We’ve all seen them, the pristine apartments in magazines and TV shows alike, everything in order, fridge filled to the brim, everything sparkling despite the apartment being the size of a football field. Hyperboles aside, there are ways to spruce up actual apartments to free up space and create a more natural flow in the area. It is worth keeping in mind that the steps needed to achieve this will require more work on ourselves as opposed to working on our home.
Work with what you have
One of the first mistakes many people make is to overstock on material possessions. Although there is nothing wrong with indulging ourselves, taking into account apartment/house size is often overlooked and can cause serious problems. Simply put, gauge the amount of things to get with the available space in your apartment. I.e. if faced with a narrow room, filling up 60% of it with closets simply isn’t an option. Same goes for corners, windowsills, shelves and any other empty space that we may have available. Plan it out, make room for people as well.
Designate areas for specific things
This is something that doesn’t work for everybody, but it can help immensely. By designating specific areas for things, the amount of clutter drastically falls of due to our own tendency to categorize. Just like we have rooms designated for cooking and bathing, further dividing these rooms into segments can drastically reduce the chances of finding a dirty shirt in the document drawer or a clean sock below the fridge. This accelerates cleaning as well because it minimizes the spread of, let’s say, stray clothes or wrappers/plates.
Return to sender
This is by far the hardest thing to do, but it is the more impactful than anything else. By modifying our own behavior and forcing ourselves to get used to cleaning after ourselves right away, the presence of clutter almost completely disappears. Washing a plate straight after a meal, putting away work clothes as soon as we return home, throwing trash away. All of these activities, if done regularly, make Sunday cleaning take a couple of minutes as opposed to a couple of hours, just by stopping clutter buildup at its core.
Move focus away from the material
Despite what advertisements are constantly telling us, life really isn’t about material wealth but experience. The world economy will continue existing and/or collapsing if we hold off on that new doodad that we’re going to get bored with a week later. Be it a new car, clothes, instruments, whatever floats your fancy, studies have shown that things do not make us happy. Whatever your needs and interests, before spending, consider whether that money could be put to better use in a night out or a vacation with friends or family.
Clean regularly
Make no mistake, this is a double-edged sword. Cleaning our homes is not even up for discussion, but there is another side to this notion: throwing out excess stuff. Sentimental things can be the most difficult to let go of, but they can be the worst offenders: scraps of paper, arbitrary lengths of string, inherited vases etc. People even keep furniture due to sentimental reasons, which just clogs up the entire house. If letting go is too difficult, some people opt for opt for supercheap storage units to store the things too painful to look at but too painful to throw away.
Digitize
As mentioned above, paper can be a real problem in this day and age. Besides it requiring the death of a tree, it just starts piling up and taking up ever-increasing areas of our abode. Despite following the steps mentioned above, copious amounts of paper are impossible to keep tabs on for prolonged periods of time; it will eventually overwhelm us. Thankfully, we’ve moved into an era where most of our documents and material can be stored on physical and virtual drives, eliminating clutter and saving a few trees while we’re at it.
Keeping a house or an apartment clean is no laughing matter. Anyone who’s been left to take care of themselves for the first time learns this the hard way. It’s boring, it takes way too much time and, worst of all, it never ends. Hopefully, by following these steps, you’ll end up feeling less like Sisyphus and have more time left to spend on yourself and doing the things you love. And this can be achieved, all we need to do is remember that, like in most things in life, we reap what we sow.
