If you’re anything like us, the warmer weather has you dusting off the patio furniture, cracking open the windows and dreaming of long, carefree summer nights. But before we can fully enjoy all that spring and summer have to offer, it’s time to get organized! To help you kick start your spring cleaning activities, we’ve brought in the experts on creating an organized, beautiful and happy home – John and Sherry of YoungHouseLove.
John and Sherry are DIY aficionados who have spent the past five years fixing up their first and now second home. They like to learn as they go, and share their adventures – and misadventures – with the world via their YoungHouseLove blog. They’ve done a little of everything, including tiling, demolition, cabinet refurnishing and furniture painting, among much more. John and Sherry love bringing budget-friendly solutions to the table. From documenting how they completely gutted and rebuilt a bathroom for just a little over a thousand dollars to making a 13′ double desk for their office for under $150, they definitely aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty while pinching their pennies. When they aren’t working on a DIY project or blogging, they spend time with their little girl, Clara, and dog, Hamburger.
Join us this Wednesday, April 4th from 12-1 pm PT to get tips and tricks for organizing your home from John and Sherry themselves. To participate, follow @Bing and @younghouselove, and be sure to include the hashtag #BingIt in all tweets to follow along and contribute to the conversation. As a special bonus, we’ll be giving away $50 gift cards to two lucky participants that will help you get a jump start on your spring cleaning and organizing.
To help you get started on your spring cleaning, here are a few tips from John and Sherry:
- Tip #1: We love having a little hand vac that you can zip around corners and along the baseboards between total house vacuuming sessions. It’s sort of like a touch up, so if someone calls to say they’re dropping by and I have five minutes to make the house look clean, I grab the hand vac.
- Tip #2: When it comes to keeping things organized, as obvious as it sounds, you’ve got to have a place for everything. Otherwise you’ll get piles of clutter and your counter or table will never be clear. So something as simple as buying a large basket, bin, or bowl for storing “mail that has to be dealt with” can keep it from piling up everywhere. You can even get a basket for storing the remotes in the living room so you never lose them or wonder where to put them if people are coming over. We try to have a place for everything, so everything can be in its place.
- Tip #3: Lots of people have paint paralysis and are afraid to make the wrong choice or somehow ruin their lives by picking the wrong paint color, so they sit there frozen in fear and never paint the walls. Instead we like to remind folks that it’s only paint (which is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to update a room) and if you never go for it, you’ll never be any closer to living in a home that you love. We recommend bringing home lots of paint swatches, taping them up on the wall, seeing how they read in different lighting (at night vs. during the day) and then just selecting your three favorites. Then grab a test pot of paint for each one of them (they’re usually only a few bucks each) and then you can try them out on the wall before making a final choice. It’s like training wheels!
The #BingIt Team:
– Kari Dilloo – @karidilloo
– Ted Roduner – @roduner
– Archana Ramachandran – @archana