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.
	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.

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to think that certain clothing items in and of themselves are the sole source of memories (“I can’t get rid of that outdated dress!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.

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.

I decided to divide my favorite small desks by price ranges, which is largely impacted by the type and quality of the material used. Most high-end desk are made of solid, quality wood, which is expensive just for the raw material, so you’ll only find cheap, thin wood or other materials on some of the cheapest desks. As always, you get what you pay for, but also get what you like.

So, without further ado, here’s my small desks for small spaces list for 2010 .

Small Desks for Less than $200

• This IKEA desk is only about four feet wide, with simple, affordable yet elegant look consumers have come to associate with IKEA furniture. There are no drawers, but there are cable compartments for keeping the look uncluttered, and you can attach the storage area on either the right or left side. Plus, at less than $70, it’s hard to complain about much of anything, except, perhaps, that it needs to be mounted to the wall to hold steady.
• Office Depot has several modular-style, industrial-looking office desk/workstations for less than $100, including this zillope computer desk with pull-out keyboard, wheels, and attached vertical shelving. All the built-in storage options are nice, though that CD holder might be a little dated and the space used more effectively to store something else instead.
• Staples, like Office Depot, has many industrial, modular desks for sale, though at a bit higher price range ($170 for the desk pictured). I particularly like this small desk on wheels – somehow it manages to have style despite the fact that it uses some less expensive materials than some other desks on this list. With its own lower shelf for the keyboard and mouse, and a small set of drawers, it’s a complete mobile computing workstation.

Small Desks for Less than $300

• This desk from the Container Store is a little unusual-looking, but it gets definite points for space efficiency, allowing you to roll it out on wheels when you need the full desk space for using your laptop or paying the bills. Plus, it’s got tons of built-in storage to store little items that so easily get lost on other desks. It would also work well as a non-computer desk with all its little storage compartments, whether that’s paying the bills or doing a craft project.
• This white, country-inspired desk from Target is surprisingly cute for being from this megastore (and reasonably priced at $250). It comes with the hutch pictured, and has a pull-out drawer to hold a mouse and keyboard. It’s also cable-friendly, with a hole in the back to let your cords through invisibly. No drawers or any storage attached except what the hutch provides, but it makes up for it by maximizing horizontal space on the desk.
• This waxed brown wooden desk by JC Penney is stylish in a modern colonial kind of way, with four drawers with elegant silver knobs plus a pull-out keyboard tray and two open shelves on the bottom of each side to hold magazines or loose documents. Its $280 price tag is nothing to scoff at, either.

Small Desks for Less than $400

• Crate and Barrel is known for sturdy yet elegant furniture, and this wooden desk with a deep top drawer and a legal-sized filing cabinet in the bottom drawer gets maximum points for both space efficiency and style.  It’s a great work area for someone who doesn’t need to sit in front of the computer all day and will just be doing occasional work there. The rest of the time, you can keep the pull-out board retracted and use the glass-topped surface to display decorative pieces.
• This Home Decorators desk at Amazon is sturdy without seeming bulky or being made of solid wood. It comes in two widths: one, which is essentially the width of the keyboard pull-out drawer, is a mere two and a half feet wide. The other with, still a slim three and a half feet, includes a drawer next to the keyboard shelf. You can choose from four different wood stains, and for the slightly wider model, the price comes in at $360. The smaller version is much cheaper, at $160, but both are quality desks.

Small Desk Splurges

• At $800, this solid hardwood desk from Pottery Barn has quality workmanship that will last decades. It’s only an inch over three feet wide, with a fold down writing and computing surface that hides the numerous drawers when the shelf is up. There are numerous cable holes in the back for electronics charging, telephone cords, and Ethernet cords. All the little details, including the pewter hardware, are lovely as well. It’s available in antique white or a mahogany stain.

Got any more small desks that you love? Let me know in the comments section!

Here are some of my favorite small bathroom decorating ideas.

Add color to washed-out bathroom walls

• Tile stickers like these tile tattoos can add color and patterns to boring tile, especially if the tile isn’t particularly attractive and you want to draw attention to a chic design instead.
• Removable wall stickers are easily installed on normal drywalls. My favorite approaches are to cluster the graphics into a small area to get the effect of a painting being hung there. The quality of graphics vary widely, so keep looking if you Some wall adhesives are even reusable, so you can bring them with you to your next home.
• Fluffy, colorful towels hung on attractive rings or bars in your bathroom can make the room feel softer and more lively.

Change bathroom fixtures (keep the old ones if you’re renting)

• Changing your shower head from a cheap, plastic head to a stainless steel or brushed nickle shower head with different massage options can transform your showering experience from something necessary to something pleasant. Installing a new showerhead doesn’t take more than five minutes, either.
• Similarly, sink faucets and knobs aren’t hard to change out, as long as you know the size of the hole and stick with that size. Extra tall faucets will enable you to fit just about anything into the sink for washing.  Just store the old fixtures under the bathroom sink until you move, and your landlord will never be the wiser.
• Ugly florescent lighting can be mitigated with a cute, bathroom-safe light instead. Most simply “clip on” to the typical recessed lighting found in bathrooms, and can be pulled out again when you move.

Use removable accessories to add color, texture, and design

• A giant candle next to the sink can provide much softer lighting for baths as well as being a piece of art in itself. Stick with beeswax or soy candles, instead of the typical, petroleum-based paraffin wax candles, to reduce indoor pollutants within the enclosed space of your bathroom.
• Get cute “necessary” appliances like toothbrush holders and soap holders. They don’t have to be boring, or even conventional! An old-fashioned Coke bottle can hold toothbrushes. Liquid soap can be stored in a fashionable dispenser, for instance, and a hands-free automatic dispenser can reduce the need to clean out the dispenser.
• Cute, thick rugs make tiles seem much less harsh and makes the bathroom a much more comfortable place to be, and protect bare feet from cold bathroom floors in the wintertime!

The goal with feng shui in a home office -  an area of your home where you need to stay focused and work productively – is to keep the yang, the bold, strong energy levels high, while still creating a few elements with the softer yin. Using halves will  provide some balance so your heart doesn’t start racing every time you walk into your office, while still empowering you every time you sit down at your desk.

1. Choose the location - A room near the front or back door is best, and as far apart physically from every other area in your home as you can make it. If there are two doors into the room, always use one just for going into the office, and the other for everything else.
2. Position your work desk – The ideal location for your desk is diagonal in a corner, facing the entrance to the room. The second best is straight-on with the opposite wall from the entrance, still facing the entrance. Never sit with your back to the door. Try not to position the desk under a window unless it’s unavoidable.
3. Re-energize dead spaces – Place a mirror on any partitions that exist between the door to the home office and your desk to reflect the energy halted by these physical disruptions back into the rest of the office.



4. Combat negative spaces – Any flat, irregular spaces like jutting walls or jagged corners should be filled in with an easy-to-maintain indoor plant like lucky bamboo, or common potted plants, to counteract the negative energy produced by these dead spaces.
5. Cover the walls - Don’t leave walls bare – they should have at least one positive picture, framed photo, or mirror on every available wall to provide positive, strong energy. For even better impact, line up your home office with the bagua chart and place pictures that represent the different aspects of the chart. Symbolism works too, so placing a photo of something like a vacation spot in the prosperity corner might be a good idea.
6. Create separation – I know it might be hard to dedicate an entire room to just being an office when your home is small to start off with, so what you may need to do is separate, visually and physically, the office from the rest of your house. Use a screen divider, big potted plants, or something similar to separate the “office” from everything else.
7. Finally, de-clutter your home office! - Of course you will have some papers and other office items floating around your desk, but keep everything stored neatly, and get everything that you’re not working on for that day out of sight and neatly into a drawer or filing cabinet. The flow of energy is disrupted by every item that doesn’t belong.

If you want to completely create a feng shui office, the next step is to place symbols of the different aspects on the bagua chart in the corresponding section of the room, such as a placing a small fountain, which can represent the flow of money, into the wealth corner. It’s much more important to find and use  symbols are meaningful to you, plus it helps if you enjoy looking at them, than it is to follow specific suggestions.

Even a few of these feng shui home office suggestions should make a big difference in how you feel every time you sit down and get to work. And remember, a neat and de-cluttered office will make you a happier, more productive worker.

This post is aimed at making your balcony a fulfilling place to be for both pets and their owners, but anyone with a little bit of private outdoor access will benefit from reading these tips.

The pet owners among you will want to give your furry friend a little exposure to the outdoors in a safe way. Of course, your pet getting harmed or stolen is always a concern, so here’s how to prepare your balcony to be a safe, happy haven for your dog, cat, or bunny.

• Real Grass Crate – Growing live grass in a basin on your balcony is marketed toward dog-owners short on time, but cats and bunnies would enjoy sniffing around on this their own tiny yard, too, without you having to worry about bugs or snakes hiding in the grass. If your animal does their business outside, commercial options will have a small sprinkler that washes urine into a collecting area, and you will need to pick up droppings yourself.
• Protective Balcony Fence – Fears of jumping off a balcony probably are not a cause for concern with dogs, but cats and bunnies may well jump or step off without realizing how far up they really are. I used a grid storage set like the ones described here to create a fence all the way around the inside perimeter of my balcony, and held up against the posts of the balcony with cable ties so that I can let my cats out safely. Always keep an eye on your pets while they’re out there, though! Cats especially can be reckless when they’re exploring.
• Separating Pets and Plants – Many pets enjoy eating the fruits of your gardening work, and some plants are poisoning to small animals, so it’s best to keep the two apart. That doesn’t mean pet-owners can’t garden, too, though! Hanging planters and window boxes attached to the side of your balcony will make your balcony a more positive place to hang out, with or without a pet.
• Water Fountains – If your balcony is covered, a pet-friendly water fountain can serve the dual purposes of providing fresh, running water to your pet, and adding natural sounds and sights to your balcony. For non-pet owners, larger water fountains can be very appealing and promote tranquility, but these fountains usually don’t have filters to ensure they are safe for drinking out of.

Fortunately, I’ve figured out how to reduce wasting gift cards down to almost nothing, and how to use them and get rid of them quickly, without adding more clutter. Here’s what I do.

1. Get all your gift cards out, including gift cash cards, which often have horrendously high usage and inactivity fees associated with them. Most cards don’t have expiration dates, but throw out any that are useless now.


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2. For gift cards to stores that you like that also accept gift cards online,  either figure out something you need there and purchase it today (before you forget again), or make a few gift purchases to give to friends or family.
3. With the cards that you can’t use online, decide whether or not they are really worth the trip to the physical location.  Find out where the closest store is, if you don’t already know, and write down your planned trips for the worthwhile cards on your to-do list, and put the remainder of your cards in a separate pile.
4. Gift cards you don’t need can be donated to charity through non-profits like the Works of Life charity or Gift Card Donor, which gives 75% of the value of the gift card you donate to the charity of your choice.
5. Selling gift cards is another option, and it’s especially lucrative for large chain retailers. Gift card “brokers” like Plastic Jungle and GiftCardBuyBack buy cards at a certain percentage discount from you, depending on the store, and resell the cards for a higher amount, but still at a discount, to other shoppers.

The average American home has $400 in unused gift cards lying around – save money and eliminate all your gift cards today.

The thing is, most people don’t cook enough to justify dozens of single-use items, though these special items may perform their lone duties marginally better than their more mundane equivalents. Unless you’re are cooking full meals at home more than three times a week, there’s almost certainly a significant amount of kitchen clutter you can eliminate. Here’s the same (albeit mental) list I go through when I’m going on a kitchen purging.

1. Purge excess pots and pans. Most people really don’t need more than a couple pans and maybe three pots, but they often tend to reproduce in the back corners of dusty cabinets, and you’re left with more containers than three stoves could accommodate.  Get rid of them.
2. Clean out the refrigerator. Yes, you might find some pretty gross stuff back there, but then again, you might also be able free up some forgotten containers and not have to keep buying more every time you go grocery shopping. Use a baking soda and water or vinegar and water solution instead of normal cleaning supplies to wash out the inside without getting anything toxic near food. If you want to go all-out in cleaning out your refrigerator, read this step-by-step guide to stripping, washing, and refitting your fridge.
3. Check expiration dates. Or, if you want to preserve your food for a little longer, check out this food expiration guide. Pretty much every food goes bad eventually, despite what you might think. I have found people’s spice racks to be particularly packed with little half-used canisters of spices that expired in the last decade.
4. Keep counters clean. Tall counters are perfect for setting junk down on the second you step through the door, but forcing yourself to keep the open surfaces in your kitchen bare except for the occasional decorative item is good from both a feng shui perspective and to reduce unappealing visual clutter around the kitchen area.
5. Organize your cabinets. Kitchen cabinets tend to have too few shelves for too much height, but you can give yourself more horizontal space by using shelf sub-dividers like this one on Amazon. Suddenly, all your plates do fit in one cabinet. Amazing, right?
6. Get rid of the misfits. My own dinnerware is mostly matching, but there’s still lingering themed cups or utensils that I accidentally walked out of a restaurant with that wreak havoc (visually, at least), on any hopes of having a neatly ordered kitchen. Unless you have a large family, more than a couple dozen each of flatware and dishes is overkill, and purging your cabinets of items that don’t belong will make you much happier with your kitchen in the long run.

Still lost? For inspiration, I usually check out the kitchn for pics of beautifully-designed but still livable kitchens, and the Container Store‘s kitchen section for products that might jump-start my imagination. A happier kitchen awaits you!

For many urban residents living in houses or multi-dwelling homes that were built 50 years ago or more, laundry rooms are non-existent, and their homes may well not even have the plumbing to handle a modern washer and dryer unit. For others, living without a modern laundry system is a conscious choice, whether for space (most of these appliances are huge, and dual-purpose or stackable units are expensive), to save money, or to minimize their environmental impact.

Since dry-cleaning is expensive over time and uses harsh chemicals, we will assume that is only an option for dry-clean only clothes. Here are some more ways to live well without a washer and/or dryer.

1. Manual clothes washers – You might think old-fashioned “agitators” had gone the way of the telegraph, but manual washers are still in heavy use among the frugal, long-term travelers, and in other parts of the world. Most of the benefit of getting clean clothes comes from the clothes twisting and pushing against each other, so you really only have to use a little bit of soap to get your garments clean, and the process only takes about five minutes. The WonderWash is probably the best-known manual washing product, and it can handle 5-lb loads at a time.
2. Hand-washing – It’s not exactly fun, but to get clothes clean by hand, you’ve really got to scrub and twist, giving your arms a thorough workout in the process. If you have a bucket of water or a big sink, you can give this method a try. Hand-washing underwear and shirts isn’t that difficult, but getting jeans and other thick, heavy clothes clean enough to wear is a time-consuming, labor-intensive process. For more on hand-washing clothes, click here.
3. Laundry pickup and delivery services – These are usually locally-owned businesses, so I can’t recommend any particular company, but you’ll probably find at least a couple by searching for “laundry pickup” + your city. You will usually pay by the pound for clothes to be washed, though some places may offer payment by the bag. This is not a particularly environmentally-friendly approach to cleaning clothes, but it is extremely convenient. If you live in a condo or apartment, your office may have a recommendation of a provider to use.
4. Clothesline drying – This is an almost effortless way to dry clothes, and you can get clothes dry even in cold climates if you give them all day. If air-drying them makes them too stiff for your comfort, shake them thoroughly both before and after you hang them, and add a little fabric softener to the wash. Here’s a huge list of tips on hand-drying clothing at ThriftyFun.