Storage

Minimalist decor gets confused with owning nothing. Most of us aren’t going to give away two-thirds of our things, and we shouldn’t have to. What makes a room look minimal is mostly where things are and how much of it you can see at once. Here’s how to get the calm look in a small apartment without becoming a different person. Clear the flat surfaces first The fastest change is the floor, the coffee table, the kitchen counter and the top of the dresser. If those are mostly clear, the room looks minimal even when the cupboards are full. ...

Lots of apartment front doors open with one wall right next to them and another wall at a right angle a few feet away. You end up with a corner and nothing else. Most entryway advice assumes a long flat wall, so it doesn’t help. The good news is that corners are efficient. You get two walls’ worth of hanging space and you don’t block a walkway. Measure first Stand in the doorway and open the door fully. Note where it stops. Anything you put in the corner has to clear the door’s swing, and if it’s behind the door, you’ll lose access to it every time someone comes in. ...

Rental bathrooms are usually small and almost never have enough storage: a sink with a cabinet under it if you’re lucky, a mirror that may or may not open, and one towel bar. Everything else ends up on the edge of the tub or the back of the toilet. The fix is to use the parts of the room that are empty: the wall above the toilet, the corner of the shower, the back of the door and the dead space around the pipes. ...

In a small bedroom the bed takes up most of the floor, and everything else fights for what’s left. The way to make it work is to stop thinking about floor space and start thinking about walls, the space under the bed and the closet. Where the bed goes Against a wall. In a really small room, pushing one side of the bed against the wall frees up a usable strip of floor on the other side. You lose easy access to one side, which matters for two people, but for one person it’s almost always the right call. ...

Lots of apartments don’t have an entryway at all, just a front door that opens into the living room. But even two feet of wall next to the door can do the job of an entry if every piece earns its place. Everything an entry needs to handle: coats, bags, keys, shoes, the mail, and one last look in the mirror on the way out. Hooks before anything else The first thing to sort out is where coats and bags go, because otherwise they end up on a chair. A wall coat rack with a shelf (on Amazon) gives you hooks below and a little ledge above for keys, sunglasses or a plant, in about two feet of wall. ...

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. ...