The Iglu Guide | Blog
5 space-saving tips for your student apartment
Fed up with the clutter in your student apartment? When you head off to your student accommodation, it’s hard to work out what will or won’t be useful when you get there. And it’s not unusual for students to arrive with way too much stuff for the available space. But don’t despair – that’s when you need to get clever with your storage. Here’s how to save space and live your best life along the way.
1. Keep the floor clear
Less is definitely more when it comes to creating floor space. If your apartment floor is cluttered and messy, it gives the impression the whole apartment lacks storage space. Small spaces will only ever have limited storage so it’s time to make that furniture work double time – and that means maximising any available space. Consider investing in drawer dividers and hanging organisers, and use storage boxes inside your wardrobe to tidy away accessories like belts, hats and scarves – maximising your floor space in the process. There’s enormous potential to hide a multitude of storage sins underneath the bed. As the largest piece of furniture in your room, there’s usually plenty of room for rolling storage or stacked boxes for lesser-used items like seasonal accessories, sports equipment or used textbooks. This can be easily created using simple DIY solutions such as labelled boxes and cotton bags.
2. Limit your wardrobe
Clothes generally end up on the floor when you’ve run out of space to easily put them away. But maybe it’s time to ask yourself whether you simply have too many clothes – in which case, it’s time for a serious de-clutter. When you’ve separated your clothes into 3 piles (keep, donate, discard), consider creating a capsule wardrobe. This limited selection of interchangeable clothes will all complement each other, no matter what the combination. Not only does it free up huge amounts of space in your wardrobe, it prevents you buying more fast fashion and spiralling backwards into clutter and chaos.
3. Organise your bathroom
The trick to keeping a tidy bathroom is to get used to returning your items to their rightful place after use. For this to be effective, they all need to have somewhere to go in the first place. Student bathrooms are generally on the small side, particularly if you’re lucky enough to have a private ensuite. So it’s even more important to keep the surfaces as clear as possible – and that means tidying away your personal products into cupboards and drawers, and investing in a shower organiser to hang over the shower head. If you’re sharing a bathroom, consider a portable shower caddy that you can easily transport between rooms. When it comes to managing the laundry, make sure you have somewhere in your student room to store your dirty washing. Piling it up in a basket you can then transport straight down to the laundry is a great time-saver. As a minimum, try to use a designated corner of the room that will prevent it being spread out across the whole apartment.
4. Free up your workspace
Try to keep your desk area as free as possible. Not only does this maximise your workspace in a literal sense, it helps you approach your studies with a clear mind. Use desk organisers to keep pens, sticky notes and other stationery needs tided well away. Charging stations are useful places to stash messy wires – and remember, storage creation doesn’t have to be expensive. Jam jars make excellent pen holders, and even a simple shoebox can double up as a charging station.
5. Use your wall space
Even if you lack square footage in floor space, every student apartment has space on the walls that is most likely under-utilised – and it pays to get creative. Everywhere you see available wall space, that’s a potential storage location. Think hooks, shelves, wall pockets and pin boards for starters. That’s coats, scarves, hats and accessories sorted, with somewhere to pin up important university information before it gets lost. There’s very little that can’t be mounted on a wall, from guitars and bikes to book racks and sticky hooks. When you think you’re out of space – think vertically – and you have a whole new canvas to play with.
Image: Iglu South Yarra
