Tips and Tricks to Consolidate Space in a Small Apartment

Do you somehow always find yourself just a little bit cramped? Is your kitchen just a little too crowded to use properly, your living room dimensioned a bit oddly, and your bathroom too small to hold your stuff? Join the club. Let’s take a look at a few simple, practical ways to help you make the most of the space that you have so that your home will be more aesthetically pleasing, easier to organize, and less stressful to live in.

Expand your Kitchen

Many of us have this irrational idea that kitchen things necessarily belong in the kitchen. What’s actually important is that your stuff is within easy reach when you’re cooking. If you’ve got space near your kitchen it might be time to expand outward. My incredibly tiny kitchen is situated directly next to a small dining area that opens up to the living room. This dining area is about 3 feet wider than it absolutely needs to be, so to take advantage of this I moved my dining table and chairs to one end of the area, and put a hutch in the cleared area to balance it out. That then can play host to my microwave, toaster oven, coffee machine, dishes, cutting boards, and bowls. This clears up enough space in the kitchen to keep the counters entirely clear and ready for use at all times.

Use Your Walls and Ceilings

Don’t forget to make use of all of the surfaces in your apartment, and we’re not just talking about the horizontal ones. Set up shelves, hutches, cabinets, and wardrobes to help you store your stuff vertically. If you can remove all of the clutter from your environment you can turn a previously cramped space into something downright roomy.

Of course, while it’ll look nicer all of that isn’t going to help much if all of your usable space is now covered in nice decorative items instead of the clutter that we just cleared up, so let’s address decor. If you want to indulge your artistic or botanical side but don’t want to fill your floor and counter space (also end tables and coffee tables) with knick knacks, planters, and vases, consider hanging your plants from the ceiling in baskets, setting your small decorative items up on small decorative shelves, or hanging canvas artwork on the walls rather than setting them on end tables.

Partition Your Living Room

Lots of apartments come with unnecessarily long rectangular living rooms that are virtually impossible to set up in a manner that effectively makes use of all of the space. An easy way to solve this problem is to partition off a section of your living room and turn it into a small office workspace. You can use anything from a full blown false wall to a decorative folding panel screen. This will cut your living room down to size so that your furniture, coffee table etc… can fill out the space properly, all while providing a spot for a computer and work related documents.

Edward Stuart is an art and decoration enthusiast as well as an online publisher for Canvas Art. He frequently blogs on the topics of art, art history, design, and home decor.