Your home should be your refuge. A palace where you’re the undisputed monarch and can relax while watching Friends all day long or host a few friends for brunch. Nice, right?

Reading that, you might sigh and think of your aggressively cluttered living room and cramped bedroom and think Well, that would be nice. For someone else. Or maybe you don’t have separate rooms and live in a studio.

The thing is, you don’t have to wistfully imagine what it would be like to live somewhere spacious where you can host friends or relax in a decluttered environment. We’re going to unpack how to do that and more – even in a small space.

Remember that you do have space,

It’s just not on the ground. Take a glance at your walls. Look at all of that juicy real estate waiting to be used. Here are some tips just for vous:

• Get some sturdy stick-on hooks from the department store to hang your pots and pans from. Convenient and on-trend.
• Invest in floor to ceiling shelving and floating shelves. These can be used for off-season clothing, books, shoes, whatever tickles your fancy.
• Thrift or commission a ladder shelf. While it does take up some floor real estate, you can stack it high with anything from decor to dishes.

Consider your bed

If you have a bed frame, that’s a good 30-ish feet of square footage of storage space right there. Purchase some shallow, wide containers (preferably with lids for added protection) and store everything from your winter boots to winter bedding.

Brighten it up

If you’ve ever lived in a basement apartment, you know it can be a drab and depressing experience. Light colours are key for revitalizing basements, and so are clean windows. Don’t want to do that task yourself? Check out Victoria-based window cleaning professionals XtraKlear and let that sunshine in!

If you are the homeowner, contact the renovation professionals at BCR Basements. They’ll work with you to transform your cave into a bright, airy, and modern basement apartment that will have prospective tenants pounding your door down.

Ditch the furniture

Well, we don’t mean all your furniture. But do you, a single person, really need that oak kitchen table that takes up half of your studio? Do you need that extra squashy, extra ugly chesterfield that your mom thrifted for you in university? Probably not.

Old, unnecessary furniture absorbs valuable light and space. There’s also probably years worth of dust and mildew embedded into it. Causes include schlepping it from apartment to apartment, general use, and poorly maintained air ducts (hint, check out North Vancouver based DuctDudes for your duct cleaning leads – your lungs will thank me later).

Go with streamlined furniture pieces that feature bright woods and light colours without any prints.

The key to minimizing clutter is to use only what you need. If you live alone in a studio, a pine coffee table strategically placed by the couch would be sufficient instead of a cumbersome kitchen table and chairs. You’ll have more space for strategic seating and can say hello to hosting brunch.

Take note that pine is also super trendy right now with sanding and finishing a great DIY project for beginners.

Conclusion

Notice a theme here? Minimizing clutter and making the most of the space that you have.

Much of the effort it takes to put your items in bins under your bed or organizing wall storage is going to take some serious organizing of unused clothing and knick-knacks.

Make the experience sustainable by selling what you can, donating your clothing, or having friends come by to pick out what they like (another excuse to host).