You can yearn for summer from October to March, suffering from colds, colds and drafts. And you can change your home for this time and winter without worries.
Tasty little things
This secret is known to all experienced real estate agents. They often advise homeowners to carefully prepare for showing the apartment to potential buyers. No, do not scrub the floors and wipe the dust (this by itself), but brew aromatic coffee, bake a cake with ginger and cinnamon, place jars of colored spices on the shelves in the kitchen, and put a plate of oranges, tangerines and apples on the living room table. This does not require serious efforts, but immediately makes the house warmer, sunny and cozy.
And what is "behind the stove"?
In autumn, Russian villages carefully prepared the stove for the coming winter: they cleaned, whitened, and covered the cracks. There are no stoves in our apartments, but their replacement - radiators - is also worth taking care of. To begin with, we thoroughly clean them from dust and dirt. A smooth, clean surface not only looks better, but also gives off more heat. Then we check to see if old newspapers, etc., have collapsed between the wall and the batteries — all this impedes the spread of heated air. And finally, if the house is cooler in winter than you would like, you can hang a thin sheet of aluminum or cardboard painted with silver paint on the wall behind the battery. He, like a mirror, will reflect the heat of the radiator and return it to the room.
Caution, the doors do not close ...
More precisely, formally the front doors are closed and even locked with a key, but uninvited guests - cold and draft - still sometimes pass through them. The easiest way to block their path is double doors. A “thermal pillow” of air forms between them, which, like a layer of fluff in a winter jacket, will reliably protect the house from the cold. If you do this there is no way, it's okay. A single door will also cope if you strengthen it a little. Are there gaps between the wall and the jamb? If there are any, we eliminate them with a mounting foam. On both sides of the threshold we put on a thick rug. This will not only protect the floor from dirt and snow, but also prevent the cold air from slipping into the gap under the door.
Turn on the music
Winter is a quiet time. Rain does not make noise, birds do not sing, children do not play on the street. Why not fix it? You just need to pick up a few disks with the sounds of nature: a summer thunderstorm, a splash of waves, the sound of the forest. And turn them on when you get home from work or Sunday morning when the whole family gathers for breakfast. The mood of the household, and the house itself, will immediately change for the better!
And outside the window ...
Today, many apartments have double-glazed windows, but this does not mean that they do not need to be prepared for winter. To begin with, we will arrange the windows for strength testing: twist the handles, open and close the wings. If they move with a rattle or just go tight, you must carefully lubricate the metal parts with special oil to care for plastic windows. Then we check how tight the seal is (the rubber layer between the sash and the frame is the main barrier to the cold in the apartment). To do this, slip a sheet of paper between it and the frame. Does it stretch with effort? Everything is fine. If it falls out freely, tighten the screws at the upper and lower ends of the frame.
Down with the drought!
If you put a fresh apple on the battery, after only a couple of days, the delicate skin of the fruit wrinkles. Also, air overdried by heating devices affects everything and everyone in the apartment. The skin on the face dries, peels, and the throat and nose become more susceptible to infections. Often even parquet with furniture does not stand up: they dry out and crack. How to humidify the air in winter?
* Beautiful way. Buy an aquarium. By the way, it can only be inhabited by plants.Or put in each room a small decorative fountain.
* Practical way. To buy an air humidifier: traditional (the air in it is driven through a filter filled with water and moistened naturally), ultrasonic (Н2О with the help of ultrasound is transformed into tiny sprays and sprayed in the room) or an “air wash” that moisturizes and purifies the air.
* Economic way. At least once every 2 days, do wet cleaning in the apartment, and on each battery install a container of water and do not forget to change it regularly.
We believe in light
A winter day is 3 times shorter than a summer one, which means that there should be at least 3 times more sources of artificial light in the house. How to determine how much? In the evening you need to turn on the overhead light and see how many dark, gloomy corners are around ... In order not to yearn for the long summer days, light a small “electric sun” in them. It can be a floor lamp near an armchair, where it is nice to read or talk on the phone, a sconce in the hallway from the room to the kitchen, a lamp on the desk, a garland of colorful lights in the nursery, or even a few candles in the bathroom.
Add color
What do we see when going out on a winter street? White snow, gray sidewalks, black branches of trees, tan walls of houses ... Happily. And psychologists are sure: the constant contemplation of dull, faded colors can easily lead to spleen and even depression. To avoid this, it is worth adding bright details to the interior in advance. It can be thick curtains of the color of milk chocolate on the windows (at the same time they will become additional protection against possible drafts), an orange bedspread on the bed or sofa pillows of a sunny color.
Let's be fluffy!
In summer, we walk on a wide variety of surfaces: grass, sand, earth, stones. In winter, we don’t get out of shoes, which are not always convenient and comfortable, even at home - it’s half cold. And if you send a fluffy carpet in the room? This will reduce the load on the spine, which increases from constant walking on a hard surface, and at the same time improves blood circulation in the legs. In addition, the carpet alone can increase the temperature in the room by 8-10% and reduce the amount of dust in the air (its fibers hold dust particles tenaciously, preventing them from rising).
Plant life
It would seem that the easiest way to settle the summer in an apartment is to place indoor plants everywhere. They absorb carbon dioxide, secrete healthy oils that are healthy and remind one day of sunny days somewhere in nature. All this is true, but ... Most of the flowers that we keep at home come from the subtropics and tropics. They do not tolerate our cool, sunless winter and require painstaking care. Fortunately, there are easier ways to “blossom” an apartment. For example, bouquets of dried summer flowers and herbs: spikelets of rye, oat “panicles”, bright “lanterns” of physalis. You can buy cacti. They are good because from November to April they do not need to be watered at all. Another option is unpretentious stems of green bamboo, which do not even have to be planted in the ground. It is enough to pour water from time to time in the containers where they live.
The article was published on the materials of the magazine "Good advice" 10/2013
Text: Irina Toropova. Photo: Legion-Media; Fotolia.com
Material prepared by Julia Dekanova
