Storage tips for small apartments

For many, small apartments are a dream come true. Small homes may have less room but that also means less space to keep clean and tidy. Adapting to living in a small apartment can be tricky though, especially if you’ve got a lot of stuff. But there are tricks to make downsizing from a roomy two bed with a home office into a tiny one bed with barely the space for a sofa easier. Read on for our storage tips for small apartments!

Storage tips for small bedrooms

In a spacious house, bedrooms only have to be bedrooms. In small apartments, bedrooms often have to pull double duty. Sometimes it’s your home office, sometimes your living room, sometimes your dining room, sometimes your gym. If your bedroom has to perform multiple functions, so should your furniture.

Using storage furniture is a great space saving idea for studio apartments. Choose a bed frame with a storage headboard so you can display knick knacks, books, and photos. Even better, buy a bed frame with a storage headboard and footboard. The footboard can be used as an entertainment centre,  so you can create a cosy sleeping nook that doubles as your living room. 

Your bed is likely the largest use of floor space in your small apartment. If you’re not storing things beneath it, you’re wasting valuable storage real estate. There are a few options here:

•  An ottoman bed with its own built-in easy to access storage. 
• Long boxes to keep under your bed that you can store linens, extra bedding and towels in. 
• Under-bed shoe organisers 
• A DIY platform bed. 

Utilising under bed space is one of the best ways to snag yourself more storage space without having to invest too much time, effort or money.

Storage solutions for small kitchens

Small kitchens are one of the toughest parts of small apartments, especially if you’re a keen at-home chef. One of the best ways to work around a tiny kitchen is to hang everything. We mean it. Everything.

Hanging everything is one of those storage tips that can work for any space. Hang pots and pans. Hang mugs. Get a magnetic knife strip above your work top. Hang cooking utensils on a rack on the stove backboard. Get magnetic spice jars so you can stick them to the side of your fridge. 

But the up-in-the-air storage doesn’t stop with the little things. If you’ve got no dining or living room and you don’t fancy eating in bed, a small kitchen table is your only option. But a table can waste valuable floor space, especially in a room where you need to move around easily. One solution is to install a table that folds down from the wall. This way you can tuck it away completely unless it’s in use. For the chairs, you can invest in folding wooden chairs with space in the back panel to hang them from. Install some sturdy hooks in the wall, either above or below your folding table. 

Clearing out the table from the kitchen also deprives you of the junk table. We’ve all got one – or a junk drawer, or cupboard, or room… But this means you need space for things like keys, mail, and wallets. Hang the storage solutions for those too! A key hook by your front door and a small shelf with mail cubbies and a tray for wallets and other pocket-fillers will do wonders.

Space saving ideas for small home offices

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us ended up working from home despite not really having the space to do so. We ended up working from couches or cramped corners of the kitchen table. We took calls from our bedroom floors and worked from our beds on lazy days. Now it looks like remote working may become a long term situation for a lot of the workforce, we have to find more permanent solutions. 
The good news is that you don’t need a whole room in order to have a permanent home office. A slimline ladder desk with lots of shelves and drawers won’t take up too much floor space. There are other small desk options too. Set up in an empty alcove and voila! A permanent home office in a tiny space! 

But one of the hardest things about working from home was keeping a healthy work/life balance. It’s hard to switch off from work when you’re trying to relax in the same room you worked all day in. Hence, the ‘cloffice’.  A cloffice is a closet or cupboard that has been repurposed as an office. It’s a great way of solving all your storage issues in one go. The best part about it though? At the end of the day, you can close up the doors and shut away your work space. Out of sight, out of mind!  

If you do a job that requires a lot of paperwork that you need hard copies of, don’t let these clutter up your home. Put your paperwork in document storage. It’ll be safe and secure (no spilt coffee on these documents!) and still easily accessible if you need to access the hard copies. 

Contact us here at Currie Easy Self Storage to find out how our archiving storage works.

Storage tips for small bathrooms

Bathrooms with a small amount of cupboard space are a pain. There are lots of products that need shelf space in a bathroom – from products for cleaning the shower to products to clean ourselves! 

Much like in small kitchens, the ultimate space saving solution for small bathrooms is to hang everything. Hang a towel rack so you can keep a few towels on easy rotation without having to fill up your airing cupboard with them. A heated towel rack is an even better option. Hanging shower organisers are also handy and stop you from kicking around the bottles that live on the floor in the corner of the shower.

Hanging storage isn’t the only option for small bathrooms though. Being smart about your shelving can give you loads of extra space. A great place in the bathroom for shelving is over the toilet. You can either install some floating shelves or invest in free standing shelves that fit over the top of the toilet cistern. These shelves are great for keeping cleaning products and loo roll in easy reach.

Storage tips for small living rooms

The living room is a luxury not everyone with a small apartment gets. Our living rooms, like our bedrooms, often have to fill multiple functions. Our furniture has to do the same!

A great way to make your furniture work for your space is by buying a footrest or sofa with built in storage. That way you can store your stuff without taking up any extra space. This extra space is great for CDs or DVDs, or blankets for those chilly winter nights! 

Alternatively, consider furniture that packs away, like nesting coffee tables. These can be spread out across the room or packed away under the biggest table. This makes them perfect for evenings when it’s just you and a book, but also perfect for when you’ve got all your friends over and take out containers everywhere!

Struggling with making space in your small apartment? It’s worth knowing what you could live without, even just until you move into a bigger place. If there are things you don’t have the space for and you don’t need, get rid of them! If you can’t quite let them go yet or they’ll be useful to you in the future, consider taking out storage with us here at Currie Easy Self Storage. Self storage is the perfect storage solution if a lot of your possessions are things you can live without on a day-to-day basis.

Get in touch with us today to see how we can help you save space in your small apartment!