There are so many positive elements to consider about apartment living: having a cozy space within a big city, less expensive utilities, and keeping the battle to have a clean home restricted to a manageable scale. With all of these upsides, it's common for clutter to build up quickly in smaller spaces. The beginning of the New Year is a wonderful opportunity to reset and reorganize. Why not start 2021 by maximizing the potential of your space, so it works for you and your lifestyle.
Image Source: The Organized Home
Utilize Unseen Space
With space-conscious living, utilizing the unseen is key in making sure you use the space you have to its fullest potential. The dusty, hidden corners of your apartment are great storage resources. Under the bed storage boxes, corner shelving, and over the door organizers are all fantastic ways to make use of space that otherwise may go overlooked and underutilized.
Style Your Clutter
Don't feel the need to give in to the dogma of minimalism if you're a maximalist at heart. Instead, do intentional clutter. Pick your knick-knacks carefully and be sure not to overstuff your shelves, by grouping together a few complementary pieces and putting the rest away. You can always swap them out during your seasonal clean if you get sick of your set-up after a few months, as we all do! And most importantly, keep your cord-monsters out of sight at all costs by investing in a cable organizer when you can't go cordless.
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Driver Roll Up The Partition, Please
Particularly in studios or shared apartments home to multiple people working from home, creating physical boundaries between spaces that serve distinctive purposes is critical to maintaining privacy and productivity. Room partitioners are a great way to temporarily segment your space according to your needs, and a must-have for those of us carving out multiple purposes within one room.
Go Up, Not Out
Approaching organization and design from a vertical, rather than a horizontal perspective is an easy way to free up more surface area to move around in. For example, opting for a tall shelf rather than a wide one will help draw your eye upwards, making the room feel bigger than it actually is. You can apply this logic to organizations on a smaller scale too. A wall-mounted magnetic knife strip frees up counter space; hanging pot racks are far more spatially economical compared to keeping them in drawers; a floor lamp will inherently take up more space than a string of lights. Make these vertical trade-offs where you see possible.
Image Source: Style at Home
Give Big Pieces Multiple Uses
Almost every piece of furniture can be finessed to serve multiple purposes, if selected correctly. If you're concerned about space, pick out big pieces with the intention to get the most use out of it as possible. Place precedence on storage that can be stacked, coffee tables with subtly styled storage compartments, and pillows to transform a storage box at the end of your bed into a cute bench. If you're in need of some quick inspo, check out this list of multifunctional pieces from Huffpost (or this one from Homedit, if you're in more of a DIY mood).
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Organize Your Space With Accessibility In Mind
Along with comfort and aesthetic pleasure, the primary organizing principle of your apartment should be accessibility: keep the things that you use frequently in a place that's easy to find. By this logic, be strict with yourself about putting away stuff you don't use — such seasonal items — in your closet or under the bed organizer. You can even vacuum seal summer clothes during the winter, and vice versa, to save up to 75% more space per bag. Be advised: it's best to limit the time sealed to up to around 6 months. Any longer, and permanent damage can be done to the structure of the fabric.
Light, Consistent Colour Palette
Staying consistent with one light paint colour for the entirety of a room helps blur the line between walls and ceiling, making the entire space feel larger than it is. Remodelistas recommend pairing a white or off-white theme with various warming textural elements, such as wood or wool, to keep your space from feeling too stark and cold. Applying a neutral palette allows these statement pieces to shine. Apply this same logic to everything from the paint on your walls, to the pillows on your couch, to the texture of your curtains. For example, airy white linen drapes will take up less space than heavier dark fabrics that absorb light and draw the eye.
Image Source: Foter
Mirrors
Mirrors are the single most effective way to combat claustrophobia in a small living space. A large statement mirror placed in a tight space is a longtime trick of many interior designers to open up a small room; the right statement mirror can even pass as a window when placed correctly. When used in the kitchen, they can be a great tool to check out what's going on in the dining room or a safety mechanism to keep an eye out behind you when there are multiple cooks working in one space. Don't be afraid to play tricks on your own mind, and utilize the optical illusionary effects of mirrors to create a fabricated sense of openness.