When I first bought my condo a year ago, my American Dream became a reality as I finally had a place to call my own. Growing up, my family only rented to so I was used to keeping spaces as they were when we first moved in and seeing white walls. After saving up and purchasing my condo, I now had the opportunity to get creative. Over the past year, I have taken on some small tasks to get my place the way I wanted and I wanted to share them because I feel like these minor improvements can actually make the biggest changes in making a place seem more “homey”.

Five ways I improved my new home:

1. New Paint- Before even moving in, the first thing I did was give my home a face lift with a new paint job. When I bought my home, the walls were a sand color. Though there was nothing wrong with the previous color, I felt it would be nice to change the color to a pretty grey-blue color to soften the color palette. Initially, one of my friends and I got together and tried to make a project out of it. We actually spent a good day painting with minor breaks to eat Costco sandwiches before realizing that to be more cost and time efficient, I should call a professional. Unless you have a big group of people who would all be free to help, I highly suggest getting a professional painter. My friend and I took almost a whole day to paint and we only got the living room completed. When the professional came in, he painted my whole condo within a day time frame. The following picture is a before (left photo) and after (right photo) that shows the difference that the new paint made in my kitchen.
2. New Lighting- When I first moved in, I had florescent lighting fixtures that looked like they haven’t been switched out since the place was first built. The color from the florescent light casted a dirty yellow color everywhere. In order to change out the lighting, I went to Lowe’s and got updated fixtures that not only fit better with my new household but also provided more natural lighting.
3. Small Additions- One addition that made a huge difference was adding ceiling fan light fixtures to each bedroom. I made this change to add brighter, natural lighting to each room as well as to help with the air flow. Another addition I made was switching out the mirrors in each bathroom. When I first moved in, I noticed the main mirrors in each bathroom that my condo came with were older and were slightly rusting on the edges. Since I would be looking in these mirrors on a daily basis, I switched them out for a newer mirror that had a pretty mosaic edging. The new mirrors were beautiful and helped to brighten up each bathroom. I wish I had a picture of the old bathroom mirror of the rust to show a before and after but all I have is a photo of the new mirror which you can see below.
4. Getting organized- When I first moved in, I wanted to have nice, clean spaces, and not a hoarder’s dream home, so I made sure that all my things had a place. Cute mementos that I wanted to be on display as well as movies and books I would need access to on a daily basis would be on my living room bookshelf as you can see in the following picture. This was basically how I assessed all my things in every room. Anything out in each of my rooms were things that I used frequently and everything else would be tucked away in a closet or in a bookshelf bin.  Right now, I am still working on getting rid of a lot of things and I’ll probably donate to Goodwill and sell some stuff at Buffalo Exchange.
5. Decorating- The last thing I did after moving in and setting up was decorating. This was probably my favorite part. When decorating, I made sure to stick with a color scheme and theme. For my color scheme, I stuck to teals, blues, beiges, and golds to compliment the light brown cabinets in the condo. In addition, since I love to travel, I got pieces that were inspired by different places of the world I have been. For example, my bedroom pictured below, uses a lot of cool colors to help create a “beachy” Hawaiian feel. Lastly, I hung up art pieces that I created or that friends had given me based on how well they flowed with each other and matched the theme of each room. I even created an art wall which you can see in the pic below in my room with some art pieces I made over the years.

These small improvements definitely helped to make my place feel like home and they are definitely things that anyone can do too. Some of these enhancements such as a new paint job and new fixtures do cost a little bit of money but it is money worth spending to help create a space that you would enjoy coming home to. Furthermore, having self-made art pieces or even just art that you love up in your house will add small personal touches that will help to create a place that’s a visual representation of you.