different kind of wall piece to your wall, perhaps plates? Not only is this simple, but how many houses do you go into and see plates hanging on the wall? Exactly.

Livingroom – everyone tends to go with pushing the sofa chairs right up to the wall, why not make a change, move it around a little and pop the sofa more in the middle of the room, away from the walls, (obviously if your lounge isn’t big enough to do this, putting the sofa in the middle of the room really wouldn’t work).

Extra little things you could do is update lampshades, simple, but will give you a slight change. Perhaps going a little less simple, but still a simple idea, change the colour of your walls, paint them a different or even add some wallpaper to them, this will make for a very noticeable change if thats more so what you’re looking for. Or simply just move already hanging wall pieces around, swap them up a little, put them in different places or just change them.

 

Tips for Choosing the Right Furniture

Sometimes when buying furniture can be difficult, you see something that you like and in more instances than one it is likely that it actually won’t suit the interior you’re looking to buy furniture for. So the whole time you’re looking for furniture don’t just fall in love with a piece because it looks nice, you need to make sure you’re buying the right furniture for that room, otherwise you may end up with a rather odd looking room!

To help with picking the right furniture I have come up with a few tips which should make it a little easier, firstly (probably the most obvious), pick a budget. This will make sure you only go shopping for the furniture you need and not come back with lots of little extras because you haven’t set yourself a specific budget. This will make your life a lot easier.

Select which material you want or need your furniture to be, this will enable you to go straight to the furniture made with this material instead of looking  round lots of furniture which has no relevance to you.

Think about storage space; depending on how much storage space you are going to need perhaps look for a coffee table which has a few extra drawers for storage space, or whether you actually need the furniture you are buying or maybe it is going to take up too much space, so ensure you know exactly how much space you have to fill.

If you already have things in the space you’re trying to decorate like curtains, wall pieces etc, then make sure you coordinate all this with the type of furniture you get. You want the room to look good and fit well together.

But most of all, don’t make the process of buying furniture stressful, you can make buying furniture and decorating fun if you make sure you have a few things planned out and know exactly what you’re looking for. Just like women (and some males) enjoy clothes shopping you CAN enjoy furniture shopping.

 

Children’s Bedroom

As a child you have so many expectations and ideas as to how you want your bedroom to look, and over the years I have seen some amazing children bedroom interiors, here are just a few:

 

 

 

Not only does creating a cool bedroom design make for an awesome room in the house, it could essentially make bedtime easier! I mean who doesn’t want to go up to a bedroom where they’re going to be sleeping in a ship for the night!? To any child this will definitely sound cool.

You don’t have to go all out and fancy and hire an interior designer to decorate something like this! Its pretty much all about the furniture, the amount of decorating is actually little and its all about finding the right place which sells the right furniture to create this magical room for your little one. Furniture CountryWide have a huge range of children’s bedroom furniture which could help!