Ask The Lifestylist

 

Happy Holidays from our kitchens to yours! May your holidays be filled with love, laughter, memories, and of course, great food!

We are so excited that 2020 is finally behind us! It was a year of challenges, but good things as well. 

As a Lifestylist, I am always trying to look forward and there are lots to look forward to in this New Year! We look forward to hearing from you, and sharing answers to your life and style questions. 

A great question that we get asked all of the time.

A factory-built, or mobile home can be so many things. Think about if you asked if any home was safe. There are so many options - a home can be a luxury mansion, or a falling down abandoned shack on the side of the road that hasn't been lived in for years.

The same is true with manufactured homes -it depends on how they are taken care of, and how they were built. The good news about any manufactured home built after 1976 is that is was built to HUD code specifications - a national code that makes sure that the home is safe and built properly. Site built homes are typically built to local codes, which tend to vary drastically depending on what city and state they are constructed in.

As a Lifestylist®, I like to use the example of how many site-built homes do you think can go down the road at 70 miles an hour like a manufactured home does, sometimes over 1,000 miles or more? Factory-built homes are built to withstand the shaking, winds, and weather that being on the road subject them to.

A great resource where you can learn more is the Manufactured Housing Institute. They are the organization for manufactured and modular housing and have lots of great resources on their website.

We discovered we were wasting a crazy amount of time trying to source items for our new retail stores.  Even though we are located in a big city, finding things like mannequins, price tags, and case locks had us running in circles.But we found the ideal place to source these efficiently, quickly and at a great price - Amazon Business.
This free service makes it possible to shop for what you need in the middle of the night, and if you have signed up for an Amazon Prime membership many items ship for free within two days! There are also financing options for qualified companies.

Take a look at what this offers, and we promise you will never look anywhere else.

The Lifestylist List is a great place to find out what's new, trending and information you need. Lifestylist® Suzanne Felber travels coast to coast to find the most interesting products and places to share.

Visit their website, Facebook page and Twitter home to find out more.

The easiest way to find a Lifestylist® in your area is to visit the official Lifestylist website.

That is where you can find everything you need to know about the Lifestylist movement.

One of my favorite lifestyle items that many people don't think about is towels. Think about how many times a day you use one, but when it's time to make a purchase we spend more time worrying about cost and color than value. A typical family of 4 owns 15 towels, and we tend to hold on to them longer than maybe we should. My parents own a lake house and received 20 beach towels that were promotional items at least 10 years ago and we still use them!
My favorite store to buy towels from is JC Penney. They always have sales going on, but you can get a luxurious bath towel in beautiful current colors for under $10.00. As a Lifestylist® and model home merchandiser I buy a lot of towels for my job, and JC Penney is always my first stop for this purchase. Their sheets and bedding can't be beat as well. Instead of buying all of your towels the same color, try buying coordinating colors. That way you can mix and match, and each family member or house guest can have their own color so you'll always know which is yours!

Great question, and as a Lifestylist® the first thing I would say is that your purchase should have a lot to do with your lifestyle.
My Home Idea Factory is truly a printing factory that was built in the 1940's that I love, and the advantages are the architecture and details like the solid oak floors, acreage and location close to town that I could never afford at today's prices. But with that comes the reality that a lot of my time is now spent maintaining my home - my single pane windows let in the cold in the winter and heat in the summer, lack of insulation means that it's really hard to have a constant temperature, the roof is always leaking and the heat and air guy is on my speed dial. And now that freon has become more regulated I can't even find what I need to keep my AC cool and happy.
A new home has it's advantages and disadvantages as well. The great news is that you have a warranty and someone to call if you do have issues, your appliances and home are probably at least energy star rated and everything is new! If there is a disadvantage it might be that everything is new, but if you are a great shopper finding unique elements that you can add to your new home can give it just as much character as The Home Idea Factory has without the headaches.
When I talk about the Home Idea Factory, I always say "it's all about You." Do you have the time, energy and resources to keep up an older home or would you rather have a new home where you don't have to worry about maintenance for the first few years? It's about your life. your style. your way.  No matter what your choice is, what is important is that it's the right home for you and your family.

Decorating is a general term that has to do with adding furniture, accessories, drapes, or whatever is needed to a home. Most consumers would "decorate" vs staging or merchandising their personal homes.
Staging and Merchandising should be the same thing if done properly with the goal being to design a home to help sell it. There are many merchandising firms (including mine) that specialize in re-merchandising a model or doing it on very tight budgets. The key for both should be we are there to sell homes - period. If the builder (or Realtor®) isn't selling a home we are all out of business.
Right now we all have to be creative to survive. I recently did a home for a builder where we teamed up with the local Ronald McDonald House and did a model completely with donated, gently used items. We got tremendous press, over 25,000 people toured the home and we raised a lot of money for a very worthwhile charity.
If there is a difference between a Merchandiser or Stager I'm thinking that a Merchandiser provides more long term solutions and ties in with the marketing of the home more and a stager is more of a short term solution.