
17. Use Vertical Space to Your Advantage
You can’t increase your square footage in a small apartment, but you can build upwards. Always try to take advantage of vertical space. Look around your apartment, and notice all of the empty space on the walls. Some people automatically want to use it for art walls. This is great, but it’s not exactly functional. Could you use floating shelves to store things on the wall, instead? Or maybe you could purchase a tall bookcase to store your items, instead of a short dresser.

Extra space that people commonly miss is above their kitchen cabinets, or the space between their TV and the ceiling. It might be possible for you to use vertical space in every single room of your apartment. For example, my parents created a shelf along the ceiling of our childhood nursery, and used it to store all of our books. Even 30 years later, those shelves are still sturdy, and nothing ever fell down. Try to think outside of the box in terms of where you can store your belongings.