The New Year provides us the opportunity to make positive changes, a blank slate so to speak. While many are busy making personal improvements, January can actually be an ideal time to tackle minor updates to your house.

With a little creativity and patience, these easy and affordable projects will give your living space a much-needed facelift this year.

Every homeowner wants to protect their home and properly care for their investment. To do this, you need to keep up on regular and seasonal maintenance tasks. While you may be focused on those recurring seasonal tasks, like changing your HVAC filters for instance, there are some that you have likely forgotten. To effectively care for your home and its appliances, be sure to put these important tasks on your to-do list.

Like the generation it’s named for, millennial pink is all around us. It’s a fun, daring, sophisticated hue that isn’t exactly new, but lately seems to have caught the eye of legions of clothing and décor designers.

Have you ever turned on one of your household appliances that hasn’t been used in a while and watched dust fly out of it? That’s a clear sign it’s time to bring out the dusters and blow some clean air through your home to eliminate dust buildup and tiny debris particles like pet dander.

Keeping your household appliances clean isn’t that hard when you follow a few basic steps:

Food processors are one of the most helpful of kitchen appliances. Whether you need to slice, dice, chop, shred or purée a host of ingredients for a meal, large or small, the handy machine can get the job done quickly with the press of a button. Depending on which model you have, a food processor also typically takes up little space on your kitchen counter or in your cabinets.

Reusing things you use often instead of using them once and then throwing them away will not only benefit the environment, but will save you some cash, too. 

Here are four reusable items that will more than pay for themselves in savings. 

Shopping Bags
A plastic bag has a lifespan of 12 minutes from when it’s initially filled with groceries at the store to when it’s discarded when you get home, according to Reuse This Bag. These bags can take 1,000 years to decompose. 

It seems like everyone—from friends to the media—are touting the benefits of weighted blankets these days. These specialized blankets weigh between 7 and 25 pounds and are usually filled with beads or pellets. Here’s what you should know about this trendy home accessory—and why experts say you should consider putting one on your bed.