M.b community, small life update: I’m moving into a studio apartment on June 1st. Will share details later, still processing everything. In the meantime, please share apartment living pro tips. Unchartered waters for me. Hope everyone here is doing well!
@sku_b excellent advice, very appreciated. I’m starting from scratch, so need everything…have already had the thought that I could over buy if i’m not careful.
@aa one thing I've always gotten a lot of value out of, especially when space is at a premium, is to draw the space out to scale on a piece of paper and then draw/cut out some scale paper versions of key furniture (table, bed, couch, etc). This will allow you to test out different layouts easily before you set anything up in the room.
@aa To add to @sku_b’s great advice, try keeping everything you have and not buy anything for at least 6 months. This gives you a chance to figure out layouts and what you might want or need. Sometimes a simple re-arrangement of furniture will suffice and you don’t need to purchase anything else.
On the flip side, depending how much freedom you have to paint and customize the unit, it gives you a chance to come up with ideas for how you want your place to look. Then you need not worry about buying something that doesn’t fit your vision and taste down the road.
@aa I hope it works well. Buy things for the place only as you need them, even if it means multiple shopping trips for a couple of weeks. If you're not used to a tiny apartment, the temptation will be to overstock it. For online looking: the Japanese are masters of living beautifully in small quarters.
@tingle I second this! Last year we moved from a fairly big apartment to a 1-bedroom (still bigger than a studio!) and mapped out the new quarters on graph paper to figure out what furniture should go where – and what furniture wouldn't fit anymore. It helped a lot.
@aa I just moved from my house of 13 years to an apartment with about 1/4 the floor space. It's been exciting to see how little I really need to have.
My tip: cultivate gratitude for having people close by, learn how to perceive them as other members of humanity. It will make the early morning jump-roping sounds from upstairs less nerve-grating. I have been pleased with my ability to adapt to significant loss of control over my environment.
@pimoore this is a good reminder to have and one I’ll need to return to. My knee jerk reaction is to buy all of the things right away and set it up how I think I want it to be. But, it will be much wiser to only get what I need first, and fill in from there based on actually living in the space. I’m starting from scratch and don’t have anything of substance coming with me, so a few up front purchases will have to happen, but I should keep it focused.
@JMaxB the temptation to overstock is definitely there…words of wisdom from the folks here helping to keep that in check :-) thanks for the online search tip!!
