Creating space in a loft-style condo
I have wonderful news. The boyfriend, Mr. Science, is moving in with me! Hurray! We’re very excited. We’ve been talking about it for months – it’s gone something like this:
January
Me: Your apartment lease is coming up in the spring – want to move in with me?
Him: Umm… no. We both need our alone space.
Me: Oh. Okay.
June
Me: Your lease is up now. Are you sure you don’t want to move in with me?
Him: I’d like to, but the condo isn’t big enough for both of our stuff.
Me: Oh. Okay.
August
Him: You know, the condo might be big enough for both of our stuff.
Me: Yeah!
So now we’re moving in together! It’s going to be great fun. Our biggest concern after making this decision was trying to rearrange the condo so that we can both fit all of our stuff into it that we want to keep, which brings me to…
How to make the most of a loft-style condo
1) Organize cupboards to utilize all the space. After taking most of my dishes off the shelves, we were able to chuck a bunch of reusable peanut butter containers and such in to the recycle bin (after all, we really don’t need about a dozen peanut butter containers). That freed up lots of space for the boyfriend’s dishes! We also came to a compromise about glassware positioning. I always store glasses upright on the shelves, to prevent the rims from becoming fragile. The boyfriend always turns his glasses upside down, to prevent particles from getting inside them. So we’ve alternated the wine glasses to have some of them upright and others upside down, which also saves tons of space 🙂
2) Create your own wall. We have four bookcases, and I used to have my three bookcases lined up against the wall. This took up a lot of wall space, which will be a problem once the boyfriend has moved some of his furniture in. So instead we moved the bookcases to create a nice little alcove “library” area, which also breaks up the space a little bit. This means that the boyfriend can work at his desk by the window, and I can work at my desk in the kitchen, with the library between us – it gives us each a little privacy when we need to concentrate on work.
Love the ladder in our library 🙂 The boyfriend's books haven't been moved from his apartment yet.
3) Be ruthless. We live in a society of consumers, so it can be difficult to break away from that mentality. At this point in my life, I really don’t want or need any more stuff. Unless it’s books and clothes, of course 😉 But truly, I hate clutter, so I’ve been going through a bunch of random “stuff” I had lying around. We’ve already taken three boxes to Goodwill, and no doubt more will follow. It feels great to get rid of old stuff and it frees up a lot of space.
4) Use drawers, boxes and magazine holders. You can stay very well-organized if you have compartments separating everything. For the longest time, I’ve just tossed knives, measuring cups, scissors and other random kitchen utensils into a drawer without any kind of organizer. So unlike me! But the boyfriend has already added a few pieces of plywood (or something like that) to divide the utensils into three “compartments” in that drawer – it is much faster to find everything in there now. I love organizers.
5) Get someone else’s opinion. We were telling the mother dear about our rearrangements, and she asked us if we had moved the piano so that it was against the back of one of the bookcases. We had placed it against the wall, which took up space where we wanted to put the boyfriend’s weight bench, and it hadn’t even occurred to us to utilize the back of the bookcase to put the piano against! We haven’t tried moving it yet, but it just goes to show that if you bring someone into the space, they’re likely to have completely different ideas from you about how the furniture can be arranged.
What do you do to make the most of a small space? Have you tried living in a loft-style home (AKA bachelor suite with no separate bedroom) with another person before?
I can’t wait to see it!
Also it’s a good thing Mr. Science is usually too busy to read this 😛
Oh, he’d approve! 🙂 You will very much like it when you eventually get to see it. Ooooooh wine and cheese date when you come home for Thanksgiving mayhaps?
I love how you turned this into a “How To” post. Your boyfriend moves in and I get to learn how to optimize my space. ((giggles))
I love my how-to’s 😉
That’s great!! Your post brings back nice memories for me about when I moved in with my girlfriend during my residency after knowing each other for two weeks, lol!
It did nothing but good things for both of us!
Wow! That would be quite the experience.
When we met, although she was a national merit scholar, she was flunking out of school! The relationship stabilized her and after the next semester she got two letters from her dean. One said congratulations for the straight “A’s” and being on the dean’s list, and the second telling her that they were considering flunking her out since her GPA was borderline! Her trend continued and she went on to get her Ph.D in psychology! 🙂
Cool beans 🙂
Good on you for being ruthless in purging things…I keep trying that now that I’m married, and many of the things I put out for charity for J to frop off keep reappearing in the back of the closet later. Gremlins I think…!
Ahaha! I’m not particularly attached to most things, but sometimes I’ll hold on to them anyway because I can’t be bothered to toss them out… the boyfriend is much more action-oriented than me in that sense so he’s been a good instigator for that.
Up up and away! And side to side, and under, and above! I always inspect furniture for what I can stick under it. I share a bedroom with one roomie and the full apartment has four girls including myself. We make it work but it took some organizing. My bed is built above a cubby area which holds untold wonders and horrors. I put in shelves and don’t stop until I’ve touched the ceiling.
But first and foremost, CONGRATS on the BF moving in! It’s so much fun having someone to dote on (and to dote on you in return).
Ooh YES. You can get so creative with finding places to store things!
And thanks 🙂
Wow that’s quite the big move!!! Best wishes with everything.
I think I’m doomed to live by myself forever, actually. I hate living with other people. Even my family gets a bit too intrusive for me, if I had to live back in my parents’ house.
And that’s SO important to recognize – I think everyone would be much happier for it if they’d admit that they need people around or that they cannot live with other people etc. rather than trying to conform to what they think they ought to be doing.
Reminds me of a tiny apartment I had where I arranged the bookshelves in a (squared-off) spiral, with a reading chair and lamp in the center. The “guest room” was an air mattress in one of the longer parts of the spiral, very private with walls all around you.
That sounds awesome!
Congrats!! I hope! 🙂 Really god post & will help a lot of people…. I am bad with clutter – I need to fix that! 🙂
Thanks 🙂