Affordable storage ideas for small apartments, clever hacks to make more space

Photo: Michal Jarmoluk/Pixabay

SNS - Living in a small apartment or home can be challenging, especially when it comes storage space. However, you can maximize your space affordably with creativity and clever solutions. Here are some affordable storage hacks tailored for every room in your home, helping you declutter and organize efficiently with style.

The Benefits of Decluttering
Another crucial aspect of maximizing space in small apartments is decluttering. Regularly assess your belongings and determine what you truly need. That can be a liberating process that frees up physical space and creates a more peaceful living environment. Consider implementing the "one in, one out" rule: for every new item you bring into your home, remove an old one. This practice helps maintain order and prevents accumulation. Additionally, donating items you no longer use can benefit others in your community while satisfying you with a clean, organized apartment. By embracing a minimalist mindset, you can simplify your living space and make it more enjoyable.

Living Room Affordable Storage Hacks
The living room is often the heart of the home, but it can also become a clutter magnet. One effective way to create more storage is by using multi-functional furniture. Consider investing in a coffee table that doubles as a storage unit or an ottoman with hidden compartments. These pieces serve a purpose and help keep your space tidy. Wall-mounted shelves are another great option for the living room. They can display books and decorative items while freeing up floor space. Additionally, consider using decorative baskets or bins to store remote controls, magazines, and other small items. That keeps your living room organized and visually appealing.

Kitchen Storage Hacks
Kitchens in small apartments can feel cramped, but there are plenty of affordable storage hacks to make your small kitchen more functional. Start by utilizing vertical space with wall-mounted racks for pots and pans. That saves cabinet space and adds a rustic charm to your kitchen. Use drawer organizers to keep utensils and kitchen tools tidy. Consider installing a magnetic strip for knives to free up drawer space and enhance safety. Additionally, clear bins in your pantry can help group similar items, making it easier to find what you need.


college apartment bedroom
Maximize your living space in small apartments by using under-bed storage options. Buy a ready made solution or create your own.

Photo: StockSnap/Pixabay

Small Bedroom Storage Hacks
Maximizing space is essential to creating a serene environment when organizing a small bedroom. Begin with under-bed storage solutions. Use rolling bins or vacuum-sealed bags to store off-season clothing, shoes, or extra bedding. That is a perfect way to keep your bedroom uncluttered. At the same time, invest in furniture with built-in storage, like a bed frame with drawers or a bench with a hidden compartment. Also, consider using hanging organizers on the back of your closet door for accessories or shoes, making everything easy to find while keeping your closet neat.

Bathroom Storage Hacks
Bathrooms can quickly become overcrowded, but there are many ways to organize this small space. Use tiered shelves or corner caddies to maximize vertical space. These can hold toiletries, towels, or cleaning supplies without wasting valuable floor space. Over-the-toilet shelving is another clever storage hack. This area is often underutilized, so adding shelves can create extra storage for towels and decorative items. Use baskets or bins under the sink to group similar items, keeping your bathroom organized and functional. These storage ideas allow you to turn your small bathroom into a spa.


Home office for professionals
Creative storage solutions can make a small home office seem more spacious.

Photo: Michael Burrows/PEXELS

Office Area Storage Hacks
Creating a productive home office in a small apartment can be challenging, but effective storage solutions can help. Use vertical file organizers to keep important documents in order while freeing up desk space. Wall-mounted shelves can also display books, plants, or office supplies. Consider a desk with built-in drawers for additional storage, keeping your workspace clutter-free. Utilize a pegboard to hang tools or supplies, allowing easy access and organization. These hacks can transform your home office into a functional and inspiring workspace.

Dining Area Storage Hacks
Maximizing space is key in small dining areas. Look for a dining table with built-in storage or a foldable option that can be tucked away when unused. Use wall-mounted shelves to display dishes or decorative items, keeping the table clear. Consider adding a rolling cart for extra storage and serving space. They can be easily moved and hold everything from utensils to beverages. Decorative baskets can also serve as stylish storage for items like napkins or tablecloths, keeping your dining area organized.

Seasonal Storage Solutions
Managing seasonal items can be challenging in a small apartment. To tackle this, consider implementing a seasonal storage solution. Use vacuum-sealed bags to compress off-season clothing, blankets, or holiday decorations, allowing you to store them compactly. Designate a specific area for seasonal items, whether a closet or storage bin and switch items out as the seasons change. That keeps your apartment organized and makes it easier to access items when needed.

Consider Renting Storage Units
For those needing additional space, renting a storage unit can be affordable. Many facilities offer various sizes of units, allowing you to choose one that fits your needs and budget. Renting a storage unit can be especially beneficial for keeping seasonal items, sports equipment, or furniture you don’t use daily. While costs vary based on location and unit size, many storage facilities offer promotions or discounts for long-term rentals, making it a cost-effective option. Additionally, having a separate storage space can help reduce clutter in your apartment, leading to a more organized living environment.

Affordable Storage Hacks for Small Apartments
Living in a small apartment doesn’t mean sacrificing organization or style. With these affordable storage hacks for every room in your home, you can maximize your space and create a comfortable, clutter-free environment. From utilizing vertical space to investing in multi-functional furniture, plenty of strategies exist to make the most of your home. By implementing these ideas, you’ll find that your small apartment can be stylish and practical, proving that great things come in small packages.


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Keywords: Affordable storage Hacks, Creative home storage space idea, Apartment storage ideas, Storage ideas for college students

5 tips to simplify your workday this fall

Photo: Andreea Avramescu/Unsplash

Family Features - Optimizing your workday through careful preparation and effective time management can create a more harmonious balance between your professional and personal life. Finding ways to simplify the day, both at home and on the job, can help you make the most of every minute, so you feel less rushed and better prepared to manage whatever the day throws your way. Make your workdays more manageable with these tips and find more time-saving ideas at BensOriginal.com.

Wake Up on Time
Starting the day with a bang, setting an alarm and sticking to it can be the secret ingredient to a super productive day. Hitting snooze not only makes you groggy, but it cuts into valuable time you need to start your morning routine. Plan to get up late enough to feel rested but early enough to accomplish important tasks, such as breakfast, which gives your body and mind the energy they need for a busy day. Consistent bed and wakeup times can improve the quality of your sleep, giving you the extra boost you need.

Grocery Shop at the Start of the Week
Use your weekends wisely with a smart strategy and foresight to plan ahead so you can save time when workdays get away from you. Planning and prepping meals and keeping your pantry stocked with easy-prep items ensures you’re fueling your body, keeping burnout at bay. For example, Ben’s Original Ready Rice products can be your go-to lifesavers as a delightful lunch that’s ready to serve in 90 seconds. Even when time’s ticking away, you can still enjoy a satisfying dish and keep your energy soaring high.

Keep Your Calendar Organized
Juggling deadlines, meetings and ongoing tasks can be an organizational hassle, but effectively mastering your calendar can make all the difference. Make it a habit to answer meeting requests and ensure they get logged into your calendar promptly. Then, like a pro, schedule other commitments around the meetings, blocking off time as necessary to ensure you leave adequate time at your desk to get your work done. Use your calendar’s labeling and organization tools to help keep you on track. For example, you might color code priority items differently than tasks or meetings that could be moved if necessary.

shopping cart

Photo: Markus Winkler/Unsplash

Simplify Workday Lunches
Bringing your lunch to work can be an ultimate time-saving hack. Enjoying a tasty dish in the breakroom gives you a change of scenery and lets you reset your brain without losing travel time by heading to the nearest drive thru. An option like Ben’s Original Street Food delivers convenience and is a perfect solution for those days when you’re short on time but craving a tasty lunch. It delivers convenience wrapped in a flavor-packed dish, ready to tantalize your taste buds. Look for flavors like Jamaican Jerk-Style Red Beans and Rice with Chicken, Gumbo with Chicken and Andouille Sausage, Fried Rice with Vegetables or a Bean and Rice Burrito Bowl to transport your taste buds around the world, right from the comfort of your office.

Condense Meetings
Whether scheduled or impromptu, meetings can quickly feel like they’re consuming your entire day. If possible, set your calendar availability so you’re only able to take meetings in the late morning or early afternoon. This nifty trick ensures you have ample time to kickstart and wrap up your day with top-priority tasks. Host standing meetings so participants are focused on the topic at hand and less likely to engage in distracting chatter. Prepare agendas for meetings so you can stay on track and handle off-topic discussions outside of meeting times.


Remote work was an underestimated benefit and blessing for family caregivers

by Joanne Kenen
Kaiser Health News

Even when Beltré switched to a hybrid work role — meaning some days in the office, others at home — caring for her father was manageable, though never easy.

For Aida Beltré, working remotely during the pandemic came as a relief.

She was taking care of her father, now 86, who has been in and out of hospitals and rehabs after a worsening series of strokes in recent years.

Working from home for a rental property company, she could handle it. In fact, like most family caregivers during the early days of covid-19, she had to handle it. Community programs for the elderly had shut down.

Even when Beltré switched to a hybrid work role — meaning some days in the office, others at home — caring for her father was manageable, though never easy.

Then she was ordered back to the office full time in 2022. By then, Medicaid was covering 17 hours of home care a week, up from five. But that was not close to enough. Beltré, now 61, was always rushing, always worrying. There was no way she could leave her father alone so long.

She quit. “I needed to see my dad,” she said.

Couple out for a walk

Photo: Pixabay/Mark Thomas
Work-from-home made it much easier for caregivers to take care of their loved ones and improve the quality of life those they were responsible for during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In theory, the national debate about remote or hybrid work is one great big teachable moment about the demands on the 53 million Americans taking care of an elderly or disabled relative.

But the “return to office” debate has centered on commuting, convenience, and child care. That fourth C, caregiving, is seldom mentioned.

That’s a missed opportunity, caregivers and their advocates say.

Employers and co-workers understand the need to take time off to care for a baby. But there’s a lot less understanding about time to care for anyone else. “We need to destigmatize it and create a culture where it’s normalized, like birth or adoption,” said Karen Kavanaugh, chief of strategic initiatives at the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers. For all the talk of cradle to grave, she said, “mostly, it’s cradle.”

After her stepmother died, Beltré moved her father into her home in Fort Myers, Florida, in 2016. His needs have multiplied, and she’s been juggling, juggling, juggling. She’s exhausted and, now, unemployed.

She’s also not alone. About one-fifth of U.S. workers are family caregivers, and nearly a third have quit a job because of their caregiving responsibilities, according to a report from the Rosalynn Carter Institute. Others cut back their hours. The Rand Corp. has estimated that caregivers lose half a trillion dollars in family income each year — an amount that’s almost certainly gone up since the report was released nearly a decade ago.

Beltré briefly had a remote job but left it. The position required sales pitches to people struggling with elder care, which she found uncomfortable. She rarely gets out — only to the grocery store and church, and even then she’s constantly checking on her dad.

“This is the story of my life,” she said.

Workplace flexibility, however desirable, is no substitute for a national long-term care policy, a viable long-term care insurance market, or paid family leave, none of which are on Washington’s radar.

President Joe Biden gave family caregivers a shoutout in his State of the Union address in February and followed up in April with an executive order aimed at supporting caregivers and incorporating their needs in planning federal programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. Last year, his Department of Health and Human Services released a National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers outlining how federal agencies can help and offering road maps for the private sector.

Although Biden checked off priorities and potential innovations, he didn’t offer any money. That would have to come from Congress. And Congress right now is locked in a battle over cutting spending, not increasing it.


They cashed in his retirement fund to hire part-time caregivers.

So that leaves it up to families.

Remote work can’t fill all the caregiving gaps, particularly when the patient has advanced disease or dementia and needs intense round-the-clock care from a relative who is also trying to do a full-time job from the kitchen table.

But there are countless scenarios in which the option to work remotely is an enormous help.

When a disease flares up. When someone is recuperating from an injury, an operation, or a rough round of chemo. When a paid caregiver is off, or sick, or AWOL. When another family caregiver, the person who usually does the heavy lift literally or metaphorically, needs respite.

“Being able to respond to time-sensitive needs for my dad at the end of his life, and to be present with my stepmother, who was the 24/7 caregiver, was an incredible blessing,” said Gretchen Alkema, a well-known expert in aging policy who now runs a consulting firm and was able to work from her dad’s home as needed.

That flexibility is what Rose Garcia has come to appreciate, as a small-business owner and a caregiver for her husband.

Garcia’s husband and business partner, Alex Sajkovic, has Lou Gehrig’s disease. Because of his escalating needs and the damage the pandemic wrought on their San Francisco stone and porcelain design company, she downsized and redesigned the business. They cashed in his retirement fund to hire part-time caregivers. She goes to work in person sometimes, particularly to meet architects and clients, which she enjoys. The rest of the time she works from home.

As it happened, two of her employees also had caregiving obligations. Her experience, she said, made her open to doing things differently.

For one employee, a hybrid work schedule didn’t work out. She had many demands on her, plus her own serious illness, and couldn’t make her schedule mesh with Garcia’s. For the other staff member, who has a young child and an older mother, hybrid work let her keep the job.


If caregivers quit or go part time, they lose pay, benefits, Social Security, and retirement savings.

A third worker comes in full time, Garcia said. Since he’s often alone, his dogs come too.

In Lincoln, Nebraska, Sarah Rasby was running the yoga studio she co-owned, teaching classes, and taking care of her young children. Then, at 35, her twin sister, Erin Lewis, had a sudden cardiac event that triggered an irreversible and ultimately fatal brain injury. For three heartbreaking years, her sister’s needs were intense, even when she was in a rehab center or nursing home. Rasby, their mother, and other family members spent hour after hour at her side.

Rasby, who also took on all the legal and paperwork tasks for her twin, sold the studio.

“I’m still playing catch-up from all those years of not having income,” said Rasby, now working on a graduate degree in family caregiving.

Economic stress is not unusual. Caregivers are disproportionately women. If caregivers quit or go part time, they lose pay, benefits, Social Security, and retirement savings.

“It’s really important to keep someone attached to the labor market,” the Rosalynn Carter Institute’s Kavanaugh said. Caregivers “prefer to keep working. Their financial security is diminished when they don’t — and they may lose health insurance and other benefits.”

But given the high cost of home care, the sparse insurance coverage for it, and the persistent workforce shortages in home health and adult day programs, caregivers often feel they have no choice but to leave their jobs.


Temote and hybrid work is mostly for people whose jobs are largely computer-based. A restaurant server can’t refill a coffee cup via Zoom.

At the same time, though, more employers, facing a competitive labor market, are realizing that flexibility regarding remote or hybrid work helps attract and retain workers. Big consultant companies like BCG offer advice on “the working caregiver.”

Successful remote work during the pandemic has undercut bosses’ abilities to claim, “You can’t do your job like that,” observed Rita Choula, director of caregiving for the AARP Public Policy Institute. It’s been more common in recent years for employers to offer policies that help workers with child care. Choula wants to see them expanded “so that they represent a broad range of caregiving that occurs across life.”

Yet, even with covid’s reframing of in-person work, telecommuting is still not the norm. A March report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found only 1 in 4 private businesses had some or all of their workforce remote last summer — a dropoff from 40% in 2021, the second pandemic summer. Only about 1 in 10 workplaces are fully remote.

And remote and hybrid work is mostly for people whose jobs are largely computer-based. A restaurant server can’t refill a coffee cup via Zoom. An assembly line worker can’t weld a car part from her father-in-law’s bedside.

But even in the service and manufacturing sectors, willing employers can explore creative solutions, like modified shift schedules or job shares, said Kavanaugh, who is running pilot programs with businesses in Michigan. Cross-training so workers can fill in for one another when one has to step into caregiving is another strategy.

New approaches can’t come soon enough for Aida Beltré, who finds joy in caregiving along with the burden. She’s looking for work, hybrid this time. “I am a people person,” she said. “I need to get out.”

She also needs to be in. “Every night, he says, ‘Thank you for all you do,’” she said of her father. “I tell him, ‘I do this because I love you.’”


KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.


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