I love interiors. Every month when I pick up the latest addition to my ELLE, VOGUE and Allure stash, a copy of ELLE Decoration always comes home with me too. I flick through the pages, ear mark ridiculously priced lamps which I will never own and ponder if I’ll paint every single room in my dream home magnolia or cream. It’s about that point that I stop, realise that I currently reside in a tiny 1-bed flat that came fully furnished to someone else’s *cough* interesting *cough* tastes and the magnolia/cream debate is a long way off. Almost two years in to living here I’m finally working out how to squeeze pieces in that make living easier and more functional without it looking like a furniture shop and my first stop was a desk. It’s taken me a while to get it right, but I think I’m just about there. So here are my top tips for how to squeeze some working space into a very small space. A weekend project, instead of post, if you will…
The smaller, the better. When looking for desks and measuring them up for size I found most to be utterly humongous. I found it best to look for laptop tables which tend to be a lot smaller in depth and therefore easier to get into your allocated space. In the end I went for IKEA’s Vittsjö Laptop Table, which really does just have enough space to fit your laptop on – don’t be fooled. Another reason I went for this is that it’s glass, so frame-aside, it’s like it’s not even there.
Leave no space unused. The mini shelf in my desk is used to store my headphones and hard drive and directly underneath it there there was a huge gap to the floor that just collected cookie crumbs and had things spilt on it. But recently I’ve stacked up some mags to create a makeshift platform and now rest my printer on there which really does make the whole thing look properly profresh and home-officey.
The no-clutter rule. Previously I had a five-drawer MUJI tower on my desk that was filled with bits and bobs that I never even used – post-its galore, pencils, a rubber, a stack of pink envelopes and a load of other stuff that I have no idea where it came from. So I’ve downsized to a simple desk organiser that forces me just to keep the basics, a photo tacked up on my wall, a lamp, a candle (of course) and a fake flower in a very, very thin vase. Done.
Double-Up. The flat came with a sofa that seats two, uncomfortably three at a push, so seating when people come round to visit is a little unappealing – the floor? Our bed? The loo? So making sure that my desk chair doubled up as a lounge chair when people came over was important. The IKEA Nils is perfect and even has my own bottom indented in it because I reside there so much.
Fellow itzy, bitzy, teenie, weenie flat occupants I hope this has come in handy and actually I’ve just treated my similarly small outside area to a bit of a Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen Changing Rooms-stylée makeover (who remembers that?! ’90’s kid alert) which I’ll be popping up sometime this week. I’m blaming my recent trip to IKEA, normal beauty programming will resume once I’ve assembled all my purchases…
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