For the first few months in my current studio, I kept buying storage. A cart here, a set of bins there, a shelf I didn’t need but that promised to “solve” the room. The apartment didn’t feel any bigger; it felt more organized and exactly as small. What actually changed things wasn’t storage at all….
Before I toured my current apartment, the listing called it a “studio,” and I pictured one plain rectangle. What I actually walked into had a little recessed nook off to the side, just big enough for a bed, tucked around a corner where the living room couldn’t see it. I didn’t have a word for…
The first apartment I ever lived in alone was 280 square feet, and for about a month, it looked like a furniture store had been picked up and dropped by a tornado. I owned one room and I was trying to put a bedroom, a living room, and an office into it all at once,…
The first thing I bought for my first studio was a dining table. A real one, six-seater, solid wood, on sale, and I was so proud of it standing in the middle of my empty apartment. I slept on a blow-up mattress for the next eleven nights because I hadn’t thought about the bed yet:…
The first apartment I had with an open kitchen, I could stir a pot on the stove and reach the arm of the sofa without moving my feet. I remember being a little embarrassed by it at first, like it was a compromise I’d settled for instead of a real layout choice. It took living…
I furnished my first studio for just under $1,100, and for about a year I was quietly convinced everyone could tell. They couldn’t. What actually gives a budget apartment away isn’t the price tag on anything in it: it’s buying randomly, one appealing thing at a time, with no plan for how much you’re willing…
The single best decorating decision I made in my first studio cost four dollars and took ninety seconds: I unscrewed the harsh cool-white bulb that came with the apartment and put in a warm one instead. The whole room looked different that night: softer, warmer, like it belonged to an actual person instead of a…
My first studio in the city had a closet exactly deep enough for a row of hangers turned sideways, and my second one had no closet at all: just a wall. I remember standing in that second apartment on move-in day, genuinely unsure where my coat was supposed to live. If you’re in the same…
When I told people my new apartment was 400 square feet, most of them pictured something closer to a hotel room. It’s not: it’s roughly 20 feet by 20 feet, which is enough for an actual bed, an actual sofa, a table, a working kitchen, and a bathroom, all at once, if the plan is…
My brother moved into his first studio apartment last year and called me the week before with one request. Help me make this not look like a dorm room. I am not a man, and I will say that upfront, but I have decorated enough small spaces at this point that he trusted me to…