Winter is a time to take advantage of shorter days and cold weather to get some extra sleep and curl up indoors with a good book and a mug of hot chocolate. It can also be a good opportunity to tackle odd jobs and improvement projects around the house. Between paperbacks, you can have a lot of fun with some of these creative indoor home improvement projects.

Install insulating blinds or shades. If you have older, single-pane windows, the time to replace them is in summer, but winter is a good time to start making calls and getting quotes on materials and labor from a remodeling service who can do the work as soon as the weather warms up.

In the meantime, you can purchase insulating blinds, or make your own warm-window shades out of materials you may already have around the house. You can repurpose old quilts and sheets into insulating shades and window treatments that help keep the cold out and save energy.

Use tree trimmings to decorate for the holidays. If your household purchases a holiday tree or has an evergreen tree in the yard, you can use the extra trimmings to create a number of different decorations around the home: on the mantel, dinner table, front door, entryway table, or anywhere you want to add some holiday cheer. Add holiday ornaments, kids’ holiday crafts, or your own unique touches to dress them up.

This mantel is elegantly dressed with living trimmings from household plants and outdoor landscaping, including fir tree trimmings, pinecones, and rubber tree leaves.

Reorganize your entryway closet. Wintertime is the perfect season to tackle organization projects, starting with your entryway closet or mudroom. Switching out seasonal items creates more room and makes things easier to find when you need them.

You can purchase shelves, bins, and containers from home décor store departments to help you organize different items, or repurpose boxes and other items you already have around the house. You can turn a simple cardboard box into a stylish storage container using wallpaper or contact paper.

Plan ahead for an outdoor room or screened sun porch. Winter is also a time to start getting ready for spring and summer. You can order seeds for your summer garden, decide which plants to use for annual landscaping, and begin locating the items you need to redecorate a sun porch, build a screened room, or create a relaxing area outdoors.

Winter is the season to start locating furniture, fabrics, plants, place settings, and other decor for a planned room addition, screened porch, or outdoor room.

Author Bio: Brad Little, owner of Case Design/Remodeling Charlotte, writes about home maintenance, remodel planning, and room additions for home improvement blogs, and on his own blog at http://charlotte.caseremodeling.com/blog/.