It’s that time of year when many households’ thoughts turn to spring cleaning, and if you’re planning to give your house the onceover from top to bottom, a bit of simple preparation can help make it less of a mammoth task.
Here are just a few ways to get the best results from your spring cleaning in 2018 by combining the latest innovations in cleaning products and microfibre cloths with good old-fashioned remedies and elbow grease.
If you have a decent amount of loft space that has only ever been used for storing the Christmas tree and gathering dust, a loft conversion might be worth considering as a way to add living space and value to your home.
Back in the summer of 2015, Sainsbury’s Bank commissioned some research and found that 31% of estate agents consider loft conversions as one of the best value-adding home improvements, on a par with a new bathroom or even a single-storey extension.
Continue reading What you need to know about renovating a loft
Can carpets be recycled? The short answer is yes, of course! Like most other materials, there are all kinds of ways to directly reuse or recycle carpets so that you don’t have to send a fairly large and bulky item to landfill.
Here are some of the suggestions from Recycle Now, which is operated by the charity Wrap – the Waste and Resources Action Programme.
With February underway and (at long last) some blue skies over parts of the UK, the evenings will soon start to feel a bit lighter and brighter, not to mention a bit warmer.
That will mean an increase in people moving house, and more households turning their thoughts to spring cleaning even if they’re not planning a move.
The ‘paperless office’ was a dream of the late 20th century, when the promise of the digital era seemed like it could eliminate the need for hardcopies of just about everything.
Energy saving products sometimes suffer from poor public perception. It can be hard to look beyond the higher upfront cost of some eco-friendly products, while others may feel forced upon you, such as the ban on incandescent light bulbs or high-powered vacuum cleaners.
But the point that many people miss is that these are not just old second-rate technologies being forced into our homes; they are genuine innovations that mean we can get the same or better results with a fraction of the energy consumption.
Continue reading What difference do energy saving products actually make?
We think of food as a renewable resource – in some cases it literally grows on trees – but producing enough food for everyone has huge implications in terms of energy usage, carbon emissions, the land area taken up by farming and the associated cost of all of those things.
Using less food by being smart and less wasteful can all help to make this most crucial of global resources more sustainable, while saving money on household food costs at the same time.
Here are a few tips based on figures from Love Food Hate Waste to cut down on your food bill by being a bit more careful about how much you cook and how much you throw away.
We could all help the environment by making a new year’s resolution to reduce, reuse and recycle more, in order to minimise the amount of waste we each send to landfill.
But what are the best new year’s resolutions you can make for an eco-friendly 2018? Here are some of our top tips for an eco new year’s resolution, which might help inspire you to come up with some ideas of your own too.
Christmas can seem like a distant dream for most of the year, but once December arrives, the festive season soon comes and goes, leaving those of us who played host to clean up the mess it leaves behind.
While many households are becoming more conscious of reducing the waste packaging they produce and using more eco-friendly wrapping papers and decorations, there’s usually still a small mountain of waste to deal with.
So what can be recycled – and how easily?
We’re dreaming of a green Christmas – and especially a greener, more eco-friendly Christmas dinner.
But what are the ways to cut down on your carbon footprint when cooking for the family this Christmas? Here are our tips for an environmentally friendly Christmas dinner.
