I have had a Dyson for years, so long that it is starting to wear in the fittings and has lost a tiny bit of suction but still works great. Waiting till the new house is built and I will grace it with both the standard and a hand held/wall hung battery operated. I do think I'll have a Rumba in the new home though, as in the busy time on our farm, I leave home in a tractor at 10am and return at 10pm and this goes on for up to 3 months although not every day but still constant enough, to not have the time or inclination to plug anything in!!! I'm quite house proud and I think a Rumba would make me happy to walk through my door after being our all day BUT I still love the Dyson for now!!!

Absolutely agree with blueskies60 ! Remove the artwork/bench/plant that's on the left and replace then with either a bookshelf or a tall chest of drawers. Perhaps the plant can be repositioned into the corner on the floor where this troublesome niche is (there seems to be more than enough light there for a plant) and just place something calm and simple in the niche itself - perhaps a Japanese style scroll or pen and ink art work set off with a more rounded object sitting in the left corner of the niche; a gorgeous rock, a lovely candle, a calming statue... If you have (my preference) a chest of timber drawers on the left where the current art work is, you'll break up the symmetry, have more storage and have another surface upon which you can place a changing display of objects. This is the area that I would utilise for a mirror.

House: I clean pretty much use bicarb, vinegar, rubbing alcohol, lemons, essential oils and washing up liquid to clean everything. We recycle the usual glass bottles, plastic containers etc in our recycle binand all our lighting is energy efficient bulbs. We use cross ventilation and use an outdoor umbrella to keep the sun off the western windows in summer and a gas heater in winter (closing off areas we dont need to heat) for winter. I'm also a huge fan of wheat bags for keeping warm. Outdoor Areas: Our front balcony is totally food oriented and our back is partially food - mainly herbs. We use a couple of (awful) plastic owls to stop the possums and rats from visiting and feasting on our plants. I recycle our coffee grounds and egg shells (ground up) onto our garden as well (the citrus love them). I also use vinegar on slugs (they all come out with the rain so I go out with a spray bottle of white vinegar and spray them - it keeps them under control - making sure that I dont spray the plants). I use vinegar on weeds too - it kills them off. Rubbish: we put our fruit/veg scraps and egg cartons/empty toilet rolls into our worm compost as well as our garden waste. The compost from the worms goes onto our gardens. All our paper, glass and plastic gets recycled fortnightly.

I've been playing around with a pantry location. Originally, I was going to move the pantry into the laundry with some custom shelving and cut the laundry space in half. Now, Im thinking of cutting into the study area and building a wall there, and converting the new space into a long and narrow walk in pantry. Either that or build half a wall and put built in shelving in the study. Building the extra wall will reduce the need to cover in the door way that is currently in place and instead utilising it. Thoughts? p.s. this isnt too scale.