Whether you like the uniformity and simplicity of having a sectional sofa provide all or most of your seating in a room, or just how truly comfortable they are, you can still find sectional sofas for small spaces – they aren’t all massive pieces of furniture meant only for 3000 square feet and large houses.
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As is so often the case when looking for furniture for small homes, IKEA comes to the rescue with affordable furniture. This orange sofa is divided into a chaise and an armless chair, that can be connect to create a small, modular sofa. Because of the different configurations you can use, the total size varies, but it takes up roughly six feet on one side and nine feet on the other. |
| Crate & Barrel has a lovely modern sectional sofa available in six different colors, and they will send you a swatch so that you can verify that you are happy with the color you selected before they ship you the couch itself. There are dozens of matching sofas, love seats, chairs, and chaises if you want to expand the theme later. The configuration pictured here is a little less than seven feet long and five feet wide. |  |
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This JC Penney Kubo sectional couch is another great sofa for small spaces, with storage compartments underneath the seat cushions and the back hinging backward to turn into a small bed. The longer side can be attached to either end, so the sofa can be right or left oriented. Measuring a little over seven feet long on the longer side, by less than five feet on the shorter, this sofa will fit easily into a small living room. |
| This espresso sectional sofa is a bit more traditional-looking than these other couches, but performs the same space-saving task of converting flat for a bed as well as revealing storage space underneath the top cushions for storing the pillows and sheets for guests. The total length of the chaise plus the loveseat is about six and a half feet, plus the length of the chaise is about five feet. |  |
These relatively small, sectional sofas will cost you in the neighborhood of around $800 to $2000, which will of course depending on the quality of the materials as well as how solid the construction is. Even furniture is easily ordered online these days, and will usually take about a month for delivery and be brought directly into your home, even if you have an apartment or a condo. I know Overstock.com will even bring it inside and set up the furniture for you.
Purge Old, Extraneous, and Unloved Items
So many people form emotional connections with their possessions, especially clothing, because we all have to wear it, and it’s easy to start to think that certain clothing items in and of themselves are the sole source of memories (“I can’t get rid of that outdated dress! My beloved late grandmother gave it to me in 1984!”). Purging clothing clutter is difficult at first, but strangely liberating, and it’s undeniable how much better you will feel looking into a closet that isn’t stuffed full.
- Go on a shoe purge – shoes are often over-represented in precious closet space, because they can actually function for many years, though by then they’ve gotten so old and worn looking that you would never actually wear them as long as there was any other pair in your closet. Just remember that there are many people who are struggling financially who’d love to pick up a decent pair of tennis shoes or dress shoes from your local charity store, and get rid of duplicate styles of footwear in your closet.
- Get rid of broken clothes you’re never going to fix – All the clothes you don’t wear because they’re missing a button, need to be hemmed, or have other flaws? Stop and consider each one. If you love the item otherwise, but it needs fixing, put it into a box to take to the tailor’s. If it’s salvageable but not worth the effort to fix, donate it. If it’s a wreck, throw it away.
- Get rid of items you have an unnecessary amount of – I tend to accumulate athletic socks through a mysterious means I still don’t quite understand, though I only need to wear a pair about three times a week. I also have about a dozen abandoned hoodies from my college years. Do you have any articles of clothing like this? Figure out how many times per week you need to wear a different article of clothing, multiply by 2-4 (depending on how often you want to do laundry), and eliminate the excess.
Eliminate Stacks of Dissimilar Items
Stacks of items are usually deceitful: they may look organized, but the minute you’ve got to get something on the bottom of the stack, your neat pile is a jumbled mess. Only stack items that you will remove from the top-down, like underwear, undershirts, or flattened socks. Here are some more tips to create an organized closet and eliminate stacks of miscellaneous clothing everywhere.
- Install some under-shelf baskets – wire under baskets are super cheap, and will sub-divide a large shelf into two horizontal shelves for more flat storage space. They’re a simple idea, but you’ll be amazed at how effective they are. Storage that connects to existing shelving in your home is especially good for renters, who usually don’t want to spend money on a customized, wall-mounted solution that will just need to be removed when their lease expires.
- Add in some drawer dividers – also super cheap, cloth, paper, or plastic drawer dividers are perfect for dividing up underwear, socks, jewelry, ties, bras, scarves, belts, and other small articles of clothing that you don’t have the space to dedicate an individual drawer to.
Store Away Space-Consuming, Unnecessary Items
Even if you’ve technically got the space in your closet, looking at items you don’t need is visual clutter, and contributes to make your closet look more full, and is subtly stressful. Find a good spot in your home, and tuck away any clothes you won’t wear for at least three months, as well as the occasionally-used items like linens for guests.
- Vacuum seal off-season clothes and get them into a storage container outside the closet or out of sight. Seasonal items that you only need to rotate every few months should be packed away so you don’t see them every day. My winter clothes right now are sealed and tucked away in a wooden crate that doubles as our TV stand, and vacuum sealed, the clothes take up about 1/3 of the space they would have otherwise occupied.
- Pack large, but moderately used items like extra blankets, coats, and pillows, in clear boxes, so that they are kept separate from your normal clothes but you still know exactly where they are and have reasonably easy access to them. I’ve started storing all my extra sheets, comforters, and extra blankets for guests in a clear mattress bag from the Container Store, It’s nice not having a loose pile of blankets fall on me every time I open the hallway closet door.
Most people want their bedrooms to be a peaceful area, a sort of safe haven from the bustle and stress of everyday life. Unfortunately, clutter, over-crowding, and poor decoration choices can leave your bedroom feeling unwelcoming an uncomfortable.
Here’s a three step process on how to organize your bedroom and make it a room that you look forward to coming home to.
Declutter Your Bedroom
- Purge clothing you don’t need. I’m sure you’ve heard it before: most people have dozens of clothing items that they never wear. You can try using the “clothes hanger” technique, which means turning the clothes hanger the wrong way after you use the item of clothing. Six months later, you will probably have many hangers that never got turned, because you never wore that article of clothing.However, if you’re honest with yourself, you probably have a pretty good idea already of what you have no plans to ever wear again (barring extraordinary events, like 80s fashions coming back in style). Donate it! The Salvation Army, Goodwill, or other clothing donation center can do a lot more good with your unwanted clothing than just wasting space in your closet.
- Take out “yang” elements if you can. You may not follow the guidelines of feng shui when designing your home’s layout, but it’s hard to deny that there is something distracting about non-relaxing objections in your bedroom, whether you call them “yang” elements or not. Examples include treadmills, work desks, televisions, or phones, which are high-energy items and belong in your home office or in the living area, not the bedroom.
New Organization for Your Bedroom
Using vertical space and hidden storage. In my own apartment, I’ve got a nightstand with a top that opens up to reveal a hollow storage area, and plastic under bed drawers that slide into otherwise wasted space. If you’ve got the space and the budget, a chest of drawers might serve you well, though plenty of small home dwellers get by with just using their closet for all clothing storage.- Keeping the floor clean. Worn clothes usually get removed in the bedroom, and even a few dirty clothes on the floor quickly makes your bedroom looking like a mess. If you don’t have the discipline to walk to the laundry hamper or the laundry room every time you undress, you might be better served with a chic, closed-top laundry hamper in the bedroom, too. Sure, it takes up valuable floor space, but you have to balance the ideals of a perfectly-organized apartment with the reality of human behavior.The same goes for having a shoe rack and jewelry/accessories area to store your other garments – in a perfect world, you would put them away in a concealed storage area the second you took them off, but hey, we’re not perfect, so we adapt. Just keeping clutter off the floor and off exposed surfaces will make an incredible difference to your bedroom’s appearance.
- Best bedroom layout. My bedroom feng shui article goes into more detail on laying out your bedroom floorplan according to the tenets of modern feng shui teaching, but the basics are to not face the bed toward any doors, but don’t place it under a window if you can help it, either. Keep the “yang”, or high-energy elements to a minimum, except intentionally bring in a single yang element to provide some balance to the room. Keep lighting soft (use a dimmer if you can), and beige, brown, or peach walls are the ideal color. Try to keep the entire room feeling soft, clean, and organized.
Bedroom Decoration Tips
- What colors and to choose for the bedroom walls. Most people are happiest with mid-toned colors in their bedrooms, and a fairly simple color scheme. Fun, energetic patterns might be cute elsewhere in your home, but they can be uncomfortable to look at in the bedroom, when you’re trying to relax. In small bedrooms especially, you might want to err toward the lighter colors if you’re having trouble narrowing down a potential bedroom color, and unless you know what you’re doing, you probably shouldn’t paint the ceiling either. With dark colors or a painted ceiling, many bedrooms can start to feel like a crowded cave.
A mid-toned sage green and matching nightstand lamps combine to create a soft, comfortable bedroom
- Choosing bedding, pillows, and visual headboards. The eye is naturally drawn to the bed, which is good, because the bed is usually the most aesthetically pleasing part of the bedroom with a little effort. If you’ve got an attractive headboard already, your job is even easier. If not, use your walls, whether through painting or using artwork as a headboard to create an attractive focus point.
- Add soft lighting. You probably don’t want glaring fluorescent light everywhere in your bedroom, but an under-lit, dim bedroom looks dreary and is just as uninviting as one that is overwhelmingly bright. The trick is to use multiple sources of soft, diffuse light in your bedroom. Ceiling and wall-mounted lamps are ideal because they will not take up floor space, but desk lamps are generally less expensive and will work well also.
