Many families these days share the warmth of their homes with pets which they treat as a part of their family. According to popular surveys, more than half of American homes have pets. These homes provide shelter for a total of about 77.6 million cats and 65 million dogs. Of course, for home owners, owning pets comes with unique challenges.
Protecting Your Home from Pets
When planning to build a home with pets in the scenario, it’s best to choose your building materials wisely. Opting for hardwood, stone tiles, or laminated finish floors would be better than choosing wall-to-wall carpet for obvious reasons. You can go for area rugs if you want to put some texture on the floors of your home. Wall-to-wall carpets are hard and expensive to clean up and they absorb odors which might make your house smell funny after a while. Bare floors will save you the headache of cleaning up the “accidents” your pet may make once in a while. You may opt to put carpeting on the stairs so that your pets would avoid slipping, especially if your stairs are made of smooth wood or marble.
Weigh down your area rugs with furniture so that your pets won’t scatter them around or think that they’re chew toys. To protect your walls from stains, hair and paw prints, you can also opt for matte finish or the non-glossy finish. You can also use window blinds, roman blinds, and the likes as an alternative to heavy drapes which can accumulate dust and pet hairs over time.
If your pets don’t have a habit of climbing furniture, then you can color-coordinate their beds or pillows on the floor to match your furniture’s upholstery. If your pets like to climb on to your sofa to nap, you might want to cover your furniture with washable cloths.
Making Room For Your Pet
Making room for pets in your new home takes some planning. There are ways to make the spaces attractive so that they go along with the architectural theme of the house. In the kitchen, you can create dens or crawling spaces under the cabinets to keep your pets from getting stepped on while you’re cooking. Laundry rooms can be a great place to make a grooming station for your pet. Feeding stations can be built in as pull-out compartments from kitchen cabinets. For people with cats as pets, you can create a more dynamic play area for your cat by making built in ramps and beams in addition to kitty condos.
There are special carpets that are manufactured specifically for pet owners. These carpets have waterproof backing that is meant to keep your pet’s urine from reaching the carpet.
Outdoors, you can also create a separate space for your cats or dogs so that they will do their digging there instead of dig away at your flower beds. It’s also important to know that making space for your pets in your home means that you’ll need to pet proof it as well. Your garden, for instance, should have no plants that are poisonous when eaten. You can consult your landscaping company for recommendations on the types of plants that you can get for your garden. Also take extra care to close and lock cabinet doors that contain toxic materials because your pet may be able to open them. You can also think about investing in invisible fences to keep your pets from getting run over by passing vehicles.
With a little careful planning, your new home can be a haven for your pet too.
