Now, I know I've promised you some tutorials and updates on projects, but I'm having some technical difficulties with my ISP and photo program, and hope to have that (at least temporarily) resolved over the weekend.

Here are a few neat links and tidbits to occupy you while I iron out the kinks:

• PropertyShark enables you to dig up all sorts of dirt on your apartment building. Mine is worth about 700K (the whole 8 unit building?!) and was built in 1931. Awesome.

• Kate's Lazy Meadow is a bed and breakfast in the Catskills owned and operated by Kate Pierson of the B52s. I am kind of desperate to spend a few days there this summer. Tour the rooms, they are insane!

• Design Without Reach. Fun/innovative/nearly free DIY design. This is getting blogged and linked everywhere, and ooh, I want to make the lollipop Nelson clock and maybe the paperclip Breuer chair. Oh! And the Eames cards!

• Speaking of Eames, a friend of mine is thinking of getting this chair, which, at $379, isn't really all that hard on the wallet. Especially for such a classic. I hope he chooses the light blue, although the orange is nice.

• I recently bought this bathmat for myself and I think it is the most lush and luxurious thing ever. It almost makes me want to nap on the bathroom floor. I got it in kiwi.

• I also got this awesome red cookware set pretty recently, but there is no photo on the page. Let me assure you: it is awesome.

• I recently took a trip to Horseman Antiques in Brooklyn, and it was really really something to behold, if somewhat overpriced. That block and a few blocks west of Horseman boast great big and little shops to poke around in. Lots of treasures waiting to be discovered. Highly recommended.

• This exhibition is the coolest thing I have ever seen. Ever. Period.

• I've been browsing a lot of sites like this in search of a new pedestal table for my breakfast nook. I like the size and shape and durability of the tables I see in restaurants, so I figure a trip up and down the Bowery may be in order soon.

• I'm hostessing a party this weekend, and it looks like my tiny place will be bursting at the seams. I'll be taking notes, so after I recover I will share hints and advice about successful party-hosting in tight spaces.

One final, but very crucial announcement:

• I got a new job! You're looking at the site of a brand spanking new assistant designer for a great architecture and design company in SoHo, which shall remain nameless. I start April 18, and the hours are flexible enough that I'll be able to devote a chunk of every morning to Apartmentalist. I'm really excited!

Enjoy the lovely warm weather while it lasts! Is anyone taking bets on at least one more New York snowfall before summer?

Coming up soon I'll also have a little photo essay about the transformations and new additions to my place, a goods and services wishlist, and a few goals for the future.

In the next few weeks, after he finishes his thesis, my good buddy Chad will be writing a guest spot for Apartmentalist, regaling us with stories and tales and photos and descriptions of his 100% manly, eclectic, and somewhat hilarious bachelor pad in Brooklyn. Now, I know that I have some male readers, and I am also aware that much of what appears on this site can be a little on the girly side. This guest spot is for you, gentlemen. Mantics will ensue.

Also upcoming: the sexy canopy project that's been ongoing in my client Dora's bedroom, as well as the fantastically BRAVE paint project results of Suzun's (another client) bedroom.

Thanks again for sticking with me, and for all your great supportive comments and emails. Great things are brewing at Apartmentalist!

Well, I don't really want to make this a personal blog in any way, but there has been a pretty dramatic change in my living situation, and this change affects Apartmentalist whether I like it or not. My now ex-boyfriend and I are amicably parting ways, and I guess I've been pretty preoccupied with all of the implications of that, and the impact it will have on my life and my home. It's not all bad. This bend in the road gives me all sorts of new challenges to conquer. And closet space to fill. And even some new furniture/art/etc. to make and acquire.

So I'm keeping the apartment, and he's moving out this coming weekend.

After the dust settles, I'll have lots to say about the evolution of the apartment from ours to mine, living alone, and oh god, more low-budget discussions than ever before.

Thanks for sticking around.

i just moved in to a new apartment that i am sharing with an old work friend. the layout of our apartment is such that there is one common wall between our rooms, and a thin one at that. there is also a door on that wall that stays shut, but is very uninsulated. my question is: is there a good way to make an attractive insulator to to help with the noise between the two rooms?

thanks for any advice.

—eric

Hi Eric,

It's hard to say without seeing the space, but my initial response is to be sure to get an area rug, as that will absorb a lot of sound and prevent it from traveling through the wall. Can the room fit a small upholstered chair or bench? The more soft surfaces you have in the space, the better it will prevent sound from bouncing off the walls and floors and escaping. Think of other ways to absorb sound on that shared wall... Can it be padded and covered with fabric-as-wallpaper without causing a fire hazard? Can you hang a painted canvas? Can you place other furniture along that wall to add additional noise-barriers?

If the always-closed door is thin, I would cover that space or fill it with furniture or some sort of soft art. I've heard of people building shelves in permanently-closed door frames. This is great if the frame is deep enough to hold shelves at least 4" or 5" deep. Simple brackets on either side of the frame will hold nicely.

If you don't mind the clutter, you could also use over-the-door hooks and hang your coats and jackets on your side to catch some sound.

But then you have the additional concern of blocking out your roommate's noise. To that end, white noise CDs and machines are fantastic, and can be found rather inexpensively here, here, and here. If you're able to splurge, I really like the look of this.

Good luck with the new place, and thanks for reading.

Ask Apartmentalist is a weekly advice column. It'll appear here every Friday (or late Saturday, as was the case this week). Do you have a question about crafts, decorating, or your living space? Email Lara@apartmentalist.com.

This is actually my second apartment (had one in college), but the first one I could paint and really make into a home. And since I'm a nest-er to the nth degree, the idea of a paintbrush and some red paint was heaven.

We painted all the walls in Classic Taupe by Behr -- except for one accent wall in the dining area, which got covered in California Poppy. Rrrred. That alone warmed the place up completely and made us feel like grown-ups.

The furniture was from the old apartment -- with a couple exceptions. We got a floorlamp from Ikea, but thought it was a little too sleek for the retro/vintage theme we had going on. Solution? Some $4 trim from Michael's and some Elmer's glue. I glued it in vertical stripes around each section of the lamp and instantly it went from something cold and mass-produced into something unique and fun to look at.

I repeated it again with our chandelier -- three cheap lampshades and some more trim made a nice echo in the dining area.

My coffee tables were from Pier One Clearance -- and they looked kinda cheap. I got some gorgeous silk (on clearance, $2 a yard!!!) from JoAnn's Fabrics and just draped it over each. Instantly added some texture and an interesting accent to the mostly-solid fabrics in the rest of the room.

Took your suggestion re: the torchiere lighting! An $8 shade from Target COMPLETELY changed the look of an otherwise yucky lamp. Very grateful to you for that one.

One of the walls was a real problem. It's huge. And tall. And wide. And . . . huge. And we didn't have much to cover it. And even less to spend on frames. Michael's to the rescue. I'd had a box of 6 pin-up prints that I'd received as a Christmas present. I bought some red duct tape and some 39-cents-a-sheet white posterboard, taped the prints down on it, cut them out, and voila. Looks as though there's red matting around each print. And $3 for duct tape for 6 prints is cheaper than any frame I could dream up.

Bordering these prints are some poems I found at Dutton's Brentwood Books on the 99-cent shelf. "Bad Boy Poems." They're hilarious. I took some of my favorites, tore them out, drew cartoon illustrations on them with a black Sharpie, and stuck them in $2 frames I found on sale at Michael's. Dirt cheap and really fun. I love looking at them.

I'd also found a couple of really gorgeous silver frames on sale for $5 each (complete with REAL glass) at Michael's. (Starting to sound like an ad for them, I know.) Took some funny postcards my mom had picked up at a book stall along the Seine when my parents were in Paris last year, stuck them in the frames -- instant character.

And just as a last little thought -- though I haven't taken pictures of it yet -- in my bedroom, I've actually wound up hanging *fabric* shower curtains from Target over my windows instead of drapes. Cheaper, rrrrrrrreally cute, fun pattern, easy to hang.

Anyway, there you have it. All done on a shoestring budget within a 4-month timeframe, but it comes together to create a living space that I'm really proud of. Thanks for reading!!

-Andrea H.
Los Angeles, CA
Grand Prize Winner of the first ever Apartmentalist Impress Me Contest

Thanks to all who submitted, you really blew me away! Andrea's aesthetic isn't all that much like my own, but she stayed 100% true to the spirit of Apartmentalist: brave, stylish ingenuity on a super modest budget. Congratulations and good work, Andrea! You will receive your book soon!

Hi N!

Absolutely not! Brights definitely work in small spaces!

But I say that with a few qualifications. As I've mentioned in past columns, there are no rules about decorating your own home (although there are probably some local laws, if you're thinking of doing a "missile silo" theme). It's one thing if you want to inflict a love of chintz upon a corporate law office, but in your own house, you really can't go wrong. If you love it, it's right. It is all about reflecting your tastes and personality properly, and if soft greens and blues make you want to die of boredom, then please don't use them.

Of the colors you mentioned, yellow is really the most versatile for small spaces of any kind, and red is the most limiting/difficult to use. But I have seen all sorts of bright and warm shades--red and orange and yellow--each used really, really well in a variety of small spaces. (This book has several! Enter my contest and win it! You have seven hours!)

One way to keep from ovewhelming a small space is to cover 2-3 walls with a nice neutral like beige or eggshell, and then smack people in the face with a deep, very sexy accent wall or two. Anchor the room here and there with dark (black or brown) accessories or furniture, too (I find it helps).

If it fits in with your overall aesthetic, in a kitchen or a bathroom you could literally divide all the walls in half horizontally with a chair-rail element (you could make one out of wood molding or with a simple strip of paint-tape, depending on your budget) or bead board (inexpensive painted paneling works here too). Then paint the top-half of the wall a more subdued shade, and then cover the bottom with your favorite vivid shade. Or vice-versa, according to your fancy.

And, say you paint your whole living area orange. Just what exactly is wrong with intimate? Shouldn't your boudoir be intimate? Why not use color bravely?

My only suggestion if you do go this route: go all out. Make sure you LOVE the color and carry its theme and feeling a bit throughout the room. It's a good idea to have more subdued furniture with bright walls, but do make certain the wall color fits in with your stuff. Pick the color up in throw-pillows, in curtains, in candles, in vases, in frames, even in a rug. Don't go monochromatic or anything, just be sure to tie it all together in a way that makes sense to your eye.

A common mistake people make with bright color is to leave it hanging and let the rest of the room just stay blah. You want a sexy, cozy, red bedroom? Do it up right, and accessorize with Eastern elements. Pick a complimentary or contrasting color to set it off throughout the space and to add interest. Go red and white and be inspired by the very chic and mod Target aesthetic.

And hey, if it looks a fright or you get tired of it quickly, you can always paint right over it. Kilz sealer and primer always provides you with a clean, pure slate if it looks like a crime scene or the inside of a pumpkin.

Thanks for reading! And enter the contest!

Ask Apartmentalist is a weekly advice column. It'll appear here every Friday. Do you have a question about crafts, decorating, or your living space? Email Lara@apartmentalist.com.

Abstract paint smears look great on the walls of the MoMA, but when you try to duplicate them yourself cheaply, often the results look like preschool fingerpainting accidents. Good canvases can be expensive to buy and a hassle to make, and anything less looks too cheap. It's easy enough to blow up a nice photo, but getting it professionally framed and matted costs a ton. And what if all your photos consist of you and your buddies out of focus, drunk in a bar?

How do you do to fill your walls on a budget?

First off: frames.

I frame my own stuff pretty often, using discount frames from Target or Wal-Mart or even Kmart. Look at the document frames! They are cheaper!

Other possible frame discounters include dollar stores (Goldmines! If they are ugly, paint them!), or Garden Place (if ever you visit a suburb). Garden Place even has pre-cut mats in standard sizes, and you can easily assemble the whole thing yourself.

My local craft shop (The Rag Shop, in Brooklyn at 60th Street between 12th and 13th Avenues) has large, reasonably-priced frames and pre-cut mats as well.

The famous Pearl Paint also offers some framing stuff, but it's a bit more expensive there, and the website's selection is way limited and offers no mats. Any plain old art supply store should have a nice selections of pre-cut mats, but it's hit or miss.

You can always try to make your own if you get some large thicker-than-card-stock paper and an exacto knife, but mat-making without the proper professional tools really is an inexact science, and this sort of effort often looks cheap and unprofessional.

Also, a quick Google search uncovers tons of discount frames and matting. Poke around on the web and compare prices. I'm super impressed with a the website of a company called Redimat, a photo mat retailer offering great discounts on bulk orders of 4 or more.

But what to frame?

There are the usual suspects of course:

• Photos of friends, family, or vacation scenery (my personal favorite)

• Artsy postcards

• Posters (movie, advertisements, famous art prints)

• Calendar illustrations

• Maps

• Thrift-store paintings

• Notecard sets (usually one artist's work is featured on up to six different cards, so you can pick favorites or hang the whole series)

Here is a set of Edward Gorey notecards that I have up in my place. (kind of in the background):

Some new ideas:
1. Photo blogs really are everywhere, especially after the advent of sites like Shutterfly, Ofoto, and Flickr. If you see an image on a personal website that strikes your fancy, contact the photographer for a print. Most photobloggers will be flattered and give you a fair price. For example, my absolute favorite photoblog is electric boogaloo. I recently saw this great image there:

I have a thing for birds, so I purchased a print, and I believe it may be destined for my bathroom.

2. Artistic friends are awesome for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is: they make a lot of art. Sometimes they do a study for something that they later simply discard. Ask them to save some for you! Offer to pay what you can. Again, budding/struggling artists will be flattered. In my case, my friend Laura gave me a pastel drawing of a tree in silhouette that I really love (on the left) for my birthday one year:

The photo above the headboard is one I took myself, and I found that frame on super-sale at Urban Outfitters. The mat is nice and unusual, but the glass is really cheap plastic. I can't tell, can you?

3. What else is flat and cool? Behold:

On the left I have a blown-up color-copy of an old horoscope illustration from Jane Magazine, which happens to have been done by my favorite contemporary artist, Michael Gillette. He's amazing, and also illustrates for Dwell Magazine a lot.

On the right, I've got an old inkblotter from some random French primary school. I got it at a David Sedaris book reading, oddly enough, because he decided to clean out his junk drawers and storage space beforehand, and gave away all his weird junk to his fans. I love him, and I love the look of the inkblotter.

I don't have a photo handy, but one of my most prized possessions is an old crappy Xeroxed flyer for a Shins show in my old hometown record store, before they got really huge. I was in attendance, and I fell in love with their songs, and it's a great memory. I've had the flyer framed on my wall ever since.

I also love record album covers on the wall, framed or not.

Can you beat these ideas? I bet you can. So don't forget to about the contest! You've got less than three days to send me anything you've got. Ideas, crafts, photos, even just a few paragraphs of the things you love about your bedroom or your bathroom or your closets, seriously. Just impress me with your enthusuiasm and a very cool book will be your very own!

Again, all details can be found here.

Email your awesome apartment ideas to Lara@apartmentalist.com!

Edited to Add: An astute reader (Hi Alita!) called my attention to The Rasterbator. It takes any image, blows it up, and converts it into many 8.5x11 print-ready sheets, each sheet comprising a small part of a greater grid. The end result is a huge art installation of your favorite image. Check it out, it's ingenious and simple!

Don't forget about the contest! You've got five days to send me anything you've got. Ideas, crafts, photos, even just a few paragraphs of the things you love about your bedroom or your bathroom or your closets, seriously. Just impress me with your enthusuiasm and the book pictured above will be your very own!

Again, all details can be found here.

Tomorrow: I will discuss some DIY and/or inexpensive wall art.

In the meantime, hit me with your best shot at Lara@apartmentalist.com!

Hi CS-

It totally depends on the look you're going for. There really are no hard and fast wood-mixing rules unless you are a very strict decorator who likes things very uniform. I personally like to mix it up a little.

First off, I know that I totally hate matchy-matchy furniture sets. No offense to places like Rooms-to-Go, or to people who buy the entire window display rooms from Pottery Barn, but you need to inject your taste and your personality into the space in order to feel comfortable there, in order to feel that it's really your home. Buying sets/suites that come all together is fine, and can look quite lovely, but I find it so impersonal. Sometimes the bizarre things that match nothing else are the objects that make your house warm, unique, and 100% you.

I like to use different woods to distinguish spaces. Like, my whole living area is full of dark cherry-stained wood pieces, but just a few inches from all of that, I have a pale, pine wood dining table (it sort of matches the shade of my hardwood flooring) and bright red-stained dining chairs (these match other red accents throughout the living space). So I have these micro-rooms within a room, and because everything in there sort of goes with a few other things, it doesn't clash or look too busy. It works.

And our bedroom is mostly pale wood, but my boyfriend's desk is metallic veneer. It really divides the space somehow, into office and boudoir. And the dialogue is maintained by other silver accents around the room, in frames and lamps.

However, mixing can be done poorly too. You do want your room to hang together cohesively, and you want each piece to have dialogue with the other elements in your room. Nothing should stick out like a sore thumb. If you can justify its inclusion by ensuring that everything in the room corresponds somehow to a few things without clashing horribly with the other stuff, then you've succeeded.

If you have a menagerie of different woods and textures and finishes with no common theme (similar shapes/styles), your room could just wind up looking like a furniture store. There are a few solutions to this:

• Sand & repaint a piece or two to look more similar—be creative here, use red lacquer or even a crackle glaze if that is in keeping with your overall style

• Sand & repaint clashing pieces into neutrals like white or black or beige

• Keep things in one or two shades of wood, and weed out/replace the rest

• You can always re-stain items, too, or have it done for you by a pro

• Unite clashing pieces with creative accessories, like new matching metal hardware/drawer pulls, or twin vases and photo frame arrangements

• Like paint, but faster and less labor-intensive, fabric is a great cheap equalizer... Depending on your style and the function of the furniture you want to cover, you could do some creative draping with cool fabric here and there to unify the room

• Decor is all about balance, and balance is pretty intuitive... If it feels warm and balanced to you, it works, period

In the last sentence of your query above, ("When I buy things I never think how the color is going to fit into the rest of things I own, I just judge the piece individually."), you have totally hit upon the #1 reason people like me have a job. Of course you just buy whatever strikes your fancy... That is how we shop for anything else. The thing is, most furniture is a commitment. It's usually pretty expensive, and you'll see and use it every day, all the time. It's not like a shirt you can hide in the closet and wear occasionally when you're in a purple kind of mood, you know?

I see furniture and home accessories in shops that I really LOVE and WANT really BAD, but I have to literally force myself out of the store if I know that the object just will not fit into my space or a client's space. This requires so much control and discipline, it sucks. And sometimes I so regret walking away from wonderful finds.

If the desire for a non-matching piece is eating away at you, try not to do any impulse buying. Sleep on it. Do you love it enough to go back for it? Would you consider redesigning a room around it? Will it fit anywhere else in your world, like an office or a bathroom? Hell, you can also just throw it into the mix and see if it works. If you love it that much, who cares if it matches perfectly? The look of your living spaces evolve over time, and someday it might be the centerpiece of your entire aesthetic, the hub around which everything else flows.

Ask Apartmentalist is a weekly advice column. It'll appear here every Friday. Do you have a question about crafts, decorating, or your living space? Email Lara@apartmentalist.com.

-The White Stripes

It's "convenient theories for me" time! And also a contest!

As you may have noticed, I find little spaces very inspiring. The constraints and challenges force me to think really creatively about design and problem solving, and maybe everything else too. If I somehow got dropped into a mansion, or even a real house with rooms larger than 14'x14', I think I'd have more trouble decorating and filling the space well. And I posit I'd be less able to express myself creatively overall. Just a theory, no way to really test it. Unless you really want to give me a mansion to decorate. In which case, I probably won't stop you.

And I have Edna St. Vincent Millay to back this theory. She was a fabulous New York poet, and the first woman to ever win the Pulitzer. She lived in the city's narrowest residence for a year (1923-1924). Actors John Barrymore and Cary Grant also paid the rent at 75 ½ Bedford Street. Coincidence? Um, maybe not!

I've brought your attention to this already, but my two favorite magazines recently had special features on small spaces, and this site is really focused on nothing but small space living. I'd like to believe that there's a bit of a sprawl backlash movement on the rise, and more and more citizens will grow more conscientious about our consumption of resources and space.

Anyway, I'd like to share another big inspiration of mine with all of you:

There are tremendous ideas in this book. Some of the apartments may not be your style or mine, but every space includes a neat idea or five for storage, for creative use of color, for furniture, for lighting. I've read it a hundred times, and every reading unearths a great new detail I'd never noticed before, or helps me solve a new design problem.

THE GOOD NEWS:
I have an extra copy of this book.

THE GREAT NEWS:
I want to share it with a lucky Apartmentalist reader.

THE CONTEST:
Email me at Lara@apartmentalist.com and (in 1000 words or less) describe your favorite room, tell me about a unique solution to a design problem, share a cool DIY project, whatever. You can attach photos and drawings to the email (in fact, I'd love that!), but just write anything you think will interest Apartmentalist's other 200+ readers.

Please include:

• Your name/How you'd like me to identify you

• Your mailing address (this is for prize-mailing purposes only, and I will burn it once the contest is over)

• Your essay

• Any photos and drawings you'd like to show the world

THE PRIZE:
The winner will receive their own copy of the incredibly cool Living Large in Small Spaces: Expressing Personal Style in 100 to 1,000 Square Feet by Marisa Bartolucci and Radek Kurzaj, and their submission will be featured on this site on Monday, March 7th.

THE DEADLINE:
Entries are due at Midnight, EST, on Friday March 4th, and they'll be judged by me and a panel of design savvy friends, possibly over a bottle of wine. The winning entry will appear here on the morning of the 4th, with a byline and everything. I'll send the book to you via media mail shortly thereafter.

THE DISCLAIMER:
Adherence to the guidelines increases your chances of winning, but please also be creative. Your submission grants me explicit permission to publish it. The copyright will remain yours. I will credit you however you like. I will not give out any of your personal information ever, to anyone, for any reason. I reserve the right to edit or excerpt your essay pre-publication.

Any questions?

Please submit!

My favorite books sit atop our television in a tidy stack, like art:

I majored in English Lit, and I've been in the book business for something like eight years. So yeah, I'm a terrible bookhoarder. I pluck them out of trash piles, I buy them on the internet, from libraries, regular bookshops, and even from stoop sales. I take friends' castoffs. I have a ton of my old college textbooks, gathering dust where they sit on my shelves.

This is the smallest of three bookselves in my apartment:

I use every available square inch of this shelf, as you can see. For a while, right before my last big book purge, the top shelf was stacked two deep.

Like I noted with clothing storage, purging is essential. If you have a book just to have it, or if you're filling your shelves just so everyone will know how smart and well-read you are, well, there you have your priorities. Priorities you'll regret next time you move.

There is something so freeing about setting books free to circulate, and choosing favorites for your all-time, desert-island collection helps you to better define your tastes and beliefs and personality.

I don't mean to sound like a broken record here, some austere minimalist shouting "Throw it out!" God knows I don't follow this advice all that often. I have loads of clutter, and stacks of books I don't really like, books I've never read, books I may never get around to reading. But man, it feels amazing to send books on their way, imagining the hundreds of other hands they'll fill. At least once a year, get rid of a few. You'll feel lighter, more free, and you'll thank yourself the next time you must pack them into boxes and carry them down the stairs.

In the meantime, I love these shelves right here.

(Thanks for bearing with me during this past week's brief hiatus.)

The hallway striping endeavor was sadly back burnered due to some more pressing client projects and general winter ennui. But this weekend I got to taping and painting, and here's a bit of a progress report:

I scaled down the original stripe plan a bit, as the original would have been an overwhelming five feet wide.

The red stripe could use another coat, as red paint is the biggest pain ever.

Now I'm thinking that I'll scatter a random stripe or two throughout the hall, just to add interest and keep things balanced. Then I'll cover the remainder of the walls with beige, and repaint all the doors in eggshell.

I can't wait to peel off all the tape! I'll show off the results, of course.

I love your new site!

I'm interested to know your solution for clothing storage. I'm always amazed my NY friends have great wardrobes and no closets. I live in a good sized house and I am drowning in clothes—3 dressers, a closet, a coat closet. I'm a proud clotheshorse, but how do I keep everything from overwhelming the bedroom?

Thanks!
Heather



Thanks Heather!

Man, do I know your pain. I am also a clotheshorse and a SERIOUS shopper. I can’t even begin to tell you about the shoe situation. It’s intense. Ideally, I’d have an extra room I could convert into a huge walk-in dressing room, but alas, I have not yet won the lottery.

There are the standard solutions:

• California Closets-esque setup (Ikea has terrific inexpensive solutions, so does Lowe’s)

• Dual rods (upper and lower, a cheap way to have two closets in one!)

• Several plastic under-bed boxes (Target!)

• Plastic or cedar boxes of any size for stashing in an attic or up above the kitchen cabinets (see here)

• Skirt and pants hangers that hold multiple garments

• Those sweater-holder things and other similar stuff from Hold Everything or The Container Store

• Creative shelving/cabinetry (any hardware store)

• Over-door hook systems (Target, Wal-Mart, Lowe’s)

• The occasional footlocker/trunk/chest; this makes a lovely end-of-bed bench or low console elsewhere in your home (Ikea’s "HOL" is so reasonable at $69)

• Space efficient folding/rolling of clothing

• Vacuum seal bags are incredible! (look here, or search on Google)

• Fill your unused, empty luggage with bulky, rarely worn items

• Dressers with spacious, functional drawers

• Look at your hallway, if you have one... Can it hold a narrow dresser, wardrobe, or cabinet? This is a great place to stash stuff, and you really never spend time hanging out in the hallway, staring at it

• Look elsewhere in your home, too, and think about using some non-clothes-holding-type-furniture

• When all else fails: look into a storage facility

I stash my out-of-season stuff under the bed in big Rubbermaid boxes as neatly as possible. I hang rarely-worn dresses in the way-back of the coat closet. Valet hooks inside the closet door really help me get dressed without making a mess. Our utility closet (which is rarely used/fairly invisible to guests) has over-door hooks, so the inside of the door is covered with all of my lighter coats and hooded sweatshirts and rarely used purses. I also keep unused extra hangers in there.

That all sounds well and good, but here is one of my dirty (literally) secrets:

This hamper looks great, holds so much, makes sorting easy, and each compartment is roughly the size of a large wash load. When all my clothing is clean, my drawers and closets and boxes bulge, but during the in-between times, this hamper totally bails me out. Not that I’m advocating laundry laziness, but hey.

Most of all (and you won’t like this), it helps me to be a really hardcore editor. In RealSimple’s new The Organized Home, I read that women only wear about 20% of the clothes they own, and that rings so true to me. I hang onto tons of stuff that doesn’t fit me, clothes I’ve never worn, dumb old outfits that hold sentimental value, fantastic bargains that never really flattered me, I could go on. My tiny space makes careful, strict editing imperative. Every few months, I take a good realistic look at my clothing.

I give unwanted clothes to a friend, donate them to charity, or sell them to a consignment shop if:

• I haven’t worn it in two years (classic formalwear may be exempt)

• I am holding onto it in the vain hopes that I contract malaria and shrink to a size two, even though I was a flat-chested high schooler who ran eight miles a day the last time these things fit me

• The fit is unflattering

• It’s uncomfortable

• It’s horribly made

• It’s a hassle or too expensive to clean

• The silly trend has seriously passed, and won’t be back

• It matches nothing, or looks bad with all my shoes

• It’s impractical for my lifestyle (Those five-inch heels? Are just not a good idea for me anymore.)

I try each questionable item on, I walk in it, I sit in it, and I observe it from all angles in a full-length mirror. I hold onto the classics, the stuff that always makes me feel like a million bucks. I keep a few irrationally sentimental, never-wear items, but I get rid of as much as I can stomach. This gets easier with practice. At the sales, I try (oh, I try) to ask myself sternly "Will this be in the 20%? Will I really wear and love this all the time?" It helps to have honest, practical shopping buddies who will drag you back down to earth if necessary.

Whew, that was long. Have you all read this far?

Ask Apartmentalist is a weekly advice column. It'll appear here every Friday. Do you have a question about crafts, decorating, or your living space? Email Lara@apartmentalist.com.

When/If I actually do stumble upon a decent area rug, it's usually priced in the four digits. What's up with that?

So many designers settle on a standard, classic, timeless oriental rug, and I guess I can understand why. They're virtually indestructable, they're comfortable, they can be cleaned fairly easily, and they look luxurious and rich.

But simple and contemporary, they are not. I just don't like how they look. Picky, picky. Not to mention the expense. So, so pricey.

I've gotten around this in several ways over the years:

• Remnants (some professionally edged, some frayed and unraveling)

• Wal-Mart (shudder)

• shady suburban strip mall rug liquidators (double shudder)

• Urban Outfitters sales (sage faux chenille for $25! 5'x8'!)

• warehouse wholesalers (places like Costco and Sam's Club occasionally have some nice stuff, decently priced, seriously)

• and then there was the roommate who was fond of straw mats from Chinatown (they weren't that bad looking, but totally horrible to clean)

But! One need not resort to these tactics any longer!

After hearing about them for months and months, I finally comprehend the wonder that is: FLOR.

Inexpensive! Durable! Washable! Eco-Friendly! And! So! Freaking! Stylish! I! Might! Faint!

Tiles are about 21 inches, and are priced from $9-$14 apiece. Available in tons of colors and textures, tiles come with special removable-yet-hardy adhesive. FLOR can be purchased online or in person at Design Within Reach (not a misnomer, for once!). The website has tons of photos and interactive features so you can customize your own FLORplan. Ha.

My favorite style (and incidentally the least expensive, for once) is "Housepet." I can customize it to coordinate with my room & fit my narrow living room, and for about 5'x6.5' feet worth of fancy mix & match action, the total cost is about $108. $108 for a fancy rug!

Sold!