One of the things I love about Apartment Therapy is their mantra of small is cool. Every year, AT holds a "Smallest Coolest Home" contest that looks for "beautiful, inspiring and ingenious use of small spaces from coast to coast." Winners get cash money and gift certificates from Room & Board. Not bad.
Although I'd never win one of those contests right now -- the winning entries almost always have cool, modern furniture and brilliant storage, decorative and design concepts -- I try to abide by their 10 Tips For Small Space Living.- Double duty. We try to find and highlight furniture that does more than one thing. I am the proud owner of a bad-ass* Crate & Barrel day bench that also provides storage for miscellaneous boxes and electronics, and moonlights as an awesome place to get your nap on.
- Regular edits. Make sure you're reviewing your possessions twice a year to keep them to only the things you use and/or love. I probably do this only about once a year, but when I go through my stuff, I go through it quite thoroughly. Decluttering is pretty therapeutic and I love the fact that I can get by just as well with fewer things. Clothes are my hardest problem, though.
- Convert a closet. Not really an option for me. Although my current closet is a pretty large walk-in, the shelves are filled with clothes and most of the floorspace along the walls is occupied. However, I was able to snugly fit a chest of drawers and my clothes hamper in there.
- Go vertical. If you really want to maximize storage, have those shelves go all the way up. Not too big of an issue for me; I'd rather have things inside drawers than exposed on a shelf (with the exception of my closet). I only have one medium-sized bookshelf in the living room with a few textbooks and picture frames on it, so shelf space is not a concern.
- Digitize media. 99% of my music, television, photos and movies is either in my laptop, external hard drive or iPod. No more heavy CaseLogic CD albums for me.
- Have a landing strip. This will keep clutter from overwhelming a small space. I don't want to drill any holes in my current apartment, but when I lived in a loft in the north end of Seattle, I installed a small "floating" shelf a few steps from my front door for keys, mail and receipts. It was an easy and convenient way to keep miscellaneous crap from filtering into my house. Plus I never lost my keys.
- Have a space for everything. If something doesn't have a home, it's not going to get put away and will likely be sitting around for months. This is a battle I'm slowly winning. My greatest nemesis is old school documents. When I do get around to filing them away, there's a great sense of accomplishment, but they tend to pile up in random places once in a while.
- Put your apartment on a diet. Only bring things in if you're taking something out. I'm pretty good at this. I haven't significantly increased the volume of stuff in my place since I moved in three months ago. Hopefully I'll maintain this all year.
- Keep things monochromatic and consider sight lines to make a space feel larger. While my apartment isn't monochromatic, I like to think I possess a decent sense of design and arrangement. I consider myself a minimalist to begin with and appreciate the use of white/negative space to make a place bigger. (Plus, I hate clutter so it works out.)
- Stop designing for who people expect you to be. Instead, find out who you are and what you need. Then, start to edit. Not much to add here; I already know what I like and don't like in terms of design and flow when it comes to my living space. It's worked out for me so far; I haven't been called a slob yet ...
0 comment(s):
Post a Comment