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.

Where I’ve seen indoor strings of lights the most is in college dorm rooms, where the rooms are often windowless, and lacking in good lighting. Those lights were only cheap Christmas tree decorating lights, salvaged off Craigslist or in garage sales, but the effect was immediate and cozy when they were lit. If you want the look in your own home to be a little more classy, there are strings of lights that are made specifically for draping in the corners or along the upper corners of your walls or ceilings. I have also seen them draped in reading nooks, along the tops of four-poster bed frames, and above framed art on the walls to draw attention to it. If you want to learn how to make the adorable fairy lights you see on the left, visit Espirit Cabane for the full instructions (and more pictures!)

Strings of lights are also popular at larger parties, especially outdoors, so that the host/hostess can keep the area dark and friendly-feeling without leading to undue falling as guests struggle to navigate an area they are unfamiliar with. If your lights are going to be exposed to the elements, make sure they are a kind suitable for the outdoors, and that one storm won’t render them useless. Check out Urbanspoon’s excellent blog post about all the varieties of outdoor lighting options available to you if you want to learn more about this style of outside decoration. Several options I didn’t even know existed (now they have solar-powered strings of lights?).

In general, adding more walls to an already small space makes the entire place feel smaller. Sometimes, though, you need to give an area of your apartment or condo the feel of its own room and start dividing up a room in an apartment or condo. Fortunately, you have many tools, depending on the circumstances and your personal preferences, to divide up a larger room.

Temporary Room Divider Solutions

If you have someone staying over for a few nights in your small apartment or condo, you might like to try dividing up a space in your home so that they can change clothes and sleep in. Even a small effort at creating privacy will be much appreciated by most people.

• You might also benefit from a room divider if you’re working on a project of some sort, whether it be a sewing, craft, or home renovation task that doesn’t look very pretty right now, but can be effectively contained in its own area of your home. Japanese screens, are great for this reason – they’re stylish, and they can cover up a project area and keep the room looking clean and neat.
• Also, most of the screens allow partial light through, so if you place a light source behind them, they admit a warm, soft glow to the rest of the room, which makes the space appear larger and more airy. With a fan-like shape, they take up very little room when folded up, and can easily be stored flat and upright in the back of a closet. The aptly-named Room Divider Store has a website with hundreds of Japanese-style screen dividers that you can purchase online, if you are so inclined. They’re also just nice to look at and to get some ideas for your future room designs!

Long Term Space Dividing Solutions

Got a studio apartment and don’t want to feel like your bed is sitting in the living room? Or, heaven forbid, do you have an old-fashioned New England apartment with the shower in the kitchen? You may even have a child whose “room” is part of a larger space, like the living room. In any case, there are some room dividers that do an excellent job of creating the effect of an entirely different space.

• Curtains on a curtain rod (if the walls are close enough together) or a clothes line if they aren’t, can block out lots of light and create a screen of privacy. Apartment Therapy has an article on hanging curtains as room dividers. For dividing up open spaces,  they suggest aircraft cable, which is plastic coated so it won’t snag curtains, plus it won’t droop like such a long length of clothes line would. Ikea Hacker also has a post about an extremely cheap curtain divider solution using ceiling mounts and muslin cloth.
• Bookshelves and other shelf furniture like the IKEA Expedit bookshelf might not completely block out light, but they do a good job of visually “roping off” the space as its own separate room. Big potted plants, or something like a chest of drawers facing with the back outwards (if you’re trying to create a bedroom) can effectively divide up a room.

Many of the people who have done the best at eliminating their paper ties have done so because extreme small space forced them to be efficient.

Of course, there are some paper records you really should hold onto (marriage certificates, birth certificates, Social Security cards, and tax records are some of the most important to keep), but you should be able to reduce your paper records down to one folder or binder at the largest.

The first step is to get your information on the computer. If you have a scanner, you could open it and place every individual item on the screen, wait for it to scan, and save it where you want to go. That gets tiresome pretty fast, though. Luckily, you have other options. You can purchase a self-feeding document scanner, some of which will even straighten pages and file the documents as PDFs for you, like this Fujitsu scanner.

There are also smaller, more portable scanners that do especially well for receipts, and can be uploaded to Microsoft Word and Excel, but they usually aren’t self-feeding, and you’re back to placing the paper in yourself again. If space is at a premium where you live, however, this might be the choice you need to make.

Once you have the files on your computer, you may want to upload them to the Internet. There are several popular devices for saving records electronically. The first is online database solutions, where you don’t need to worry about buying an external hard drive of your own and then keeping that safe. This is also a good option if someone/something destroys or steals everything in your house, while your most important records are safe at an off-site location.

Box.net is the only file uploading website I have ever used, and it is a good option for those who want to be able to try out the system and the interface for free before upgrading to a paid subscription. Prices per month hover around $6 monthly for around 5GB of information among the most popular websites for file uploading and backing up. If you won’t ever need more than 10GB of storage, and you don’t mind ads, check out Humyo.com for 10GB of free online space.

A few months ago, I splurged on a piece of very nice furniture for my apartment. It’s called the Expedit, and it is sold by Swedish retail chain IKEA. In case you have never been to an IKEA store (they are scattered all over the US, but only in some of the biggest cities), they are truly an experience. They are huge, multi-story, warehouse-style buildings with massive amounts of home furnishings.

At my local store, you go to the second floor first, where they have complete rooms and even apartment-sized areas laid out, with the square footage, so you know if it would work in your own apartment. There, they have all their furniture, furnishings, and decorations set up in such a way that you can see how a complete room would look. It really helps to be able to see all the packaged furniture assembled, so you know how big and how much space your furniture will take up.

Back to the Expedit. The way that Ikea can offer functional, attractive furniture so cheap is that they specialize in modular components that they can mass produce, package flat in boxes, and through in the warehouse area right before the checkout on the first floor.You will have to grab a big dolly and do some searching for it, not to mention spending a half-hour or so to put it together, and the Expedit is no exception.

Suggested Uses for the IKEA Expedit

The Expedit is a cheap ($70) piece of furniture that still manages to make a big impact visually and provide lots of storage space. The two-by-four, can be used vertically or horizontally, and for $160, the big four-by-four square. You probably aren’t able to have a traditional bookshelf in your home if you are pressed for space, because you shouldn’t be storing that many books in one place in the first place. That’s what libraries, the Internet, audio books, and half-priced buy, sell, and trade, bookstores are for (but that’s a different post).

• On a storage system like the Expedit, however, the depth and height are greater than the traditional bookshelf, and you can store pretty much anything that you need constant access to, decorative or otherwise. There are also accessories made for the Expedit that create sub-dividers and little cloth drawers out of the individual boxes.
• I have also seen Expedits used as room dividers, particularly in studio apartments, and to create storage when there are natural storage devices like closet shelves that are included within your apartment or condo.
• In my own (one bedroom) apartment,  it serves as a bookshelf, display case, and game and DVD storage case. I have books filling two of the cubes, a lamp in one, games and puzzles in another, and reference books in another.

There has become somewhat of a cult following surrounding the Expedit, and for good cause. If you want to see more pictures of the IKEA Expedit in action, visit the Expedit Group Pool on Flickr.com for over 250 action shots by users. If you want to find some more creative uses for your Expedit (or any IKEA product), visit the ikea hacker blog. Good luck with your Expedit!

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