Small-Apartment

New Year’s Eve comes a week after Christmas, so most apartments are already half-decorated. The easiest New Year’s look starts with what’s already there, takes the red and green out, and adds gold and black. Keep the lights, change the rest Leave up any white string lights (on Amazon), garland and candles from Christmas. Take down stockings, Santas and anything red. Greenery with white lights already looks like a winter party; it doesn’t need to look like Christmas any more. ...

A small apartment is actually a good place for a holiday party. People stand closer, conversations overlap, and it feels busy with fewer guests. You just have to plan where people will stand, where the drinks go and where all the coats end up. How many people A rough guide: about one person for every 10 square feet of floor you can clear. A 300-square-foot living area that’s half furniture fits around 15 people standing, fewer if most of them want to sit. If you’re inviting more than that, plan for people in the kitchen too, because that’s where they’ll go anyway. ...

A full tree in a small apartment takes a corner of the room for a month and then a corner of a closet for the rest of the year. If that’s not worth it to you, there are plenty of ways to have something tree-shaped, or at least tree-like, that take up much less space. Things that stand on the floor or a table 1. Lit branches in a vase. A tall vase with battery-lit branches (on Amazon), or real bare branches with a strand of lights wound through. Hang a few light ornaments from them. It takes up about as much floor as a lamp. ...

You don’t need a long farmhouse table and fourteen chairs. People remember the food, the company and whether they had somewhere comfortable to sit. Eight people around one table in a small apartment can feel more like a feast than a big formal dining room ever does. Here’s how to make it work, in five parts. 1. Choose the table Dinner happens wherever the biggest flat surface is. A 6-foot folding table (on Amazon). Seats six, or eight with one person at each end. Put a floor-length tablecloth over it and nobody will think about what’s underneath. The kitchen island. Stools on both sides seat four to six. Two tables pushed together. A desk or card table against the end of your regular table, with one long cloth over both, seats eight. Measure ahead of time. Each person needs about 24 inches along the edge of the table, and there needs to be about 36 inches behind the chairs so people can get up. A 6-foot table is 72 inches: three people per side, exactly. ...

A Christmas tree in a small apartment usually means moving a chair into the bedroom for a month, and then finding somewhere to keep the tree for the other eleven. Lots of people skip it, and the apartment can still feel like Christmas. What works instead is decorating the few places you actually look at every day. In most small apartments that’s the front door, the TV stand, the windows, a wall or two, and the coffee table. Get those right and you won’t miss the tree much. ...

Every January the same thing happens: the tree box leans in the hallway, the lights sit in a knot on the counter and the wreath ends up on top of the fridge. In a small apartment you live with these boxes for eleven months and enjoy what’s in them for one, so it’s worth deciding where everything goes before you buy any more. One bin No garage, no attic, no storage unit. So the rule is: all your Christmas decorations fit in one bin. Two at most. ...