I’m excited to announce a new feature that I’ll be doing on Wednesdays every so often on the blog. The feature is called At Home, and I will be featuring ideas for how to make your home (be it an actual house, a rental, or whatever you call home!) reflect your personal style and what you love and find important. I’m not an interior designer, but I feel like Jordan and I are making major strides in making our current apartment rental (a one-bedroom, new-construction apartment with its quirks) feel more like home than our last rental (a too-big-for-us townhouse that was expensive to keep warm in the winter).
To start off the series, I thought that I would share five strategies that have worked in our apartment rental to make our space feel more like home.
1. Hang things on the walls.
To hide that boring shade of white or beige that you (more often than not) cannot paint in a rental, hang things on the walls! Everything from pictures of your family and friends (and your pets! I love pet pictures!) to framed posters (especially movie posters from classics like Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Citizen Kane) can help your walls to reflect your true personality. I love the idea of hanging frames in a gallery wall setup; check out the unbelievable gallery wall over at Young House Love! Don’t stop at pictures or posters, either – what about shelves? Making the most of your space is often a challenge for renters (it sure is for us, since we live in a one-bedroom apartment!), so use the real estate on your walls by hanging some shelves.
Worried about nail holes? Don’t be! Check out 3M Command hooks or similar products - they will change your life as a renter in need of some wall spunk.
2. Invest in a bed frame or headboard for your bedroom (and any other bedrooms you may have).
Take a look at our (new this spring) bed frame (we chose the IKEA Hemnes bed frame in black-brown). [Ignore the white comforter, I'm going to put our new duvet cover on our bed soon soon soon!]
Even if you are short on space, finding (or making! or upcycling!) a headboard will add structure to your bedroom. I love the look of this padded fabric headboard over at Bower Power. Interested in DIYing a headboard, but not too keen on trying to DIY an entire bed frame? Adding a little bench or ottoman to the end of your bed functions as a faux footboard, as seen here on Young House Love.
3. Hang some curtains!
Curtains to a room is like lipstick (or, if you’re like me, lip gloss on a good day, or chapstick on every other day) to an outfit. It brings it all together. Disagree? Check out how these (inexpensive!) white curtains from IKEA make our bedroom extra kissable (get it, like lipstick?):
Ignore the lack of a bed frame in the picture above, as this picture was taken before we made our pilgrimage to IKEA this spring (also, ignore the green and white duvet cover – we’ve recently purchased a new duvet, but it just hasn’t made it on to our new bed yet – call me lazy). Anyway… Just like a headboard does for a bedroom, curtains around a window add structure to a room. Plus, if you’re living in what feels like the tundra like we are (South Dakota winters are COLD, y’all), curtains can add warmth and reduce your heat bill, too, if you’re gaming for that!
4. Trade in your hand-me-down towels for some cushy, luxurious ones. Same goes for your bed sheets.
If you are anything like me a few years ago, you moved into your first apartment (if you’re me, you were moving in with your super-fab best friend), and you used the same sheets that you slept on when you were still young and sleeping in a twin bed (me, minus one awesome new purple set of sheets that my Mom bought me), or your Mom passed along to you your Grandma’s old bedsheets (fastforward to one apartment later: me again). Or, you’re still using the monogrammed towels that your parents’ friends gave you for your high school graduation (also me, until about a year and a half ago). In other words, your linens are not the newest, not the cushiest, not the awesomest.
But, if you’re living in a rental, I firmly believe that you, more than any homeowner on the block, need to feel awesome about your digs. Homeowners can paint, they can tear down walls, and they can blow the place up if they want to. But you? You’re renting, and it’s imperative that you like where you are living, despite the fact that A) you can’t pound seventy thousand nails into the wall hanging up your posters of the Backstreet Boys (what, just me?) and B) that you can’t paint a. single. wall. The trick to making your rental feel homey, I promise you, is LINENS, people.
When Jordan and I got married last year, we registered for a bunch o’goodies, and one of the major things on our list that we received as gifts were cushy bath towels and washcloths. We went to Macy’s, we picked the middle-of-the-road option in terms of price, and we LOVE our towels. We also invested in some high-thread-count sheets this spring, and they are HEAVENLY to sleep on. Seriously, they better have those sheets hanging out in the clouds when I get up there someday.
Invest in new linens. You can do this slowly, or you can have a linen shopping spree – but look for sales!
5. Have one thing hanging/sitting/positioned near your doorway that is guaranteed to make you smile.
My brother just moved in to his first apartment. He has been chilling in the dorms for the past two years, and to say that he was anxious to get out of collegiate dormitories is an understatement. He was BEYOND ready.
A week ago, he tweeted the following picture:
Why yes, this is a humongous picture of Michael Jordan. He lives with a guy friend of his, so it’s totally cool for them (though it wouldn’t fly in my house – I mean, come on, where’s the femininity in Michael Jordan?). But, regardless of whether or not you are a fan of Michael Jordan is not the point.
What is the point is where this picture is hung: right above their couch in their living room. So, after walking in the door, one turns to the left and is greeted not only by a huge TV and gaming consoles (they are guys, after all), but they are also greeted by His Airness, MJ himself.
Why is this important, you ask? Because it’s a certainty that upon entering his new digs, my brother, who buys MJ stuff like it’s his job to wear a fresh pair of J’s, will instantly smile. Smiling is a reflection of happiness, and I’m a believer that happiness that is found by entering the door of one’s rental abode = happiness with one’s apartment rental home as a whole.
What are your tips for making your apartment or rental feel like home?
NOTE: I wasn’t paid or perk’d to feature any of the goodies in this post – I’m just a fan of what I mentioned!
[All pictures by me, except the one of His Airness, Michael Jordan, which was taken by my brother Brian]
