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Pivoting as a Parent this School Year

If you have kids that are still in school, you’re probably experiencing the uncertain and undulating roadmap of the future of education. With COVID-19 rearranging our schedules, altering our abilities, and whereabouts, one industry that has perhaps suffered the most is education. Toddlers in preschool, middle schoolers, high school students, and university scholars alike have all experienced a trying year, a crash-course in pivoting. Learning how to adapt to shifting circumstances has not been easy, and as we look ahead to brighter days, we also must address the current educational climate, now in October. The percentage of schools open to in-house teaching is only a small percentage, peppered throughout the country, while most education is being taught online from home.
For states that experience drastic weather changes during the winter months, such as the East Coast and Midwest, it will not be possible to hold classes outside, as was the solution starting this fall school year. With flu season nearing and temperatures dropping, we may start to see a greater push for at-home learning. For those educational institutions choosing to continue classes indoors, new spatial solutions will be an absolute necessity for safeguarding all students and faculty against the virus.

Working from Home

If you’ve recently been asked to bring learning home after your children have already started this school year in a real school setting, the transition can be cumbersome. Home doesn’t exactly emulate the same classroom setting, often making it difficult for students to focus and keep on top of their coursework. Especially for children who are used to having their own special space in a classroom, their own desk, as well as a physical instructor and teacher aids helping guide their learning process, homeschooling can be a huge challenge. With so many external factors contributing to their inability to focus like other siblings, pets, and toys, it’s no wonder this has been a trying time for so many. If you’re like most parents, you’re probably wondering how you can set your child up for success for the rest of the school year. After all, if we’ve learned anything from 2020 it’s that the future is a complete mystery- with no known timeline of this virus to help aid our decisions.

What We Can Do

One of the quickest and swiftest decisions you can make for your child’s learning process from home is to provide them an educational sanctuary within your home. Most of us don’t have an extra bedroom available to make a classroom come to life seamlessly, however, there are other reasonable solutions. You can easily and affordably construct a home office/classroom within an open space by using Sliding Glass Wall Partitions. Glass partitions are easy to install and remove, affording you the flexibility you need during these uncertain times. Next month everything could change, and the kids could be back in school, and that’s why it’s important to come up with malleable solutions that don’t break the bank! Floor-to-ceiling glass wall dividers can be constructed within a matter of hours and your little ones can enjoy the extra privacy and focus they need to succeed this school year. Choose from varying glass opacities to achieve your desired level of privacy- from completely transparent, to opaque, you have tons of options for customization.

Get Them Active!

If your children have recently returned home to do remote learning, one of the best ways to ensure a productive, less-stress day is to get them outside often. If you can, encourage them to take small breaks every few hours so that they can get up and walk around and take in the fresh air while burning some of that pent-up energy! Too much stagnant energy can certainly keep children of any age from focusing. Go on a walk together, ride bikes, or encourage them to make up their own games in the backyard. During a normal school day, they would have lots of time to play with other kids, run around the schoolyard, engage in P.E. or after-school sports. It’s important to make sure that they still get this activity time!

Give you and your kids the gift of calm this fall with awesome space optimizing solutions offered at The Sliding Door Company. Hop online and check out our viewing catalog of Sliding Glass Room Dividers, beautiful Sliding Glass Barn Doors, and more! Schedule a free initial consultation with one of our knowledgeable experts to get started on your exciting project today. Don’t wait until your kid’s grades start dropping to call the space experts today!

TSDC 1029 – A

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Finding Resolution in Your Home Improvements This 2020

With the turn of a new year- and in this case, a new decade, it’s a wonderful time to set some New Year’s Resolutions. Crafting a vision board of the things that you know would help add to and enrich your life is a great place to start. Even just taking a few minutes out of your busy schedule to jot down some reminders to yourself. Go outside more, be more active in your week, more mindfulness with your spending, less time on social media, reconnecting with old friends- these are just a few simple yet meaningful and powerful changes for living a better life entering this new year.

A large part of any New Year’s resolution starts with your environment and allowing yourself the necessary time and space to accomplish your new goals, hobbies, and habits. We recommend first turning to your home to see if there is any current stagnation within your environment discouraging creativity, inspiration and just all-around positive energy. Below are a few simple tricks and tips for updating your space- doing out with the old- bringing in the new.

Sliding frosted glass room divider for kids study room

Re-arrange Your Space!

The classic draw and inspiration towards reorganizing and re-arranging your physical environment is a common practice, experienced by many surrounding large benchmarks throughout the year. We feel inclined to mix things up, reevaluate and update our spaces because we exist in them every day and they hold so much meaning and value to us. With the start of a New Year, there is a lot of mental discarding and relinquishing of things that don’t necessarily serve us anymore. In addition to the mental, there is also a lot of physical changes we experience and crave to discard as well.

While setting out to rearrange your house or simply a room in your house, think about what you can actually get rid of. Whether it’s lackluster furniture, uncomfortable lighting, art on the walls, decorative pieces, or even just realizing how cluttered it has become. There are usually quite a few items we end up holding on to and surrounding ourselves with that we are long overdue to ditch. When cleaning out your spaces, remember to make different piles to categorize the items you plan to get rid of. Make a trash pile, a recycling pile, a Goodwill pile, and a ‘give to friends’ pile. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” as they say- and it’s true. You never know if what you’re tossing out might be useful or appreciated by someone else. Now that you’ve done a great deal in cleaning out and decluttering the space, you can begin the fun part- the Feng Shui.

This Chinese artful tradition was developed over 3000 years ago and is used by many a renter, homeowner, designer and interior professional today. It is a system that attempts to harmonize the individual to their surrounding environment. Feng Shui employs the belief that our home is essentially a mirror to our energies and what exists inside of us. Below are the top Fen Shui tips to crafting a harmonious environment for you and your loved ones:

  • Clear Your Clutter (We already did that)
  • Get Good Quality Air And Light
  • Learn The Basics Of 5 Feng Shui Elements
  • Always Be Mindful Of The Quality Of Energy In Your Home
  • Seek Balance
  • Bring The Outdoors In
  • Use Mirrors Wisely
  • Open the Front Door to Positive Energy
  • Use Feng Shui Wealth Colors
  • Water Flow

These tips may be a bit vague, so we’ll provide you with a bit more clarity for some of these topics. For example, The 5 Feng Shui Elements are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. Choosing from a variety of materials and elements and bringing them into your home will add much balance and harmony to your environment. There are luckily many a chart online that detail the five elements and the corresponding directional degrees in which to integrate them into your space. A quick Google search will provide you will all there is to know about said elements and their place in your home.

Another area that we might lend some advice on, is the tip of Getting Good Quality Air and Light. A very important aspect of creating an ideal living atmosphere has a great deal to do with your available light and air quality. You know that uncomfortable experience when you enter into a home or building and it’s all stuffy and dark- you feel a bit trapped and boxed in. A great way to ensure your space is getting enough light is to install sliding glass room dividers and glass wall partitions throughout your home so that beautiful natural light is able to move through space and bring this light into all deserving rooms of the home. The Sliding Door Company offers a myriad of available Glass Doors, wall partitions, and even sliding glass barn doors for a more rustic approach to integrate that crucial natural light throughout a home.

Create Your Own Space

Whether you live with roommates, your parents, a partner, or with your own family, there is oftentimes no available alone time or space to do the activities you want to. Crafting a sanctuary in your home is a vital aspect of making a positive living environment that caters and provides for you. If wondering how to make a separate room or space amid a home without any extra bedrooms, we suggest considering wall partitions and glass room dividers. A great way to create novel spaces-home offices, workout rooms, or arts and crafts studios- is to install glass room dividers. This successfully utilizes your useable space and optimizes your floor plan. With six different glass opacities offered, you can craft privacy by choosing a high opacity or frosted glass finish. Without your own private zone, it can be super difficult to be inspired, creative and productive living amongst the people in your life.

Hopefully, with these helpful tips and info on rearranging and updating your home environment, you can realize your goals and attain true balance and harmony in your life. Integrating ‘home improvement’ in your New Years’ resolution is a great way to start the new decade.

For more inspiration on how to partition your rooms and make use of valuable floor space, have a look at our website. Schedule A Free Consultation to get in touch with a helpful representative and start the transformation towards a brighter, more harmonious 2020!

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Interior Design Must-Haves

As a designer, it comes with the title- the expectation to harbor creativity, to be innovative and of course, to provide cutting edge products and design solutions for your clients. After years of designing, improving, and optimizing spaces, there can at times come the routine stagnation of creativity. It’s a demanding profession with all sorts of stressful assurances. You constantly need to employ novelty and invention to be ahead of the curve. It’s no easy feat to be as up to date as possible on all of the current trends, architectural elements that are in season, the latest in furniture and above all else, to adapt to an ever-changing market.

There are so many factors to consider when designing interior spaces

You have to tie in the decor, the furniture, the structural elements and the unique aesthetic of each home harmoniously. We at The Sliding Door Company like to provide innovative and stylish interior solutions so you can design to impress. Below are a few ideas to help ensure your next interior project a success.

A current trend utilized extensively in interior design the past few years has been a revisit in Mid Century Modern. The furniture selection, lighting fixtures and overall vibe of many an interior has pulled from this sophisticated and striking period and has done it well. While this look has garnered a lot of attention and employment, it’s time to take a leap and catapult an already well-considered aesthetic further.

glass sliding closet doors

What could set your interiors apart from the rest?

The attention to and innovation of everyday features. A great artistic flourish can be added by updating all of the hardware, trim or even doors in the home. The Sliding Door Company provides excellent cutting edge door designs and customizable features to scale-up your interiors.

A perfect example of juxtaposing the draw of modern sophistication while tapping into rustic nostalgia is the sliding glass barn door. Not only is it suspended, creating equal interest and intrigue, but the functionality of this feature provides the client with tranquility and ease. It’s both elegant and raw, offering thought-provoking duality. The sliding glass barn door allows for individual customization with features you can choose from, such as to go frameless for that ultra-clean, modern look. These barn doors are a wonderful solution to opening or closing spaces off when needed. The Sliding Door Company takes into account the need and demand for multiple choices, such as customizing accessories and finishes to make them uniquely yours. That’s why we offer sixteen different glass opacities to choose from, as well as six finishes, and framing options.

Glass barn doors in an office space

When working with scale and limitations, designing and decorating can be tricky. Especially if you are working with a tiny home or small city loft. The lack of square footage can pose a troubling threat to the overall experience and essence of the space. One way to combat small spaces is to utilize mirrors to create depth and expansion in the home. Floor-length mirrors are optimal as they provide dimension and aid visibility in any room. Mirrors are also great for optimizing natural light in space – making this a cost-effective solution. Greatly broadening the experience, mirrors give the illusion that space is actually much larger than it is. A good way to do this is to install mirrored sliding closet doors. This simple solution serves a dual purpose by adding scale and style all at once. The Sliding Door Company proudly offers many designs to choose from, ranging from mirrored sliding bathroom doors to entire glass wall partitions. Scale-up with mirrors and provide the duality and function of modern sliding doors.

Lastly, allowing the client to uniquely customize their space at the drop of a hat is an innovative and much-appreciated design feature. You as the designer get to play with the curatorial aspects of each project. When rooms are too large or overly airy, they can tend to feel cold, unwelcoming and therefore, unused. There are a few smart ways to redesign and break up interior spaces without bringing an entire construction crew into play. This saves you time, cost and energy. The way to craft new interior spaces or entire rooms even is to add interior partitions to an existing open floor plan. By utilizing ever-helpful sliding wall doors, wall partitions, and sliding panel doors, you effortlessly craft entirely novel rooms and break up excessively large or open rooms. The great thing about these room dividers with doors is you can easily lock and unlock, open or close spaces in mere seconds. Allowing the client to have control over their environment is a sure way to gain recognition and approval. Taking the client’s needs into consideration is huge, especially when there are a plethora of talented designers out there- it’s important to leave a thoughtful and artistic mark on your projects.

glass wall slide doors in a kitchen

We at the Sliding Door Company proudly offer space optimizing solutions for you and your clients

We produce high-quality doors in our own factory that boast safety, style, and flexibility. As mentioned on HGTV, Hilton Hotels, and The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Sliding Door Company is the right choice when redesigning your interiors. Check out our products gallery for inspiration and product images to aid your latest concepts. Don’t hesitate to schedule a free consultation with one of our knowledgeable professionals and get a quote on our many available solutions.