Small Apartment Ideas: Mixing Styles + Cozy Living + More!
Want your apartment to feel dreamy, inviting, and cozy? Same! Today I’m sharing small apartment ideas that will help you make your space into the lovely retreat you’ve been yearning for. 🥰
And I’m doing so by going straight to the source and and answering your apartment lifestyle questions! In this Ask Me Anything, I’m giving my two cents in response to questions like:
How do you go about mixing styles while still keeping your apartment decor cohesive?
Do you have any cozy ways to destress? (spoiler alert - I sure do!)
How do you manage having a cat in a small apartment?
And more! So if you’re looking for small apartment inspiration, cozy living ideas, and studio apartment inspo, you’re in the right place!
Video Transcript ↓
How do you combine different interior design styles while still keeping things cohesive? How do you manage living with a cat in a tiny apartment? What are some cozy ways to de-stress in your apartment?
All of these questions - and more - I am going to answer in this video!
That's right, I am doing an Ask Me Anything. On Instagram and in my YouTube community tab, I asked you what questions you might have for me - interior styling questions, cozy living questions, questions just about lifestyle stuff in general.
So sit back, relax, curl up with a cup of coffee or tea or the adult beverage of your choice, and cozy up with me as I answer your questions!
And before we dive in, I wanted to let you know that you can now watch my free workshop, "Decorate Your Dream Apartment Without Spending Money on the Wrong Decor For You" whenever you want!
In this FREE, 1-hour workshop, I’ll teach you how to…
Discover your personal style so you can decorate a space that feels like YOU
Create mood boards to help you visualize what your apartment could look like before buying things
Shop for decor in a way that will save you money and allow you to buy things that actually fit your space and your personality
If all that sounds like exactly what you need to create the dreamy apartment you’ve been yearning for, click here to watch the workshop!
All right, let's dive into your questions!
So I'm going to start with the YouTube community tab questions. And the first question is from Jacqui G:
“What are some cozy ways to de-stress? It's so cold and snowy and anxiety is high.”
And Jacqui, I get it. As someone who deals with some pretty bad anxiety, honestly, one of the reasons why I'm so obsessed with coziness is because it's just kind of a way to cope with my own anxiety.
So for one thing, if you want a really in-depth answer to this question, I definitely recommend watching this video, where I went through all these different cozy hygge activities that I personally like to do in my apartment.
But for now, just off of the top of my head, here are some cozy ways that I like to de-stress in my apartment.
I love to curl up on my couch with a warm cup of coffee and with my cat Helo on my lap. Having a cat is a wonderful way to get cozy and de-stress - if you are a cat person.
And I like to surround myself with cozy soft textures; faux fur blankets, pretty decorative pillows. I prefer to live my life in my apartment just enveloped in softness. 🥰
So look out for ways that you can just texturally implement coziness in your life. Where do you spend the majority of your time in your apartment? How can you just literally make it softer, warmer, cozier?
And when it comes to the cozy activities that I like to do that I mentioned in this video, I love to just watch a TV show, and I love to play my Switch.
There are a lot of really great cozy games out there for the Nintendo Switch, so even if you don't really consider yourself a gamer, I would definitely look into getting a Switch and seeking out the cozy games that are on there. Because if you want like a cozy way to de-stress, I can’t recommend cozy gaming enough.
By the way, I'm planning on doing a video where I list out my favorite cozy games. So let me know in the comments below if that's something that you guys would be interested in! Honestly, I'm probably going to make the video anyway because I just really want to geek out about the cozy games that I've been playing. So you have no choice in the matter, I'm gonna do it. 🙃
So there's a starting point for you, Jacqui G, and anyone else who has wondered the same thing about cozy ways to de-stress in your apartment. If you want to dive deeper, definitely watch this video. It's basically coziness in video form, so I think you'll really like it.
The next question comes from Gizmo Rain:
“How do you combine different design styles and still make it look cohesive?”
And I'm very excited to talk about this one because I am a firm believer in mixing different styles.
I would actually venture to say that there isn't a single room in existence that sticks to one style and one style only. That would be extremely difficult. And it would also require being a robot.
Really, I think mixing styles is what makes a space feel alive and visually interesting!
In my online course, Small Apartment Styling School, there's a whole lesson called the Art of Mixing Styles. And so in that I dive into my exact sort of methodology to mixing different styles while keeping things cohesive.
But if I were to give you one specific tip in this video, it would be to utilize repetition.
Repetition is the key to cohesiveness. I'll say it again: repetition is the key to cohesiveness!
So what does this mean? It means that if you can find ways to repeat colors, repeat subject matter, repeat materials, repeat textures… anything that you can repeat in your space will bring a sense of cohesiveness.
So for example, in my studio apartment, I repeated a green-gold color family throughout the space. That color showed up everywhere. And that brought a sense of unity to my studio apartment!
And my studio apartment mixed a ton of different styles. It was rustic, it was boho, it was witch aesthetic, it had a little bit of glam to it, it had a little bit of industrial to it. I mean, it had a lot of different styles sort of packed into that little 500 square foot space. But it felt cohesive because I repeated things!
I mean, it sounds very, very basic and simple, but truly just repeat things.
I repeated the subject matter of music in my apartment, so there was a lot of music as sort of a motif in that apartment, and that again, unified the space.
As far as materials went, I repeated metals throughout the space; there was a lot of bronze and iron and sort of silvery metals. So again, when you repeat that over and over in the space, it unifies everything into a more cohesive picture.
So keep all of this in mind when you're mixing styles in your apartment: what can you repeat over and over again in your space? Repetition is the key to cohesiveness.
The next question coming from the YouTube community tab is from July, and July asks:
“How do you avoid cluttered space? Do you purge your closet and/or home decor periodically to avoid having a cluttered space? If so, how often do you go through your belongings to determine what needs to go and what can stay?”
This is a hot button question for me right now, for both me and my boyfriend Kobee actually. Because one of the big challenges that we've run into with this apartment is a lack of closet space and just a general lack of storage space. And so it's been really hard. 😭
And I'm planning on doing a video where I talk about how Kobee and I have compensated for this lack of closet and storage space in this apartment. I'll be honest, we haven't done so perfectly. In fact, we've done so in a very flawed way. Let's just say there's a reason why you haven't seen much of this apartment in my videos lately…
But for now, I'll speak to my overall experience of avoiding clutter in small apartments where storage was always an issue.
Number one, I really try to stay super diligent about always putting not-so-aesthetically-pleasing things away.
Like household cleaning items, you know? For example, You don't need a bottle of Dawn dish soap sitting on the counter in your kitchen. Instead, I recommend finding an aesthetically pleasing glass bottle soap dispenser for your dish soap so that it can be out, easily accessible, AND pretty - but it doesn't have that unattractive Dawn branding on your counter.
So avoiding clutter in a small space is very much just about being super aware of the things that you're leaving out and whether or not they are actually attractive things that should be out.
And to answer the rest of the question, do I purge my closet and or home decor periodically? I honestly don't. I should more often.
Although I just remembered that you might enjoy this video. I did this video a while ago in my studio, where went through my closet and I made it less chaotic in there. So if you want to see behind the scenes of how I purge a closet, watch this video:
But if I'm being honest, the the contents of that video don't happen very regularly. So that's something that Kobee and I need to do currently. There's, there's a bunch of stuff that we need to go through and decide what to donate, and we just… haven't… done it yet. 🙃
All right, the next question is from ecvp123.They ask:
“How did you manage living with a cat and in a small apartment? Did she ever mess with your decorations? I'd love to know.”
Well actually, the wonderful thing about Helo is she, for some reason, does not mess with my decor. That was honestly one of the things I was afraid of and really made me second guess getting a cat.
I got Helo was when I was living in my studio apartment, and that space had decor shit everywhere. I mean, pretty thing here, pretty thing there. Very knockable, breakable things all over the place.
So when I got Helo, I was kind of bracing myself for, um, absolute terror. But miraculously, she doesn't knock things over. I mean, she's mischievous in her own little ways, but when it comes to my decor, she's never been destructive at all, which feels like the kitty gods are looking down upon me favorably.
The elephant-in-the-room question when it comes to having a cat in a small apartment is the litter box conundrum, which actually, again, hasn't been much of a problem for me. In the studio, I had the litter box in my walk-in closet, and here we have the litter box in the hallway closet when you enter the apartment. It's not ideal having a litter box in a closet, but where else is it going to go?
And by the way, if having a litter box hidden away in a closet isn't an option for you, then I definitely recommend going on Amazon and just typing in the search, “cat litter box cabinet”.
They look like regular cabinets, but there's a little secret door for the cat to go into, and inside is the litter box. So to the unsuspecting eye, it looks like just a normal run of the mill cabinet, but really it is a shit box.
So if you're thinking about getting a cat and you live in a small apartment, I highly recommend doing so. It really ain't no thing!
This next question comes from Janet. Janet asks:
“Do you do actual holiday decorations? And if so, where do you put them? I'd love to keep a tree up all year and decorate it for various holidays, but a tree takes up a lot of real estate. I can't bring myself to use a flat surface like a wall or door.”
So Janet, I actually have a video that I made way back in the early days of this YouTube channel. I think this was like maybe my second or third video. Disclaimer, since it was really early on, it's not the highest quality video. I was very new to making YouTube videos back then.
But in that video, I talk about my favorite way to decorate for the holidays, which is to use fairy lights. And pretty much exclusively use fairy lights. Nothing else.
So first, to answer your question, I don't really do anything to decorate for the holidays. All of the fairy lights that were in this video have since died. So I just simply don't have them anymore, and I haven't bought more since.
I think when you've lived alone in an apartment as long as I did, it felt a little pointless to decorate for the holidays and spend money on decor that would only be odd for like a month or two. And that's why fairy lights were a really great way to make the space feel more festive and holiday cheery without, you know, going all out.
Fairy lights are simply pretty and add a little dose of magic in an apartment. I am always here for fairy lights all year round. All day, every day. All year, every year.
So as I'm reading these questions and recording this video, I'm realizing that I'm going to have to split this into a two parter in order to answer all of your questions. I have an appointment to get to in 15 minutes, so I'm going to answer the last question in the YouTube community tab, and then the next video will be answering all of your questions that you asked me on Instagram.
I thought I was going to be able to just breeze through all these questions, but leave it to me, I had to dive way deeper than I intended!
So, let's get to this last question, which comes from Alvita. Alvita asks:
“First, I love your channel. I've tried the pumpkin pasta recipe, and it came out so delicious. Do you have any more fall/winter, go-to recipes or drinks that you'd like to have during these seasons?”
That's a very good question, Alvita. To be honest, I'm not really much of a cook. I don't really cook much. I could probably share some recipes from my dad, who is an excellent cook - like truly the best cook in the entire world.
And so maybe, if you guys are interested in more recipes carried out by kind of a novice when it comes to cooking, let me know in the comments below! Because even though I don't really know a lot of recipes, my my dad sure as hell does.
So yeah, just basically my answer to this question is kind of a question right back to you guys, which is, would you like to see more recipe and drink recipe content?
All right, so those were your questions from the YouTube community tab! Like I said, I am now going to be splitting this video up into two parts, so next video will be answering your questions that you submitted through Instagram. And now I have to rush off to my appointment, so do excuse me. Helo says hello to all of you. She loves you. And we will see you next time!
For regular glimpses into my apartment life, you can follow me on Instagram @moda.misfit.
And for regular doses of apartment styling tips and cozy living inspiration, subscribe to my YouTube channel and hit the bell to be notified when a new video goes up every week.