There’s a lot of design trends that you’ll want to keep up with as a homeowner. What are people doing to their backyards to make them more beautiful? What types of countertops are buyers looking for these days? Some trends are beneficial. However, there’s a lot of trends that can be detrimental to your home. You want your home to be an expression of who you are, however, there are some trends that just aren’t attractive to buyers. 

Bright And Bold May Not Be Beautiful 

While that lime green room may look really attractive to you, it probably won’t look as good to anyone else. The best colors for paint inside of your home are the neutral colors. These include beiges, grays and soft whites. The most important thing is to keep your paint color consistent throughout your home. Not that you can’t change shades from room to room, but don’t make the paint change too drastic.  

No One Really Likes Shiny Things

As much as you may like shiny accessories throughout the home, it’s not going to be everyone’s thing. Although people will be decorating your home on their terms once they buy it, it’s important to note that busy isn’t always better. People need to be able to see past how you have set up your home to see the potential it holds for them.  

An Open Floor Plan That’s Too Open

You can take the idea of an open floor plan to an extreme. There are certain rooms in the home that just deserve privacy. The bathrooms and the bedrooms need walls surrounding them to give people the space and quiet that they need. If there’s no good way for you to fix this issue, you may want to find some room screens before your open house in order to keep buyers interested.  

Converted Rooms Squash Vision

If you have a third bedroom that you have converted into a home gym, that’s great for you. It may be hard for other people visiting the home to realize what the room could be used for. You may not have to move everything before an open house, but try to keep the room open for possibility.     

Carpeting Kills Buyer’s Dreams

There’s not many more terrifying things to buyers than walking into a home and seeing wall-to-wall carpeting. Their minds race, thinking of the possibilities of how to get beloved hardwood floors into the picture. If there’s floor under your carpet and you know you're going to sell soon, you’d be wise to tear up the carpet and polish up those floors. It will attract more buyers and sell faster because people will know they have that much less work to do once they move in. 

The Takeaway

 The important point here is that when you’re getting ready to show your home, you’ll want to take your personality out of the picture. Buyers need to have space to get the vision to see how they can make your former home their own. Reversing a few of the personal upgrades that you have made to your home can help you to make it a more welcoming place for new owners to begin a journey.

Household recycling has become easier than ever. Many towns and cities offer free recycling pickup, and even private waste management companies are implementing recycling programs.

There are a number of advantages to recycling. It helps protect the environment by reducing the amount of waste and making it easier to reuse raw materials. But, recycling is also advantageous to homeowners who don’t want to pay hefty fees for trash pickup when they can often recycle for free.

One of the more difficult aspects of household recycling is the learning curve of actually learning what is and isn’t recyclable. Homeowners might think something is recyclable because it’s made from plastic, only to find out later that it’s a specific type of plastic that can’t be recycled. On the other hand, you might be throwing some items in the garbage, filling up your bin each week when you could be recycling it instead.

In this article, we’re going to talk about some of the lesser known items you could be recycling. We’ll also cover some items you shouldn’t throw in your recycling bin, and give you tips on how to tell which is which.

Things that shouldn’t find their way into your recycling bin

It’s easy to assume that just because something looks like paper, plastic, or glass, that it can be tossed into your recycling bin. However, that isn’t always the case. Look out for these items that may not be recyclable in your area.

• Used paper food containers. Pizza boxes are one of the biggest culprits that end up in recycling bins when they shouldn’t be. Items like paper food containers, use paper towels, and paper plates are all soiled with grease and other food residue making them ineligible for recycling.

• Those glossy drink cartons made from unknown materials. There’s a good chance that if you can’t find a recycling logo on it somewhere it can’t be recycled. However, a growing number of cities are accepting milk cartons, so be sure to check on the rules in your area.

• Plastic shopping bags. Those flimsy bags that you get from the supermarket? You can’t recycle those. As a result, many cities and stores are encouraging the use of reusable shopping bags. If you forget your bags at home, however, fear not: many supermarkets now accept your used plastic bags to be recirculated.

So that eliminates a lot of common household waste from being recycled. However, there are plenty of items you might not be aware of that can be tossed into the recycling bin.

Lesser known recyclable items around the house

Even if something isn’t eligible for curbside recycling doesn’t mean you should just toss it into the trash. There are many items that you can drop off or donate. Here are just a few items that are likely sitting in your house right now:

• Old cell phones and electronics. Our gadgets are becoming obsolete at an ever-increasing rate. That means many of us have a lot of old tech junk sitting in boxes in our basements. The good news is that several stores accept free drop-offs of old electronics for reuse and recycling.

• Mattresses and furniture. Large items like mattresses and old furniture are a pain to get rid of. They’re also likely useful to someone out there. For mattresses and box springs, try contacting retailers to see if they reuse them for materials. Furniture that is still in usable condition can be placed on Craigslist or donated to a thrift store like Goodwill or Salvation Army.

• Oil and ink. Run out of ink in your printer? Online retailers will often pay you for your old cartridges. Also, if you recently changed your oil, drop it off at an auto parts store to be recycling into other automotive materials.