Upgrade These 4 Spots in Your Home This Year

Surroundings have a big effect on how you feel. The right surroundings can make you feel relaxed, happy, even inspired, while the wrong surroundings can make you feel stressed and anxious. Perform a bunch of small upgrades around your home this year and you can make a big difference in how you feel about your cozy, personal space.

Simple Home Upgrades

A coat of paint can go a long way toward making any area of your home look upgraded. You can use it to refresh up furniture, frames, molding, the walls, cabinets...well, the list of what you can paint in your home is a long one. If you're feeling creative and want to make a noticeable change, paint is a great way to do it. But you have lots more options if you really want to flex your DIY muscles. Try one of these projects and start working your way down the list to freshen up your home in many new ways.

Laundry Room Upgrades

A well-organized laundry room with lots of storage space is actually easier to get than you think. Put up some simple wire shelves and your laundry room becomes a highly efficient space. You can hang items off the bottom of wire shelves, including hooks and hangers, and easily store all your laundry-related items right here. Everything is open and easy to access. It's easy to attach baskets and plastic bins under wire shelves, as well, and add even more storage space as needed.

Kitchen Upgrades

If there's one area of your kitchen that needs a little work, it's probably the area under the sink. This cabinet often becomes a catch-all for cleaning products and room essentials, like the dishwasher detergent. You may have carpet cleaner, extra shopping bags and all sorts of random items under there. The best way you can upgrade this area is to get it organized.

Start by putting up a tension bar that fits across the width of the under-sink area. This is a quick and simple upgrade. Just place a standard shower curtain rod under there. These rods are adjustable and they're sized perfectly to hold spray bottles. This is an easy and very effective way to get this cabinet well-organized.

Add plastic containers or large glass jars to hold items like your dishwasher detergent, shopping bags and all that stuff that seems to collect here.

Upgrade the room by re-lining your kitchen cabinets. This can be a time-consuming task but it goes a long way toward improving the look of your cabinets. Get creative and use bright, patterned shelf paper to add a fun pop of color every time you open a cabinet. This also gives you the opportunity to re-organize the cabinets, something everyone needs to do from time to time.

Bathroom Upgrades

There's never enough room in the bathroom, no matter how big this space is. Get creative and add lots of little extra storage spaces to your bathroom with some really quick, really easy upgrades.

The inside of your bathroom cabinets and closet are unused storage space. A few stick-on hooks can change the way you organize this room. Place a couple of stick-on hooks on the inside of the bathroom door or vanity cabinet, put a hole in the cuff of an old sock and now you've got a nice little spot to hold hair tools. The sock is a perfect sleeve for a curling iron or straightening iron.

Hooks in the shower area are an easy way to store sponges and brushes. This also allows these items to dry after they've been used. Hanging up items that get wet is the best way to store them.

Upgrades Everywhere

With a little elbow grease and a handful of pretty inexpensive items from the home improvement store, you can perform some quick upgrades that make a big difference overall.

If you have a dresser, nightstand or chest of drawers that's scratched up, has a finish that's peeling off or otherwise just doesn’t look so great, forget about all the hassle of completely refinishing these pieces. Get some peel-and-stick wallpaper to quickly and easily give any drawer face or tabletop a face-lift. If you have a razor knife and take precise measurements, you can beautifully re-cover furniture pretty easily and give it any look you want. This type of wallpaper is available in wood patterns, vivid colors and just about any look you can imagine.

Don't have time to refinish cabinets and drawers? Grab a screwdriver and remove the old handles and pulls instead. Replace these pieces with new hardware and give your cabinets and drawers and whole new look. This is a very affordable and easy way to give your home a more modern, stylish look.

Another affordable item available at the home improvement store that can quickly freshen up your home is outlet covers. Grab some light switch covers as well. Replace all these old covers and you'll see an immediate difference. If you want to do a little something extra, pain your light switch colors and outlet covers in the trim color used in your home or in the wall color used in the respective rooms where you're replacing all these faceplates.

Want to get really extra with your light switch covers and outlet covers? Get a bunch of little frames or many small pieces of molding, paint them, and place them around your covers with small drywall nails. This is an easy upgrade that looks amazing.

Clean

Cleaning alone can actually make a really big difference. There are a lot of cleaning projects you can tackle around the house to make everything look fresher. Wipe down all the baseboards and doors with plain water and a little clear cleaning solution. Wiping down all your painted walls will make a big difference, too.

Remove and clean all the vent covers in your house, clean your windows and all the window trim, wipe down all the window blinds. Wash your shower curtain and all your window curtains, too. Shampoo the upholstery and the carpeting. Remove glass light fixtures and give them a thorough washing, too.

Take some time to take on some cleaning projects you don't normally do and you'll notice a big difference in the way your home looks.

Upgrading Your Home

Upgrades don't have to be expensive and they don't have to be complicated. There are a ton of little things you can do around your home that will make a big difference. Focus on the small upgrades you can do and you'll end up getting a whole lot of stuff done.