After our first round of life hacks for apartment dwellers, we’re back with even more great tips to help make your apartment more stylish and efficient.

In this second part, we’re excited to bring you a fresh batch of ideas and tricks that will not only enhance your apartment’s functionality but also elevate its aesthetic appeal, all while being conscious of your wallet.

Whether you’re outfitting a cozy studio or multiple bedrooms, these clever solutions are designed to help you make the most of your space and your budget.

Add Lighting That Matches Your Mood

Lighting plays a key role in setting the mood of any room, from the direction of the light to the color and hue. Apartment lighting is so much more than just making a space brighter. It can also make areas feel more intimate, vibrant, or joyful.

While overhead lights are a staple of apartments, accenting that lighting with additional sources of light allows you to reduce shadow, draw attention to items within the room, enhance activities such as reading or watching TV, and generally add to the styling and layering of a room.

Slim corner lamps, such as those offered by Govee and Philips Hue take up minimal floor space and offer a range of features including different shades of white, colors and even gradients to match any vibe. You can use lighting to create a cozy nook for reading or relaxing, adding some separation within rooms of your apartment.

For an even more minimal approach to flexible lighting, consider Phillips Hue or Govee light strips that can be attached under or behind furniture to provide an accent of light without taking up any floor space or having the electronics of the light be visible in any way.

Decorate With Historic Art Pieces

Think you don’t have the budget for hanging artwork in your apartment?

While the original versions of many art pieces can fetch prices even in the millions of dollars at auction, there’s a seemingly endless amount of high-resolution paintings, posters and illustrations that are available for free in the public domain. This means they’re free to download and you can use the printer of your choice to create larger (or small) prints that match your taste to decorate your apartment without paying a high premium.

Artvee offers a curation of thousands of such pieces available for free download and includes work from artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, and collections based on a range of themes and artists.

Some more unique categories of free downloads include:

• NASA’s Visions of the Future (https://artvee.com/collection/nasas-visions-of-the-future/)
• Bicycle Advertisements (https://artvee.com/collection/bicycle-adverts/)
• Book Illustrations (https://artvee.com/book-illustrations/)
• Fashion Illustrations (https://artvee.com/collection/fashion-illustrations/)
• Popular American Song Covers (https://artvee.com/collection/popular-american-songs-covers/)
• And much more: https://artvee.com/collections/

Green Field (1889) by Vincent van Gogh

Target’s family of brands offers sets of frames as well as large poster sized frames at competitive prices and they typically ship for free when the order total is over $35.

Create Cozy Spaces Under Your Feet

Soft, cozy rugs are a great way to accentuate your apartment. They help to add personality to the design of a room, add warmth under your feet (a must in a Buffalo winter), and even help to insulate noise – both your own and from surrounding neighbors.

Even relatively thin or inexpensive rugs can have a plush and luxurious feel with a substantial (and less expensive) rug pad below them.

Target has a wide variety of area rugs that are suitable for all spaces, including many for under $100.

Check Facebook Marketplace and Craiglist

With people constantly moving and getting rid of spare items, there are always slick deals to be found on Facebook Marketplace and Craiglist. It offers an opportunity to find pieces that fit your current space without having to pay full price (or anywhere near it).

You can also set up alerts to track items as they’re posted, so that you have the opportunity to grab them before anyone else does. From bed frames, rugs and dressers to kitchen tools, houseplants and couches, you can find everything you need at a reasonable price on Facebook or Craiglist.

Audit Your Belongings

In some cases, less truly is more. One of the best hacks for living in an apartment is being a minimalist with your belongings and space and getting rid of excess clutter. We recommend taking steps to audit your belongings and figure out what truly “sparks joy,” as we outlined in our post on using the “KonMari” Method. This explains how to clean out your apartment and organize your clothes and belongings efficiently.

Sometimes the solution to your storage needs to simply to donate items that are no longer needed, but are still in usable condition. Consider this as a way to give to others while saving yourself the expense of potentially buying additional storage products or containers. Some highly recommended places accepting donations of clothes and household items in Buffalo include the Buffalo City Mission, Friends of Night People, Hearts For The Homeless, Habitat For Humanity and Salvation Army, located at 46 Broad Street in Tonawanda, near our Tonawanda properties.

You can also easily sell your items on Facebook Marketplace or online marketplaces such as eBay, Mercari and Poshmark. These sites make it easy to quickly list items with photos and pre-set shipping rates if applicable.