Apartment- and condo-dwellers cannot build upwards or make major structural alterations. How, then, can you make the best use of space if your small apartment never seems big enough for your needs?
Know Thy Living Pattern Well
When trying to save space in small apartment, homeowners tend to build more storage room, try to control clutter, then increase storage space again later. It is an endless, often ineffective battle.
To make truly smart use of limited space, objectively regard your apartment as a whole without boxing yourself in with conventional concepts like “sitting room,” “kitchen,” and “bedroom.” Be truthful about what your family’s or your living patterns really are, then adjust your apartment to suit the reality.
Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize!
Ask yourself these questions and consider the answers:
Q. Do we cook often enough to justify a kitchen this size?
If you say “no,” cut your actual kitchen area back to one stove or microwave, sink, refrigerator, and one small cabinet.
Reallocate the remaining kitchen/dinning space. It could be a music area your kids yearn for, an indoor garden for precious plants, a computer corner, or even a corner screened off with sliding doors to give individual members of a large, nosey family some privacy when needed.
Q. Do I need more than one bedroom?
If you’re a newly-wed couple without child, ask yourself if you really intend to raise a family in this apartment. Or if overnight guests are a big part of your life. If it’s “no” to both, perhaps you only need one bedroom.
Are you allowed to knock two rooms into one for one big bedroom? Is it structurally permissible to create an opening in the wall between your living room and one bedroom to form the bigger living room you have always wanted? Would you prefer to keep the other bedroom space intact for a favorite hobby of yours or your spouse’s?
Q. Should the store room be a store room?
Do not keep stuff in your store room merely because it is there. If you don’t really need a store room, you can remove the door, install good lighting, and turn that poky place into a tiny computer niche, or transform it with wood and glass into a proper, built-in display for your much loved crystal collection.
Q. What is my living room used for?
What does your family, partner, or yourself enjoy doing most in the living room? If it is primarily a dining-cum-television area, then make it so, and drop the extras.
If family members spend all their time in their rooms or out, you may not require a conventional living room. Free yourself of the idea that a living room must have sofa, armchairs, coffee table, and television set, and free the space for other thing. You can even section off a small part and erect partitions to make a private retreat for a child who has always shared a bedroom with a sibling, and longs for space of his or her own.
Your small apartment should no longer seem quite so small because when you enjoy and need most will have its necessary space to accommodate whatever it needs.
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