Whether you live in a micro-apartment, you still can make it feel huge. All you need are smart storage ideas. We’ve collected 10 easy DIY storage hacks that will help you save space for your small apartment.
1. Repurpose A Shoe Organizer
Raise your hand if you know what a shoe organizer is. Now use that same force to hang one on the inside of your bedroom door or closet door and you’ve got 20 convenient storage pockets. They’re big enough to toss in your hairdryer, curling iron, brush, makeup, hair spray, eyebrow pencils, and other small objects that you’d rather not step on.
2. Make Your Hats Float
Balls are fun to throw and jump in. But they’re exponentially more fun when you use them to display your high school, college, and pro sports pride.
What you’ll need: wooden ball knobs, tacky glue, twine, and 3M Command strips.
3. Stack Your Beverages
Just like your apartment could use more space for the things you love, so could your fridge. And because nothing screams party foul like a rogue beer bottle that rolls out of the fridge and shatters everywhere, prevent that nightmare by clipping a binder clip to your fridge’s wire shelf. Bidding adieu to spilled brew has never been easier, or cheaper.
4. Remember Everything
Make a corkboard calendar so that you can store your concert tickets, bills, wedding RSVPs, and other important reminders in obvious, analog sight.
5. Upcycle The Bottles From Storage Hack
After you’re done storing the liquid from storage hack #3 inside your stomach, wash the bottles and upcycle them, along with a small wine crate, into a rustic storage solution that encourages you to play horseshoes with your beautiful bangles and bracelets.
6. Help Your Bike Defy Gravity
Owning a bike is awesome, unless it eats half of the space in your apartment. Investing in bike storage is also awesome, unless it eats half of your paycheck. Good thing wood pallets exist and don’t mind being reused.
Nail a wood pallet into a wall, nail two hooks into the pallet, and the result is one of the cheapest bike storage solutions for tiny apartments that you’ll ever find.
7. Bust Out Your LEGO Collection
Who knew your favorite childhood toy could double as a versatile and cheap storage option for easy-to-misplace items?
Use Sugru to stick a flat LEGO piece to any table. Then press your favorite character against that piece and attach a brick (preferably one with a whole in its side) to create a whimsical storage solution for your keys and cables that tend to disappear or tangle often.
8. Store Your Stuff Like A Bee
Bees build their honeycombs in that shape because hexagons create the maximum amount of storage space with a minimal amount of material and when placed side by side, are structurally stronger than other shapes. So, consider borrowing bees’ intellect and turn your hexagonal gift boxes into vibrant wall storage that’s perfect for showing off tiny plants, which are scientifically proven to reduce your stress. Bees are geniuses.
9. Use Cardboard To Organize Your Mail And Papers
Sure, bills never end, junk mail overstays its welcome, and papers seem to scatter themselves across your kitchen counter or desk every so often. The good news is that you can quickly free up that space for something you actually want to see, such as a framed picture of you and your significant other, by building a desk tray from cardboard that you were originally planning to recycle.
10. Increase Your Closet Space By 6X
A huge closet is difficult to come by without shelling out some serious cash, especially for apartment dwellers who live in expensive cities like NYC. Show your landlord who the boss really is by using S hooks and utility chains to hang six times more shirts than you normally would. This leaves more space in your closet to store shoes, pants, skirts, jewelry, and other accessories.
Try one, or all 10 of these DIY storage hacks, and enjoy the extra space that you didn’t know you had until now.