Winter has a way of revealing every weak spot in your home’s armour. That subtle chill across your feet, the windows that weep with condensation, and the boiler that never quite keeps up. If you’re serious about staying warm without watching your energy bills climb like frost on a windowpane, it’s time to take winter-proofing room by room.

This checklist isn’t just superficial fixes. It’s a plan to make your home perform better, feel better, and cost less to run.

Entrance Hall: Seal the Threshold

Your front door is the frontline between your warm home and the outside world. Make sure it’s not giving too much away.

• Fit a quality draft excluder at the base.

• Add weather stripping around the frame to stop air seepage.

• If you have a keyhole or letterbox, install covers that prevent gusts from entering.

Your door’s job is to let people in, not the cold.

Living Room: Heat What You Use

Your living room works hard in winter. Don’t let it waste energy.

• Pull furniture away from radiators to allow warm air to circulate.

• Use thermal-lined curtains or blinds to trap warmth after sunset.

• Add reflective radiator panels to push heat back into the room.

Layer the room like you’d layer yourself: insulation is as much about placement as it is about thickness.

Kitchen: Don’t Let Heat Leak with the Steam

It’s tempting to ignore upgrading the kitchen when winter-proofing. After all, it’s usually the warmest room when cooking is underway. But that warmth can be deceptive.

• Fit extractor fans with shutters to block outside drafts.

• Insulate around plumbing entry points where pipes bring in cold air.

• Consider under-unit insulation if your kitchen backs onto an external wall.

The kitchen is a heat engine—make sure that engine is efficient, not wasteful.

Bedroom: Cold Nights, Warm Sleep

There’s no good reason to shiver yourself to sleep or wake up with numb toes.

• Apply removable insulation film to windows. It’s invisible once fitted but creates an extra barrier against the chill.

• Lay down a thick rug if you have hard floors. Heat rises, but it also escapes downward.

• For older homes, install insulated curtains with pelmets to reduce convection currents.

Think about air quality, too. While sealing the room, allow for ventilation that doesn’t sacrifice heat.

Loft & Attic: Cap It Off Right

Heat rises. If your loft isn’t insulated, your home is essentially funnelling warmth into the sky.

• Lay at least 270mm of quality loft insulation. Anything less is underperforming.

• Insulate the hatch and install draught-proofing around its edges.

• Consider insulating exposed pipework and water tanks to prevent freezing and energy loss.

Call in the professionals to ensure it is done right. As accredited installers, All Seasons Energy specialize in converting underperforming lofts into high-efficiency, cost-saving spaces. If you’re ready to improve your home’s energy performance and lower your bills, just get in touch.

Utility Room & Bathrooms: Quiet Culprits

These small rooms often go unnoticed, but they can quietly drain heat.

• Add self-adhesive foam strips to door edges.

• Ensure extractor fans are fitted with draught-proof covers.

• Consider heated towel rails that work on timers—comfort without excess.

No More Drafts, No More Doubt

Beyond simply staying warm, winter-proofing is about taking charge of your home’s comfort and efficiency. By ensuring every room does its part, your living space becomes not only toasty but also quieter, more energy-wise, and truly inviting. Rather than merely enduring the cold, you’ll create a household that thrives throughout winter.

Source

When it comes to renovating your home, it’s natural to focus on the inside in the beginning. But at the same time, you don’t want to forget about making improvements to the outside too. Your home’s exterior is always the first thing that you see. It’s also how others will judge your property when it comes to selling. If you want it to be more attractive, it’s time to work on the best ways to boost your curb appeal.

Bring the Lawn to Life

One of the best things you can do to really showcase your property in the best light, is for you to work on your front lawn. If the grass is looking sparse or a bit yellow, it’s going to let down the overall look of your home. So why not nurture it with the right nutrients and an aerating routine? Working on your grass to produce a luscious, thick, green lawn is a very simple and rewarding way to instantly boost the curb appeal of your property.

Dress Up the Entryway

The next thing you should look to do here is dress up the entryway. When it comes to really adding a luxury feel, the way that you enter the space really matters. This is why putting up a beautiful stone gate is always a good idea. If you want an impressive way to set off your space or an entryway that makes a statement, this is certainly the way for you to do it.

Perfect the Drive

If you know that your driveway isn’t really looking the part, then this is going to be another thing that you really need to work on. It might be that you can just clean things up and repair what you already have, but you may also need to replace it entirely. Either way, a beautifully spruced driveway will always set your home apart.

Spruce With Beautiful Flowers

When all of the hard landscaping is done around your property, the next thing you need to focus on here is dressing up the space. Just like you would accessorize a room, you’re going to want to do the same for the driveway and front yard. So if you don’t already have beautiful plants decorating your front door or lining the driveway, this is exactly what you should work on next. It’s going really set off the hard work you’ve put into the driveway and yard by really making it all pop.

Clean Up the Exterior

Finally, you’re also going to want to make sure that the entire outside of your home looks the part. Once you have worked on the landscaping, you also need your property itself to set things off. Ultimately, your gorgeous lawn and flowers will frame your home and really show it off in the best light. To do that, you’ll want to make sure that your brick or paint is fresh and clean. You can also make sure that your windows, doors, and any shutters are sparkling clean. This will ensure that your home looks its best all year round.

Thinking about homeschooling your child can feel like jumping into the deep end with no float. You imagine a chaotic house, piles of worksheets, and a lot of second-guessing. But here’s the thing — it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, homeschooling can be way simpler and more rewarding than you’d expect.

Start Small

You don’t have to recreate a traditional classroom at home. Honestly, most of us start by trying to do that, then quickly realise it just doesn’t work. The beauty of homeschooling is flexibility. You can start slow and adjust things as you go. A few focused hours a day is often more than enough, especially when it’s one-on-one learning.

Learning Styles

Every child learns differently, and homeschooling gives you the space to figure out what actually works for your kid. If they’re struggling with reading, for example, you don’t have to push through the same old methods that left them feeling stuck. Some parents have found huge success using Orton Gillingham based approaches. It’s especially great for kids with dyslexia or those who just need a different way of learning to make things click.

Real Life Counts

Here’s something people forget — learning doesn’t only happen at a desk. Baking a cake? That’s maths and science. Grocery shopping? Life skills and budgeting. A walk in the woods? That’s nature study and P.E. You can build so much learning into your regular day without needing to sit down with a workbook.

No Fancy Curriculum Needed

You don’t need to spend loads of money on a big, official-looking curriculum. There are tons of free or low-cost resources online. Libraries are goldmines. You can follow your child’s interests, mix and match different styles, and change course if something’s not working. You’re not stuck with anything.

You’re Not Alone

This is a big one. Homeschooling might feel like a lonely road at first, but there’s actually a huge community out there. From local co-ops to online Facebook groups, there are so many places where you can ask questions, share wins, or even just vent when the day’s been tough. People genuinely want to help, and you’ll probably make a few new friends too.

Go at Your Own Pace

One of the best parts of homeschooling is that there’s no rush. You don’t have to keep up with a classroom or push through topics just to stay on track. You can slow down when something’s tricky or speed up when your child’s really getting it.

Trust Yourself

You don’t need a teaching degree to teach your own child. You already know how they tick. You’ve taught them to walk, talk, eat with a spoon — you’ve been teaching all along. Homeschooling is just an extension of that. Will there be hard days? Of course. But there are hard days in school too.

So, if you’ve been considering it but keep worrying you’re not cut out for it, take a breath. You probably already have what it takes. Homeschooling can be simple, natural, and honestly pretty fun once you settle in.

In our household, we have a few different health conditions. Two of the biggest are Mary's brain surgery to remove a tumor from her brain in 2022 and my own Ulcerative Colitis. Because of these larger health problems, we try to make taking vitamins a priority around here. Not just for our day to day health but also to help prevent us from getting sick. When you have existing health conditions, sometimes it makes it harder to fight off an illness as simple as a cold. But sometimes certain health conditions make it harder to actually absorb vitamins into our systems. 

Take for instance my Ulcerative Colitis. I can't take B-12 pills because my gut can't absorb them as well. So every month I have to take a B-12 shot instead. Pills themselves can be hard to absorb unless your gut is working perfectly well. But with Superior Source Vitamins, they are instantly absorbed under the tongue for maximum absorbency. 

Superior Source uses Microlingual instant dissolve melts that you don't have to swallow and they get into your blood stream faster than digesting. This is a huge bonus for anyone who can't absorb horse pill vitamins well! They are pure and clean and don't use GMO's either. Plus they are made in the USA. 

Superior Source vitamins can be found at Amazon and other great stores locally too.

Superior Source was founded by Ron Beckenfeld who started the company in 1998. Ron started it because his father had Parkenson's Disease and his own father couldn't swallow large pills anymore. His dad had small nitroglycerin tablets that quickly dissolved under his tongue and that's what inspired Ron to create instant dissolving tablets. 

Would you like to win a bundle of Superior Source vitamins? One lucky winner will receive a pack of SSV 4 Pack of Best Selling Vitamins ($85 value!) Open to the USA only.

There are many motivations for improving your household, from engaging in repairs to fixing up the aesthetics to reorganizing the space entirely. All of them are valid and worthwhile provided you have solid reasons and the budget to make the plans reality. 

However, there can be some times when you don’t want to design within an inch of your life, when you don’t want to emulate a perfect showroom, and you’re not looking to be featured on any repeated weekly house design show. 

Now and again you just want to improve your home for convenience and ease of use. That’s especially true if you have other concerns to think of, be that a family to raise, a hard job to work, or medical concerns to live with. Having a highly complex home with many things that could go wrong could be a huge impediment to all that. Sometimes, you want a home improvement that guarantees the least amount of future maintenance and cost. 

Let’s explore what those could be:

Replace Old Roofing With Long-Lasting Materials

Your roof takes a beating from weather year after year, so upgrading to materials that can handle decades without much fuss makes good sense. Metal roofing lasts much longer than the usual tiles and needs barely any maintenance once it's up there. Also, slate is another option that can go fifty years or more without needing attention, though it costs more upfront. 

Getting a reliable roofing company to assess what you currently have and recommend enduring alternatives in this way could save you from dealing with leaks, repairs, and replacements for years to come. The initial expense might seem steep, but when you add up what you'd spend on regular maintenance and emergency fixes, better materials often work out cheaper in the long run.

Install Hard-Wearing Flooring Throughout

You’ll usually find that carpets need to be cleaned often and eventual replacement, but certain types of hard flooring can last for decades with little care. Moreover, well-designed vinyl planks look nice and can handle spills, pets, and heavy foot traffic without showing wear or damage easily. False hardwood gives you the appearance of real wood but stands up better to moisture and temperature changes which is great if you live in a hot area, too.

Polished concrete might sound industrial but it's practically indestructible and easy to keep clean, which is why people use it in garages. Whatever you choose, having the same flooring throughout most of your home means less variety in cleaning products and maintenance needs, and you could always place large rugs that can be removed if you want a little decoration. You don’t need hard floors in all areas of the home, but where you don’t want to maintain, this can help.

Upgrade To Low-Maintenance Exterior Cladding

Painting the outside of your house every few years can be pretty tiring, especially if you're dealing with peeling paint or weather damage. That’s why certain cement siding, brick veneer, or composite materials are known to last longer than wood siding and can look like other materials too. 

Such materials will also help you resist moisture, insects, and fading, so once they're installed you can pretty much forget about them. The upfront cost is higher than a simple paint job, but you'll save time and money, which is the real goal here.

With this advice, you’ll be sure to guarantee the least amount of long-term care in your home.