Renter’s Advice and Resources

Do you live in an apartment where a dishtowel can double as an area rug? Is it impossible for you to have a television larger than 13″ because you’re already sitting too close to it? When you go to purchase new living room furniture, do you find yourself looking in the toy section? It can be a sad state of affairs when the only chair you can fit into your living room is a child’s Spongebob Squarepants chair!

Furnishing an apartment comes with its own set of special challenges. Your rent payment may eat up a huge portion of your paycheck, limiting the range of places you can shop. If you live in a dense city like New York or San Francisco, you may not have a car to haul the furniture to your building. If you live in a walk-up, just getting your new furniture up the stairs may require the help of a few strong friends who owe you some favors. On top of all this, your options are probably limited by the size and shape of your apartment, with its strangely shaped rooms, narrow staircases, tiny bedrooms and low doorways.

Apartment dwellers may not have room for big roll top desks or fancy l-shaped workstations. How can you best make use of your tiny space if you need to do some work at home? Read on for some super ways to make a couch into a desk and a living room into an office!

Decorating any apartment room can be difficult due to size constraints, but the living room poses a special challenge. It’s traditionally supposed to house giant furniture—a ten-section couch, a big-screen TV, large lamps, overstuffed armchairs, and long empty tables. You probably don’t want to carry these types of items up four floors to your apartment, and you probably wouldn’t have space for them once they got there, anyway. This article contains snazzy ideas for dressing up your small living room without using hulking behemoths for furniture items.

Almost everyone has an apartment-dwelling pal or two. And whether your apartment-renting friends are young or old, male or female, liberal or Libertarian, they’ll always appreciate a unique gift that helps make apartment living easier. Such gifts can range from cheap to expensive, colorful to demure, and big to small, but they’re all focused on one thing: making apartment living easier.

Wish your apartment were in the big city? You no longer need to go to the big apple to get the latest fashion and decorating tips. Apartment Therapy is to the rescue. Beginning in New York, Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan the NY editor and cofounder, has successfully caught our attention with a high décor rating.

So you decided to hire movers. Congratulations! You’ve saved your back, eliminated about 80% of the stress of moving, and have avoided annoying your friends with the old, “hey man can you help me move next Saturday” bit.