Apartment Solution

My blissful moment of a day is a night-time after my kids go to bed. Usually I spend my night emailing and surfing on internet, or on a good day, reading or watching a movie. Lately though, I have been obsessed with this blog I started last week.

One of the things I have always been interested is home designs and decorating home. When I am inspired, my mind can get preoccupied by the ideas to rearrange and redecorate our home.

We move around every two to three years. Currently, we are a family of four living in a two-bedroom two-bath apartment in a city outside of Washington, D.C. Since I’ve lived in a small place most of my life and I get spooked very easily, this life style seems to suit me well. Plus, for a single-vehicle family like us, it was simply more convenient to live in a corporate apartment, which are usually located very close to a metro station.

When I move into a new place and arrange furniture in a living room, I always try to find a way to hide our kids’ play area. I would like my kids to play in the area somewhat visible from the kitchen, where I spend most of my time at home. When you live in an apartment though, there is not much you can do in terms of dividing a space. What I usually do is dividing up a room with a sofa and hide kids’ play area using a sofa. The photo above is the view from my kitchen.

Decorating a small area is more challenging, but this to me makes it more interesting. It feels as if playing a puzzle to find a solution for a small space. (I don’t have pictures of our closets to post, but inside of our closets looks like Tetris. When we moved to our current apartment, I spent many hours pondering how to maximize the space in there. I don’t just shove everything in our closets though. I prioritize accessibility of things based on the frequency of their usage. It was so much fun!)

If you are a regular shopper at IKEA, you must have figured out from my photos how much we (more accurately “I”) love that store. My obsession with IKEA is rooted in their simple and modern designs and affordability, which are very important to me. Their catalogues offer so many ideas to decorate that I ‘read’ them as though it’s my textbook.

Their furniture is perfect for apartment living and life with small kids. The sofa we have has a white cover, but we can remove the cover easily and wash it. If it is damaged, a new cover can be purchased at IKEA with a small cost. If we sell it in the future, a buyer can purchase a new cover for this sofa, which was a big appeal to us.

There are things I would’ve done differently, but this is what we could afford to do. We’ll have to part from our furniture as we’ll be living in a furnished housing. It makes me sad to think that we won’t be with our furniture after this summer, but I am very looking forward to decorating our new home!