Game plan for making my apartment homey when I can't put stuff away

May 2, 2017 3:06 PM

I have recently moved into a new apartment. Huzzah! However, for various reasons both financial and logistical, I won't have access to a fair bit of my furniture until late June, especially storage-type furniture like dressers and shelving. Therefore, my apartment is currently full of stuff, with few places to put it. What are some temporary solutions to help me make the place feel put together until then?

Particular areas of concern: non-hangable clothes, towels and linens, utility closet items and tools (none of my closets have shelves).

posted by ocherdraco to Home & Garden (15 answers total)

We emptied and stacked boxes, open side out, a bit like this. It worked for clothing storeage just fine as a stop-gap and would do for your clothes, towels, linens etc. You can turn them over and use the smaller boxes to make smaller shelves for tools, etc as well.

It isn't a "put together" look but tidy and organised goes a long, long way.

PS: You can put shelves into your closets for tuppence if you want to.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:13 PM on May 2, 2017

If there's room in your budget for buying this stuff:

Is there space in closets for hanging organizers? This would potentially take care of the non-hangable clothes/towels/linens categories.

Also maybe consider over-the-door organizers. They come in all sorts of configurations.
posted by erratic meatsack at 3:20 PM on May 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

Hanging closet organizers are great for this!You can use them to store bedding and towels, sweaters and pants, shoes. You can get single row or even double rowed ones.
You can get an end table with canvas drawers like this one or this plastic one.
Plastic drawers for storage under the bed works too.
posted by Champagne Supernova at 3:55 PM on May 2, 2017

Target, Walmart etc often have cardboard dressers, which seem particularly suited to this situation, at least for linens/clothes - inexpensive, sturdy enough for a few months (I had one in grad school that lasted well over a year), and when your real furniture comes, easy to disassemble and save for the next time, or recycle, as the case may be.
posted by solotoro at 4:22 PM on May 2, 2017

Have a place for everything. It doesn't matter what it is, it all has to have an away location, so that you can tell at a glance if it is away or not. If you have to line things up on the floor in neat rows that is fine. If your floor is linoleum or the kind of floor that won't be damaged by it, get a roll of masking tape and delineate the storage locations precisely. One rectangle could delineate the tool chest, with the size of the rectangle dictated by the amount of space you need to lay everything out neatly. Another area would be for different sorts of clothing - one rectangle for sweaters, the one beside it for shirts and so on. Boxes would be better, but tape will do if you have no boxes. The important thing is that it all has a definite away location. If you can't use tape use cloth or cardboard to delineate your storage spaces.

If you don't know how to fold a fitted sheet so that it looks square and tidy learn to do it. There are tutorials on line. Otherwise what you do is fold sets of sheets and store them in the matching pillowcases. Put larger and taller things against the wall and shorter things in front.

Consider getting an inexpensive folding drying rack and using that for the non-hanging linen such as hand towels and face clothes.

Use ordinary food boxes such as cereal boxes for items like your socks and underwear. Until you have boxes the underwear gets laid in a neat stack, not folded, one on top of another. This way the pile won't fall over. Once you finish the Wheatabix the underwear can be folded so that it fits in the box and you can reach in and grab a clean pair every morning.

Think about what you can scrounge for free as temporary storage materials. Can you get the lids of printer paper boxes from the office or the school? Can you score some empty boxes from the liquor store? Does the budget run to 10$ at the dollar store for hooks and tape? Can you borrow a few winter weight bed sheets or blankets from someone in town to fold and use as cushions in lieu of a living room, or to mark out the away places for different items - Your "dresser" is the green blanket. Your partner's "dresser" is the Hudson's Bay blanket.
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:31 PM on May 2, 2017 [4 favorites]

I recommend banana boxes, stacked like shelves, the way Darlingbri describes. Trader Joes is a great resource or banana boxes, which are super sturdy.
posted by theora55 at 4:38 PM on May 2, 2017

Are milk crates common where you live? I've seen them used for all sorts of things, but they make great storage when stacked on their sides.
posted by kjs4 at 4:42 PM on May 2, 2017

Aside from organizing, buy a little plant to put on the windowsill and get some dish soap in a fragrance you like. Those two little things go a long way in feeling like you are setting up house.
posted by mochapickle at 4:50 PM on May 2, 2017 [4 favorites]

Any shopping bag with handles can be hung on a hanger and put in the closet off the floor. Use cloth tote bags for heavier things and paper shopping bags (department stores have sturdy ones) for lighter things. As a bonus a tote bag's worth of stuff fits in about your average small dresser drawer so you can kind of pre-organize.

All those plastic sticky hooks and velcro tabs and so-on are very reliable and useful. I have a bunch of little ones scattered throughout my house to hold things like my oven mits, litter box scoops, basically anything that I want up off the floor/counter but will use every day, and most of my pictures are hung with those velcro strips. I suggest hanging art asap to help with the hominess factor, and the velcro ones are easy to remove without worrying about nail holes if you decide to move art once your furniture shows up. The larger hooks are good for putting backpacks/purses up off the floor and at a height that is comfortable for putting stuff in and out of them.

For clothes and linens I suggest sorting through and pulling out just a few things - a capsule wardrobe to last you until June and enough linens for a single load of laundry. Keep everything else tucked away in storage tubs and don't think about them. That way you don't need to actually store all that much in an accessible way - you could keep your wardrobe in a suitcase and your linens in a laundry basket.
posted by Mizu at 5:07 PM on May 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

Extra large laundry bags in different colors.
posted by brujita at 5:15 PM on May 2, 2017

If you have any friends with kids in diapers, diaper boxes are very sturdy and nicely sized for makeshift shelving.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:08 PM on May 2, 2017

If you think you can find a future use for them (I have four of them, but they are pretty large for an apartment), including passing them on to someone who needs them, I really like the big sturdy wire "metro" shelving (Target is probably the easiest local source). Because you can put the shelves wherever you want them, and because of the wire, you can hang clothes, store folded stuff, even use it as an entertainment center (my husband uses one as a desk, and I have in the past as well).

If you put it out in the open, you can tie/magnet/clip a sheet around it to make it look a little nicer.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:25 PM on May 2, 2017

The wire shelving noted above is great. There's always a place you can use them later. Bankers boxes are inexpensive, stack nicely, and stack neatly. If you use the wire shelving, laundry baskets hold a lot and look organized.
posted by raisingsand at 8:11 PM on May 2, 2017

Response by poster: Thank you everyone! With the ideas in this thread, I have managed to get things put away (mostly!). I got a hanging closet organizer for my linens, repurposed a small bookcase to be my dresser, and stacked up a few wooden crates from Home Depot to hold my utility closet stuff. The place feels much more like a real apartment!
posted by ocherdraco at 4:46 AM on May 5, 2017

Response by poster: (And I've got my eye on that Metro shelving for the future...)
posted by ocherdraco at 4:47 AM on May 5, 2017