Blog Posts

Keep Cool Without Blasting Your AC

You could crank your AC in an attempt to keep cool this summer, but who wants to pay through the roof on electric? Whether it’s by choice or forced on you, there are a number of ways to keep heat at bay during the summer. You’re probably already doing some of them, like running the ceiling fans, but there’s more that you can do to keep cool without abusing your air conditioner. 1. Focus on cooling yourself, not the apartment : All these tips are built on this idea, but it deserves to be pointed out. Air conditioning cools the whole apartment, but your comfort depends on how you feel. It’s okay if the temperature is high, so long as you feel cool. 2. Use ice packs (or other cold items) : Freeze an ice pack and place it underneath you on the couch or bed. Keep it in a pocket while you’re walking or lounging around the apartment. Keeping it close to you will cool you down considerably. In a pinch, you can use frozen food, such as a bag of peas or popsicles, just be cautious of the mess they can make. 3. Freeze your sheets and clothes : Place your sheets and pillowcases in the freezer a few hours before bedtime, and make your bed with them right before you get in. The same trick will work for clothes, so while you can’t open the freezer to cool the room, you can use it to cool your clothes. 4. Take a cold bath or shower: If the thought of getting into a cold bath makes you sweat, fill it first with lukewarm or room temperature water, and get in. Gradually let the lukewarm water out and refill it with cold water until you’re in a mostly cold bath. You’ll feel cool for a long time afterwards. 5. Eat cool foods : Running the stove or oven just warms up the room. Instead, try to eat cold foods that don’t need to be cooked. Not only do you avoid creating more heat, but they also help cool you off. Popsicles and other ice cream are really helpful for this, and who doesn’t want an excuse to eat more ice cream? 6. Wear cooler clothes : If you’re home alone, go without clothes or walk around in your underwear or a bathing suit. Otherwise, wear natural fabrics such as linen, cotton and silk. These breathe better than man-made materials, such as rayon, polyester and other artificial fibers. Athletic wear is an exception and can wick moisture away from your body. Looser clothes also tend to breathe better than tighter clothes. 7. Close and cover windows and doors : Leaving windows open lets in warm air, and just leaving the blinds open lets in sunlight, which also warms up the room. At least close the blinds, if not putting up lined drapes or aluminum foil to reflect sunlight out of the room. Also, focus on just the part of the apartment you’re going to be in. Closing off parts of the apartment cuts down on air circulation, but that’s a benefit if most of the air that can circulate is warm air. 8. Set up fans cleverly : If you have multiple fans, set them up so that they intersect on you, the air hitting you from multiple directions. Make sure that your ceiling fan is set to counterclockwise, drawing the warm air upwards. Fill and freeze jugs of water, placing them behind fans (with a towel under the jug to absorb the water) to blow cool air at you. It’s helpful to have a fan blowing air at you, but setting it up properly can make a really big difference. 9. Drink ice water : Cooling down starts on the inside, so downing several glasses of ice-cold water will really put the chill on. Drink one ounce of water for every two pounds of your body weight. For instance, if you weigh 150 pounds, drink at least 75 ounces, or a little more than nine eight-ounce glasses, of water per day. 10. Use mint or menthol products : Smear cooling topical ointments with medicated vapors (such as Vicks VapoRub) or peppermint lotion on your skin. Bathe with peppermint soap, use lip balm with peppermint oil and brush your teeth with something minty. Mint refreshes the skin and leaves a nice cooling sensation. 11. Go somewhere with air conditioning : Just because you don’t want to run the air conditioner doesn’t mean that no one is. If a day is particularly unbearable, that could be the time to find somewhere else to go. Grocery stores, especially in the dairy aisle, are somewhere you probably need to go anyway, so why not now? You can also go to a grocery store, a friend’s house, or make it an outing to a movie theater. Wherever it is, someone else is paying for the air conditioning, and you get to really relax and embrace the cold.

Get a Smart Apartment

If the first thing you think of when you hear the term "smart home" is a programmable thermostat, but it's time to update your concept of what makes today's homes so, well, smart. Today's smart home technology has evolved to be accessible, adaptable and portable, making it perfect for renters. Here, we'll take a look at how you can outfit your apartment with smart essentials to make renting significantly more convenient and safe. Digital Assistants If you're not already using a digital assistant (also known as a virtual voice assistant or smart speaker), these devices may be one of the easiest ways for you to introduce smart technology into your home. Digital assistants, such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home, respond to voice commands and are designed to make your life a little simpler. You can ask your digital assistant to perform a number of tasks, such as play music, read you the news, order groceries, place a phone call or add appointments to your calendar. When synced with other smart devices in your home, digital assistants allow you to adjust lighting, turn appliances on and off and even activate security cameras. Smart Plugs Smart plugs are an inexpensive, easy way to integrate smart home tech into your rental. These devices allow you to remotely control anything that plugs into a wall socket - all with a tap of your finger on your smartphone or tablet. At home, you can even use your smart speaker to activate smart plugs with a voice command. When paired with lighting, smart plugs make your apartment more secure. Plug in your lights, then program the plugs to activate them at random times while you're away. This gives the appearance that you're home and helps deter would-be thieves from breaking into your apartment. Smart outlets can also optimize energy savings by turning off appliances - such as your washing machine or television - when not in use. With smart plugs, you never have to worry about leaving a light on all day or forgetting to turn off the oven, since you can manage all your devices and settings from your mobile device. Smart Window AC Unit You can't necessarily install a smart thermostat, but you can but you can have more control over cooling costs with a smart window air conditioner unit. The smart AC units are controlled by Wi-Fi. You can activate them remotely and program them to fit your schedule - meaning you can walk into a perfectly cool apartment after work without running up your utility bill. Smart Mattress Ready to go to smart apartment extremes? Consider a smart mattress. These futuristic beds provide sleep tracking, so you can keep track of how many hours you slept. They can also detect optimal wake time based upon your sleep patterns and set an alarm for you. And a smart alarm is only the beginning - smart mattresses can also regulate their temperature throughout the night, adjusting constantly to keep your body as comfortable as possible. If you connect your mattress to a smart home hub or digital assistant, it can kick off your morning the right way. For example, you can set your coffee maker to begin brewing as your smart alarm goes off, and program the lights to turn on as you step out of bed. 520 Park

Best Tech for Spring Cleaning

This is 2018, there's pretty much nothing you can't do without the assistance of technology. The same holds true for something as simple as spring cleaning. There are all kinds of gadgets to make the work easier, and apps to make the job organized. Take a look at the ones we've gathered below and choose your favorites when tackling the dreaded (or anticipated) deep clean of your apartment: Apps Cleaning Checklist helps you organize and manage household cleaning tasks and activities. Pick a room, select the task, and check it off when complete. Voila! {picture} BrightNest is for those who don't even know where to start. This app is full of useful tips for cleaning specific parts of your home, like how to remove toilet stains or what essential oils keep your garbage disposal smelling fresh. ChoreBank is great if you have kids that want to help. Assign a monetary value or activity reward to each chore and make virtual deposits to your child's account. You can even text reminders to your kids! Gadgets Unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard of Roomba , the house-cleaning robot. These bad boys can run upwards of $900, but critics claim it's well worth the price. Allergy sufferers: this one's for you. Nothing says spring cleaning like purified breathing air. Molekule is the latest in air purification systems that is not only effective, but smart and innovative. We stumbled upon a nifty little (affordable!) gadget that attaches to any standard household vacuum. The Dusty-Brush consists of dozens of tiny vacuum tubes that pick up dust and debris while leaving behind the important stuff, like nuts & bolts, craft supplies, and other small objects. Perfect for those hard-to-reach places like vents and the back of the pantry. 520 Park

Why Leap Year

Calm down, calm down, it's not a leap year. That won't happen until 2020 when we see another election and the Summer Olympics. We just got to thinking one day, why leap year? The origins of the leap year date back to 46 BC, when Julius Caesar, under the influence of Sosigenes of Alexandria, introduced the Julian calendar. According to them, a year was considered to be not just 365 days, but actually 365.25 days (hence the need for a leap day/year). But what they didn't realize is that the Tropical year (the time it takes the planet to make one revolution around the sun) is actually slightly less than that (about 365.242), and over a period of 400 years, the Julian calendar would end up having an extra 3 days. This meant certain astronomical events, like the Vernal Equinox, and festivals associated with such evens, like Easter, occurred out of sync with respect to their fixed dates. By the year 1582, the difference in time had accumulated, and the calendar had fallen so out of sync with the Tropical year, it was off by 10 days! To fix this, Pope Gregory XIII, under the influence of astronomer Christopher Clavis, produced the modern Gregorian calendar we know today to correct this error by simply omitting those 10 days. Which meant that after Thursday, October 4, 1582, the next day was Friday, October 15, 1582. Which meant October 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, in 1582 technically never happened. Google it! Apparently there were riots in Europe because people felt like 10 days were taken away from their lives. Crazy. Anyway, that's why we have a leap year. But to compensate for the extra 3 days every 400 years, the Pope also added a rule that every century which is not divisible by 400 will not be a leap year. So the year 2000 was a Leap Year, but 2100 won't be. Makes sense, right? Note: even the Gregorian calendar is still off. Every 3236 years, the calendar gains an extra day. 520 Park

Perks of Downsizing

Downsizing ain't easy. Moving from a house to a new apartment can provide you with a brand-new start, but it may also come with many changes that can feel foreign or overwhelming. Change doesn't have to be scary, though, here are a couple of the biggest things you can expect when you make the leap from house to apartment - and a look at how you can make the most of these opportunities! Planning to Downsize All you need to do is go on Pinterest or browse the magazine rack at the local market to find thousands of ideas about how to improve your life through downsizing. Lucky for you, downsizing is just part of the deal when you move from a house to an apartment. Here's a closer look at how your new lifestyle embraces this trend. Less space: One of the most obvious changes you'll encounter when you move from a house to an apartment is less living space. Apartments are designed for efficiency, which means that overall square footage will be less and individual rooms will be smaller. Rethink your furniture - that oversized sofa may need to be traded for a sleeker version that fits better in your new space. The upside is that you have the perfect excuse to go shopping and play with a whole new look for your new home. Limited storage: You'll probably have to take a good, hard look at everything that's currently living in a closet, cupboard, or drawer, and decide whether or not you can live without it. Some new renters use this opportunity to declutter their lives, while others learn to love the world of storage units. It can be revitalizing to get rid of extra baggage you've been holding on to simply because you have a place for it to hang out. But if you have items you can't bear to part with (Grandma's china), it's pretty affordable to rent a storage unit where your precious mementos will be safe and sound. Consider Community Perks If you're conflicted about saying goodbye to your house, our sweet apartment bonuses may help you greet apartment life with open arms. Amenities: A pool, hot tub, fitness room, and someone else to worry about landscaping and lawn care - what's not to love? One of the biggest perks of going from house to apartment living is the "resort-like amenities" that many communities offer. Be prepared to take full advantage of these extras. Community amenities provide the chance to relax, stay in shape, and make new friends who live just down the hall. Security: Living in close quarters with neighbors adds a lot of extra safety. It's easier to get to know neighbors and spot when someone is lurking around who doesn't belong. In addition, some rental communities have security guards or extra measures like pass cards or security codes to enter buildings and communal areas. Ask the landlord what sorts of security is in place when you take a tour of the premises; you may be pleasantly surprised at the safety measures you'll get for little to no added cost. No matter the reason you're moving from a house to an apartment, this change can be exciting. Prepare yourself to embrace apartment living and know what to expect by doing some thorough research before signing that lease. 520 Park

Best Dog Breeds for Your Apartment

Thinking about adopting a dog? If you didn't already know, we are a pet friendly community; in fact, we LOVE our furry residents. We have a few restricted breeds, however, so be sure to check with us before bringing home Fido. While almost any dog can potentially make a great apartment dog, we've narrowed down the breeds that, based on generalized demeanor, will be the best fit for your apartment. Dachshunds These adorable little "hot dogs" are expert snugglers who love burrowing beneath blankets and cuddling up to their loved ones. The smallest of the hound breeds, they do enjoy a good run - but the bonus here is that with legs just a few inches long, you can give them all the toy-fetching exercise they need right in the house! Bichon Frise Fluffy, French and altogether fashionable in appearance, Bichons shed very little, though they will need regular grooming to stay kempt. Energetic, loving and bright, the Bichon makes a wonderful companion. While they do enjoy a walk, they're happy to be little movie-watching couch potatoes, as well. Chinese Crested These interesting-looking little love dogs come in a powderpuff and hairless variety. The hairless are very easy to maintain, as you might imagine - though they can get cold and should own a few sweaters! Weighing up to 12 pounds, they of course need regular walks but don't require a large amount of exercise and do very well in apartments. Miniature Pinscher These dogs are like giant Dobermans that have been hit with a shrink ray! Miniature Pinschers (or Min-Pins, as they are often called) have a similar appearance to the Doberman, but are actually a distinct and older breed. Standing roughly 10"-12" tall at the shoulder, these tiny titans average out to about 11 pounds, and make wonderful watchdogs, as they're alert and suspicious. Also adorable. Shiba Inu Are you an experienced dog owner who loves taking your dog out for exercise? If so, the foxy-looking Shiba, which hails from Japan, often makes one of the best apartment dogs! Shibas have lots of energy, so if running either in tandem or turning your pup loose at the dog park on a daily basis sounds like you, this is definitely a breed to consider. Greyhound We know. You're probably thinking, "How can these dogs, with their racing backgrounds, be one of the best dog breeds for apartments?!" But they are! Long, lanky and content to be lazy, the only thing greyhounds may demand of you is more couch space. They actually need very little exercise or grooming, and they're wonderfully easygoing and quickly trained. What's more, greyhounds are plentiful in rescues nationwide, and thus affordable to obtain. Bulldog Want a true couch potato? These wrinkly little lovers may not look like lap dogs, but as far as they're concerned, they definitely are. Quiet, friendly and loving, bulldogs enjoy a good romp, but they're fairly low-energy and very content loafing about with their loved ones . . . and a cozy apartment would suit just fine. 520 Park