10 Hacks Every Homeowner Should Know

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When you buy a house, you buy a long list of projects that stretch into the distant future. Planning your time and budget for everything that will need to be done can be a challenge, but it’s worth it for the comfort, security, and financial cushion that home ownership offers. That doesn’t mean it can’t get a little stressful from time to time, though, which is why we could all use a few small tricks that can make a big difference as a homeowner. Here are 10 essential hacks that every homeowner should know.

Enlarge rooms with paint

One of the most common reasons for a home-buyer’s remorse is size. It can be difficult to gauge how you’ll use a space until you’re actually in it, and our lives don’t always go according to plan. As a result, it’s not uncommon for folks to feel like their house seems a bit too small for their liking.

Adding onto a house is expensive—a much more budget-friendly approach is to use visual tricks to make your house feel larger. Paint is a powerful tool for this. By leveraging color theory, you can make a room feel larger by using lighter colors on the walls and glossy white on the ceiling, and using a single color on all the walls to erase the edges that define the space, thus making it appear larger. If you don’t have a handy fortune to throw at a major home renovation, a low-cost paint project can give you the feeling of a larger room, at least.

No-dig fences

If you’ve ever been house-hunting, you’re familiar with one surprising fact: A lot of houses, especially new builds, don’t have fencing. You walk into the backyard and it’s just an open field, with invisible property lines somewhere in the near distance.

Fencing can be expensive if you hire someone to install it, with a price tag potentially in the thousands of dollars. Installing a fence on your own, DIY-style, is labor-intensive, especially if your yard is rocky. If all you need is a perimeter fence, however, a no-dig fence like this one is an easy solution that will mark off your property and pen in small pets without the effort or expense of a traditional fence project.

Dowel pin screw hole repair

Whether your house is new, lightly used, or historical in nature, eventually you’re going to deal with loose screws, especially in your door and cabinet hinges. Hinges carry so much weight and get so much use, the screws inevitably work themselves loose. You can fix this a few times just by tightening everything up again, but over time, this pattern will result in stripped screw holes and permanently sagging doors. At that point, you can either try to reposition the hinge so you can bite into fresh wood, or replace the door frame or cabinets at great expense.

That is, unless you know the dowel hack. All you need are some wooden dowel pins and some wood glue. Fill the stripped screw hole with glue, insert a dowel, trim as needed, and let the glue set. Then you can drill a fresh hole, and your screws will bite like new again, all for less than $10.

Rain-X on shower doors

One of the mysteries of the universe is the fact that bathrooms in general aren’t self-cleaning. How can a space doused with soap and water on a regular basis be so filthy?

One reason is the mineral content of your water, and the tendency for soap to transmogrify into soap scum. These two elements combine to turn glass shower doors into opaque, cloudy barriers that never look clean. Cleaning those hard water and scum stains off the glass requires a lot of elbow grease, and it’s the sort of chore we put off for months (or longer) simply because of the effort involved.

The trick is, once you do clean those glass doors, you should spray them with Rain-X. This is a product made for car windshields, but it will work a charm in your bathroom, too. It’s a water repellent, so your shower water will bead up on the glass, making it super easy to squeegee it off before it can evaporate and leave behind all those mineral deposits and soap residue. Using it on a regular basis when you clean your shower will keep those glass doors clear and free of build-up.

Deodorize with vodka

Vodka doesn’t have much of a taste, it has almost no odor, and it’s typically about 40% alcohol. All this means that vodka—even the cheap stuff—is actually a very good disinfectant and deodorizer. Many theater companies and theme parks use a mixture of vodka and water to spray down costumes between performances when there’s no time to send them out for cleaning. The alcohol kills off germs and odor-creating bacteria, and once it dries, there’s no smell or residue.

You can use this in your house, too. If your bedding, shoes, or towels have gotten a bit musty, a good spray with a 50/50 mix of vodka and water will deodorize and sanitize them effectively. You can add a drop of an essential oil too, if you want a light scent left behind.

Paint your roof

People typically don’t think about the roof of their house until it leaks—which is a mistake, because roofs are expensive to fix, even more expensive to replace, and a failing roof can allow water damage to destroy other parts of your home.

Becoming a roofing expert isn’t in the cards for most of us, but one thing any homeowner can do (usually as a DIY project) is coat the roof. Specialty coatings for flat roofs and shingles protect your roof from sun damage, fill in microscopic cracks before they can develop into leaks, and can extend the life of your roof by years, saving you a lot of money over time.

Run appliances at night

The modern house is an energy-sucking monster. We run lights, heat and cooling systems, televisions, computers, washers, dryers—the list is almost endless. And all of these devices and appliances require electricity, which, as you may have noticed, is expensive stuff.

If you can commit to running a lot of appliances at night, you can generally save money, however. That’s because electricity rates have “peak” and “off-peak” hours, so running your washing machine at night instead of the afternoon can cost a lot less. Some utility companies offer formal Time of Use plans, where you are charged a higher rate during peak hours, but a much lower rate during off-peak hours. If you can be disciplined about your power use, you can save a lot of money this way.

Get a ladder Levler

Doing DIY work around the house can be dangerous, and ladders are often involved. People often don’t know the proper way to position and secure a ladder, try to carry stuff while climbing, or forget that gravity is a thing and try to reach stuff they really shouldn’t while standing twelve feet in the air on an improperly balanced ladder. And then there’s the fun experience of having tools and fasteners in your pockets while you’re clinging to a ladder for dear life.

That can all be solved with this gizmo: The Ladder Levler. This gadget makes it safer to use your ladder on uneven surfaces (like stairs or sloped yards), and it’s also a storage bin that clips right onto your ladder, leaving your hands free to, you know, hold on like your life depends on it.

Leak detectors

Water will destroy your house if you’re not careful. Roof, pipe, and appliance leaks can persist for a long time before they become apparent, and every day a leak remains active means potential mold, dry rot, and structural damage to your home. And if you’re not home when a pipe or water heater bursts, sending gallons of water to gleefully rampage throughout your home, the cost of cleanup and repair can be astronomical.

That’s why leak detectors and alarms are an essential hack. Having these seeded throughout the house means you’ll never be caught by surprise—the moment moisture is detected, the alarms will sound, and you can deal with the problem before it ruins everything. You can get detectors that will ing you on your phone or other devices so you’ll be warned even if you’re not home, and you can often pair them with automatic shutoff valves on your water supply, stopping the flow of water the instant it becomes a threat to your home.

Thorny home security

Keeping your house secure usually involves technology like alarm systems and doorbell cameras, often backed up by a security service that can contact the police on your behalf. That’s always a sound idea, but it can be expensive and occasionally intrusive (especially if you find yourself having to reset systems and call off false alarms regularly).

But there’s also a passive way to enhance your home’s security: landscaping. A few thorny bushes near windows and thoughtful management of tree branches and ground covers can go a long way toward making your home less likely to be robbed. While this isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it kind of security plan, you’re going to have to manage some amount of landscaping anyway, so why not make choices in your outdoor spaces that actually make your home more secure while you're at it.