Decorating a Minimalist Apartment on a Budget
There are many ways to live a frugal lifestyle, but one of the best ways to save money is to live in a minimalist apartment on a budget. My first apartment was a minimalist apartment on a budget. It was a total turnoff to me because it didn’t have all the extra frills. I still love that place, but I wouldn’t consider myself a minimalist living in it. Here are some tips to save money while living in your minimalist apartment on a budget.
My first revelation when living in micro apartments was that I didn’t need as much stuff as I thought I did. When making a minimalist apartment on a budget, the goal is to get as few things as possible, preferably nothing more than a computer, a refrigerator, a bookcase, a couple chairs and maybe a plant or two. Instead of being obsessed with having tons of little possessions, the goal is to be obsessed with having just enough to provide basic needs. Myth 1: minimalist aesthetics is only that one style. While this may be true for some styles, in nature, everything is varied and there is no rule for how minimalist an item should look like.
In my minimalist apartment I’m constantly trying to declutter. Decluttering, cleaning house and de-cluttering your home does not necessarily mean giving up on style. Decluttering my home meant that I didn’t buy new furniture for every room. I simply moved the old furniture around to different locations in my house, so that the new furniture would be available if I wanted them. This also freed up space in my apartment, which made it more attractive to prospective buyers.
One of the ways to save money when decorating your minimalist apartment on a budget is to keep your budget in mind and do not decorate based on style but rather on functionality. I’ve often decorated a room without any type of lighting, because I felt that it was not functional. The truth is that most lights are too expensive for a small apartment. Therefore, you can add a few inexpensive accent lighting to really jazz up your room and save money on your electric bill! I prefer to use task lighting instead of main lighting, but if you are on a tight budget you can skip this altogether and just use a ceiling light or a dimmer switch to increase your level of comfort.
As far as living room decorations go, one thing you can do for a fraction of what you’d normally pay is to go ‘green’. I prefer to use scones as my green lighting, but you can certainly try to find other ways to save on your electricity. For example, if you have a window that you don’t open, simply hang tapestries or curtains from it! This will reduce the amount of heat going out of the room and will help your thermostat to stay at a comfortable temperature. You can also buy solar scones, which operate on the same principle.
Now that we are in the 21st century, you can actually indulge your green passion and decorate with indoor plants! If you love plants, by all means get some indoor plants and place them in an area of your apartment that receives a lot of sunlight throughout the day. I live in a rented apartment, so I don’t have a lot of space for large plants, but if you are determined to decorate with indoor plants you can buy small potted plants that you water and arrange in a pleasing bowl on the window sill. Or you can try a hanging basket of flowers, which you can also decorate with beads, ribbons and other adornments to dress them up. This will save you even more money since you won’t have to buy indoor plants. Just remember that it is important to keep your indoor plants away from direct sunlight.
In order to maximize the efficiency of your refrigerator, you need to make use of efficient storage space. Minimalists believe in using as much storage space as possible, because that makes it easier to keep things organized and also keep things cold. The way to store a refrigerator is standing it upright with legs down. In order to maximize your storage space, you should install shelving units to keep things such as canned goods, paper products, boxed items and small miscellaneous items upright.
Other ways to maximize the efficiency of your refrigerator is by installing a few shelves on your walls and installing a wall mounted sink. Shelves add height to your walls and when they are stacked diagonally against the wall they become a mini storage unit. In addition, there are many ways to utilize the extra floor space that you have available in order to install high-efficiency fluorescent lights in the kitchen and bathroom. In this way you can keep things more brightly lit and maintain the proper temperature.
