Ideas for Decorating and Equipping Balconies for Pets
Odds are, if you live in an apartment, you have a balcony or patio, and if you’re lucky, you have one if your home is a condo or a townhouse. This tiny little “urban porch” may well be the only bit of outdoor space you can truly call your own, so why not take full advantage of it?
This post is aimed at making your balcony a fulfilling place to be for both pets and their owners, but anyone with a little bit of private outdoor access will benefit from reading these tips.
The pet owners among you will want to give your furry friend a little exposure to the outdoors in a safe way. Of course, your pet getting harmed or stolen is always a concern, so here’s how to prepare your balcony to be a safe, happy haven for your dog, cat, or bunny.
Real Grass Crate – Growing live grass in a basin on your balcony is marketed toward dog-owners short on time, but cats and bunnies would enjoy sniffing around on this their own tiny yard, too, without you having to worry about bugs or snakes hiding in the grass. If your animal does their business outside, commercial options will have a small sprinkler that washes urine into a collecting area, and you will need to pick up droppings yourself.- Protective Balcony Fence – Fears of jumping off a balcony probably are not a cause for concern with dogs, but cats and bunnies may well jump or step off without realizing how far up they really are. I used a grid storage set like the ones described here to create a fence all the way around the inside perimeter of my balcony, and held up against the posts of the balcony with cable ties so that I can let my cats out safely. Always keep an eye on your pets while they’re out there, though! Cats especially can be reckless when they’re exploring.
- Separating Pets and Plants – Many pets enjoy eating the fruits of your gardening work, and some plants are poisoning to small animals, so it’s best to keep the two apart. That doesn’t mean pet-owners can’t garden, too, though! Hanging planters and window boxes
attached to the side of your balcony will make your balcony a more positive place to hang out, with or without a pet.
- Water Fountains – If your balcony is covered, a pet-friendly water fountain can serve the dual purposes of providing fresh, running water to your pet, and adding natural sounds and sights to your balcony. For non-pet owners, larger water fountains can be very appealing and promote tranquility, but these fountains usually don’t have filters to ensure they are safe for drinking out of.
How to Decorate Walls Without Painting
Whether you live in an apartment complex with strict regulations on painting your walls, or if you just plan on moving soon and don’t want to have to put up with the hassle of painting, you can still create visually interesting walls without breaking open a can of paint.
Wall stickers -These can range from a set of smaller stickers that you can arrange in your own patterns on your walls, to over-sized murals made to take up an entire wall by itself. Some are re-usable and some are not, but they will not damage your walls coming off. Wall stickers can range from a small pack for around $20 to $100-200 for very large images. Check out blik for professionally designed wall stickers, or RoomMates for more options, including licensed images.- Wallpaper – Wallpaper doesn’t have to be ugly and out-dated – there are plenty of fun, modern styles to choose from these days. Sherwin-Williams has a line of easy-to-remove wallpaper perfect for renters, with hundreds of cute designs. Wallpaper in general will take at least a few hours to put up if you want it to look even, so be aware that it can be a time-consuming process.
- Artwork - You can buy affordable prints at Art.com or ArtPrints.com (though framing gets expensive quickly), or original paintings by up-and-coming artists on Etsy.com. You can also mix and match similarly-styled paintings and group them together on one wall for a unique but stylish art grouping.
- Wall Quotes: Hanging, inspirational wall quotes can provide an uplifting atmosphere and provide a constant affirmation of something that is important to you. Best of all, you can bring the quotes with you to your next home.
- Cloth - One of my favorite options, you can apply starch to fabric and then press it onto the wall you’d like to cover with starch. Depending on the price of the fabric you use, this can be a very cheap option, and the cloth is completely re-usable after a round in the washing machine. For full directions on applying fabric to your walls, check out this article on Rental Decorating.com.
This post was updated on February 15, 2010.
Read MoreHow to Create a Feng Shui Living Room
This is Part 3 of 5 Microliving posts about feng shui.
The living area of your home is where you spend most of your waking time, whether it is socializing, watching television, or just reading. The ideal feng shui living room should be invigorating enough to keep you happy and energized, while not providing too much mental stimulation as to become distracting. Therefore, this room is one in which the yin and yang elements should be fairly balanced.
- Allow for a free flow of energy from the door to the window. Anything that disrupts the powerful flow of chi from moving from the living room entrance to the windows will negatively impact the entire feel of the room, so you may need to rearrange your furniture to allow energy to access the room freely.
- If you have a fireplace, make it a central element. Fireplaces are a great source of positive energy, so ideally your living room design and decoration should be focused on the hearth.
- Arrange seating so that everyone can see the door. A half-circular design is the best layout to ensure that good flow of chi, and also move seating furniture away from any walls or windows to foster chi flowing all the way around the furniture from all sides.
- Use mirrors strategically. Place mirrors in areas where you can reflect good chi into areas that are dark or unhappy. This is especially effective if you can reflect windows into more enclosed areas of the living room. Never allow a mirror to reflect a bathroom or staircase.
- Hang happy portraits or artwork on the walls. Surround yourself with positive images, particularly happy portraits on the family side of your bagua chart, or flowing water photographs on the north wall of your living room.
Above all else, strive for balance in your living room area. The unobstructed flow of energy is vital for a successful feng shui living room, so do not allow clutter to accumulate anywhere, keep surfaces as clean as possible, and temper yang elements with calmer yin elements. If you make at least a couple of these changes, you will feel the difference immediately.
Read More5 Tips for Incorporating Feng Shui Into Your Bedroom
This is part 2 of 5 Microliving posts about feng shui.
For a restful sleep and a peaceful bedroom, the calm, soothing force of yin energy should dominate your bedroom when you are designing it with feng shui in mind. Yin, the deep, slow energy of sleep and contemplation, will allow you to have rest uninterrupted by the jarring restlessness of yang elements.
The basic philosophy behind feng shui is on the movement of the energetic life force, or chi, throughout a home. Clutter of any sort halts chi and causes it to stagnate, filling a room and your home with negative energy. Those who live in small spaces will understand the difference just a little bit of clutter can make on their mood when they walk into a room. Needless to say, the clean, unobstructed flow of energy is vital for a happy home.
To bring your bedroom into alignment with the core tenets of feng shui, follow these 5 simple tips to get you started in the right direction.
- Remove major yang elements from the bedroom. Sources of rapid energy, these items belong elsewhere in the home, not a bedroom, including televisions, workout equipment, and PCs.
- Have several sources of lighting. Candles provide the most soothing source of light, but warm, glowing lamps and dim overhead lights will work, too.
- Paint the walls peach, beige, or brown. Bedroom walls should be skin colors, according to feng shui, to have a restful sleep and encourage the flow of positive energy.
- Bring in a small yang element for balance. Feng shui emphasizes that a happy life is a balanced one, so add a few red candles or a sexual painting, or another element that encourages yang energy, to your bedroom.
- Position your bed in a corner away from doors. Your bed should never been in direct line with a door, or your bedroom will be continually robbed of life-giving energy as the day progresses. If possible, your bed should also be away from any windows, and accessible from both sides of the bed.
How To Find the Perfect Couch on Craigslist
Craigslist is an invaluable resource for discount purchases from individuals anyway, but it can be especially useful for large home furnishing items like couches. This is because couches are big and bulky, their value is hard to determine, and they are difficult to resell anywhere else except directly to other consumers. Sometimes, the Craigslist seller just wants to get the couch out of his or her house as fast as possible, and won’t even charge you for the sofa. If you are patient, you can get a great deal on a quality couch off of Craigslist. Here are some steps to help you find a great, inexpensive couch off of your local Craigslist listings.
- Do your research beforehand. If you are looking for a Camden Crate & Barrel sofa, for instance, be sure you know what it looks like. Consider visiting your desired couch in its retail location beforehand, and even take some pictures if you can. And of course, know what the retail price is. Most people won’t outright lie in their Craigslist ads, but they might fudge and say the couch cost them $100 more than it really did, or that it’s a more expensive model. Know your facts, and you won’t be tricked.
- Be patient, and do not compromise. Do a search on Craigslist for your search terms; for example “Ikea” and “futon,” and at the bottom right of your search results there will be a link for an RSS feed of your results. Subscribe to this link (I use Google homepage) and you can easily see if there are any new results for your search. If you are specific in your search terms, you also won’t have the chance to compromise and get a couch you don’t absolutely love. Only bring the perfect couch into your home
- Once you find a listing for an ideal couch, contact the owner as quickly as possible. If there aren’t pictures in the posting, ask for pictures, and if the couch comes from a smoke-free and/or pet-free household. If its current owner smokes, you are going to have to give the couch a thorough cleaning to get the smell of smoke out (including washing as much of the fabric as you can), which is a time-consuming operation to undertake. If the owner has pets, a good vacuuming should fix the fur problem. Find out if there are any stains or other problems with the couch. Why is the owner getting rid of it?
- If you still like the couch: if you’re not in a huge hurry to bring a new couch home, offer 10% or so lower than what they are asking and see what happens. Otherwise, tell the owner you will purchase the couch and ask when you can come get it. At the house, sit on the couch and look over it one last time to make sure you love it before you pay for it. Then, pay in cash, and bring it out to your vehicle. The posters on Craigslist are generally not interested in helping you move it or load it, so make sure to bring a friend or two, and a truck to take it away in.
If you find a couch that is the right shape and size, but not the color or fabric that you want, consider re-upholstering it or buying/making a slipcover for it. Repairhome has a great article about creating your own slipcover, including some good suggestions on how to make your slipcover more unique. Re-upholstering a couch is a much more difficult task that can be physically exhausting and time-consuming. If you are prepared for this, however, it can make a huge, positive change to outdated or unattractive fabric on your sofa. Curbly has an extensive do-it-yourself re-upholstering guide, complete with pictures, for amateurs who want to give it a shot. For everyone else, there are professionals who will re-upholster your couch for you, so consider giving them a call. Happy couch hunting!
Decorating with Strings of Lights
Fairy lights, Christmas lights, rope lights – whatever the name, the concept is the same. Gentle luminescence to softly light up a room of your home, or to emphasize an area of your space that would otherwise be overlooked. The effect can be as subtle or as dramatic as you desire, the lights simple or complex. Their warmth can bring a romantic or a welcoming glow, depending on the style you use. Rope lights, sometimes called ribbons lights, are another option if you need a solid band of color in an area. They will light up a space but not overwhelm it in brightness. There’s currently a 12-foot one on Amazon with good reviews for less than $10.
Where I’ve seen indoor strings of lights the most is in college dorm rooms, where the rooms are often windowless, and lacking in good lighting. Those lights were only cheap Christmas tree decorating lights, salvaged off Craigslist or in garage sales, but the effect was immediate and cozy when they were lit. If you want the look in your own home to be a little more classy, there are strings of lights that are made specifically for draping in the corners or along the upper corners of your walls or ceilings. I have also seen them draped in reading nooks, along the tops of four-poster bed frames, and above framed art on the walls to draw attention to it. If you want to learn how to make the adorable fairy lights you see on the left, visit Espirit Cabane for the full instructions (and more pictures!)
Strings of lights are also popular at larger parties, especially outdoors, so that the host/hostess can keep the area dark and friendly-feeling without leading to undue falling as guests struggle to navigate an area they are unfamiliar with. If your lights are going to be exposed to the elements, make sure they are a kind suitable for the outdoors, and that one storm won’t render them useless. Check out Urbanspoon’s excellent blog post about all the varieties of outdoor lighting options available to you if you want to learn more about this style of outside decoration. Several options I didn’t even know existed (now they have solar-powered strings of lights?).
Divide Up Your Space, Japanese – Style
In general, adding more walls to an already small space makes the entire place feel smaller. Sometimes, though, you need to give an area of your apartment or condo the feel of its own room – but only temporarily. Perhaps a niece is coming to visit and you want to give the child her own bedroom, or you have friends coming from out of town and they’ve asked to spend a couple nights with you. You might benefit from a room divider if you’re working on a project of some sort, whether it be a sewing, craft, or home renovation task that doesn’t look very pretty right now, but can be effectively contained in its own area of your home. Enter Japanese screens, stylish solutions for creating a distinct-feeling room in an otherwise open space.
Japanese designers already do many things right (we’ll discuss more feng shui approaches in another post), but Japanese screens are one of my favorites. If you place a light source behind them, they admit a warm, soft glow to the rest of the room, which makes the space appear larger and more airy. The screens are not just functional; they are stylish and classy in and of themselves. With a fan-like shape, they take up very little room when folded up, and can easily be stored flat and upright in the back of a closet. They may be more expensive than a more typical (but ugly) room divider or a curtain on a rod, but you can bring them with you to your next home when you move. The aptly-named Room Divider Store has a website with hundreds of Japanese-style screen dividers that you can purchase online, if you are so inclined. They’re also just nice to look at and to get some ideas for your future room designs!
Organizing with the IKEA Expedit
A few months ago, I splurged on a piece of very nice furniture for my apartment. It’s called the Expedit, and it is sold by Swedish retail chain IKEA. In case you have never been to an IKEA store (they are scattered all over the US, but only in some of the biggest cities), they are truly an experience. They are huge, multi-story, warehouse-style buildings with massive amounts of home furnishings. At my local store, you go to the second floor first, where they have complete rooms and even apartment-sized areas laid out, with the square footage, so you know if it would work in your own apartment. There, they have all their furniture, furnishings, and decorations set up in such a way that you can see how a complete room would look. It really helps to be able to see all the packaged furniture assembled, so you know how big and how much space your furniture will take up.
Back to the Expedit. The way that Ikea can offer functional, attractive furniture so cheap is that they specialize in modular compunents that they can mass produce, package flat in boxes, and through in the warehouse area right before the checkout on the first floor. You will have to grab a big dolly and do some searching for it, not to mention spending a half-hour or so to put it together, and the Expedit is no exception. However, for $90, you can have the two-by-four, a great-looking piece of furniture in your living room or office, and for $160, the big four-by-four.
You probably aren’t able to have a traditional bookshelf in your home if you are pressed for space, because you shouldn’t be storing that many books in one place in the first place. That’s what libraries, the Internet, audiobooks, and half-priced buy, sell, and trade, bookstores are for (But that’s a different post.). On a storage system like the Expedit, however, the depth and height are greater than the traditional bookshelf, and you can store pretty much anything that you need constant access to. In my own apartment, I have books filling two of the cubes, a lamp in one, games and puzzles in another, and reference books in another.
There has become somewhat of a cult following surrounding the Expedit, and for good cause. If you want to see more pictures of the IKEA Expedit in action, visit the Expedit Group Pool on Flickr.com for over 250 action shots by users. If you want to find some more creative uses for your Expedit (or any IKEA product), visit the ikea hacker blog. Good luck with your Expedit!
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