Tuesday, 21 July 2009

• Bachelors, Is Your Apartment Lady-Friendly?

  Beer and Pizza is your staple diet. Your idea of comfort is a cold black leather couch with a glass and stainless steel coffee table. Cleaning may involve sweeping the crumbs off the couch and taking out the trash. But even if your apartment is spotless, do you ever wonder what women really think of your floor torch lamp and your heavy, over-bearing entertainment center?
  
  

  
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  Okay, so you’re a bachelor, who cares what your apartment looks like, right? Well, if you are a bachelor who enjoys the company of females, you may want to start reading.  You don’t have to go out and buy new furniture. You don’t have to change your undemanding bachelor lifestyle. In order to make your apartment home appealing to the finer sex, you must simply adhere to a few minor details. Whether you just want your girl to stick around long enough to watch a movie, or you're pursuing a more serious relationship, here are just a few basic considerations if you’d like to convert your bachelor pad into a lady-friendly dwelling.
  

  Lighting, lighting, lighting

  The lighting in your apartment plays a crucial role to style and mood. Here is your basic rule of thumb. Overhead lighting sucks. Get rid of it. Why? Overhead lighting (that circular light that came pre-attached to the ceiling and also that torch light from the 90’s) muddles things. It casts horrible shadows on people’s faces - transforming perfectly nice looking people into ogres, giving them dark circles under their eyes, large noses, and blotchy skin. Please, take out the bulbs in those overhead lights and get some cool table lamps that add some color.

  Add some color

  Speaking of color, when did bachelors get the idea that everything in their apartment had to be black? Throw away those black bath towels, the matching black bath mat, and black toilet seat cover. Bathrooms are great places to go crazy with color. Think bright, bold, crisp and especially clean. For the living room area, you can add a pop of color to your sofa with a warm fuzzy throw (like a blanket only prettier). Don’t be afraid of brightly colored pillows, rugs, and other accessories that add warmth to your apartment.  Women love warmth (and you win when women associate you with “warmth”).

  Eliminate odor

  Okay, so maybe candles and incense are a bit cliché and perhaps outdated – even for some women’s standards.  But you still need something to combat the various bachelor smells in your apartment. (Oh, the smells are there. Your nose has just become desensitized to them.) It’s better to err on the safe side and invest in a mild odor eating spray like Febreeze. In general, women are more sensitive to smell than men. Also, you may want to consider this: according to folks at the Smell and Taste Research Foundation, certain food smells may have an aphrodisiac effect on women – particularly the smell of chocolate, vanilla, lavender, jasmine, oranges, and Ylang Ylang. Get a scented plugin to stick behind the couch or better yet, have some fresh baked brownies sitting on the kitchen counter.

  Clean – like a woman

  Ever go inside someone else’s place, open their refrigerator and see their food products stacked on sticky, gooey shelves? When it’s your own apartment, you never seem to notice the mystery food crumbs lining your refrigerator’s drawers because you are the one who put the food there. Think about this when you clean your kitchen.  The same goes for your bathroom tub and toilet. If she needs flip flops to take a shower in your bathroom, don’t plan on her returning any time soon. For women, you can’t just pick things up. You must think cleaning sprays, scum remover, etc... Make things sparkle!    

  Consider the details

  How would you like your female guest to spend the night? If you want to be really slick, have some first class hotel-type amenities handy. A simple thing like a guest toiletry basket complete with a new toothbrush, travel size toothpaste and a new razor will leave a huge impression on the ladies. If you don’t want to look like a pretentious player, just say the guest basket is for your mom/aunt/sister who sometimes visits. Aww…(Cha Ching - points!) Other nice chick-friendly touches to your apartment include: plants, a bird feeder on your apartment patio (always nice for outdoor breakfasts), a pet (only if you whole-heartedly love it and care for it, of course), and tissue boxes.

  Allow the woman to add her touch

  If you decide to get serious with a woman and she, in return, decides to get serious with you, you may find her spending a lot more time in your apartment.  If she is sleeping over more than 3 nights a week, she has the right (by the unspoken woman law) to modify your living space. She will consider it now to be her living space as well. You may as well just go with it. If you end up living together in this relationship, you’ll eventually have to surrender to her style and taste no matter what. So just let her put up photos, add window treatments to your bare windows, and whatever else makes her feel at home. You may be astonished by her keen sense of style and how cozy she makes your apartment feel. And you may be surprised at how quickly you will become accustomed to it and even embrace it.

  This post was submitted by April Lentini.  April is married to a former bachelor. While she enjoys the finer aspects of bachelor living such as eating salty things on the couch while watching TV. She also appreciates (as well as her husband) a clean, welcoming, “lady-friendly” home.  April writes for http://san-antonio.apartmentguide.com/

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