Best Ways to Make Your Apartment Your Home This Spring

By Danielle Wirsansky on January 18, 2016

When you’re in college, you often learn the difference between a house and a home. You might be in your hometown with family and let slip, “I have to go home soon.”

“Home?” your family will say. “This is home.”

So what is the difference between your house (whether it be a house, an apartment, or a dorm room) and home, and how can you bridge the gap?

Making the space that you live in a majority of the year your own is important; it improves your morale, making you want to spend more time in the space, which in turn will help you get your work done and your grades to increase.

There’s no major downside to personalizing your space, so here are some ways to make your “house” your home this spring.

1. Art

twitrcovers.com

Everyone has their own unique style and art is no exception. There’s always art we adore and other kinds that we cannot stand and wouldn’t condone in our homes. Most of us can’t paint our walls but at least we can decorate them.

So choose what you like best, whether that be giant paintings that take up an entire wall, photographs of your favorite places placed artfully in a cluster, sculptures on side tables, or hand painted canvases you’ve made yourself on your own time.

If you like clean lines, find something stream lined. If you like color, find yourself a veritable rainbow. Whatever you are looking for, rest assured, it exists. Find something that makes you happy or introspective, or whatever feeling it is that art evokes in you.

Every time you pass by, look at it, and answer a question about it from someone who’s just seeing it for the first time — all of that will hit home, making your house your home.

2. Photos

pexels.com

Photos are a way of visiting another time, place, or world, whether you’ve been there or not. Every time you look at a personal photo that you took or that you and your loved ones are in, you are transported if just for a moment.

It is touches like that that can make a sterile, impersonal space yours. They are your memories, your family, your friends, your stories captured on paper. Especially if you live in an overall shared space, these are either in your room or your specific space.

These pictures are for you and what makes you happy. These photos and all the people and places in them are your home — and so they’ll help make your apartment feel like home too.

3. A Full Wardrobe

pexels.com

This might sound strange at first, but many college students leave half their wardrobe with their parents and keep only the wardrobe of the season with them due to a lack of space. Why have winter clothes taking up your valuable room when it’s hot and sunny out? Why bother keeping tank tops and flip flops if it’s snowing?

But seasons change, and we don’t always get to go back to our parent’s whenever we need to. School takes priority and sometimes, it can take weeks before the opportunity to trade wardrobes comes up. And what about when the weather is wishy-washy and can’t make up its mind about what season it wants to be? Do you wear your winter clothes or your summer?

Having options and treating your apartment like it really is a more permanent place that you live in rather than a place that you just sleep at between school and visits back with family will make it feel more like home. Filling your apartment with your own belongings makes it belong to you more; and it makes you belong to it more too.

4. A Work Space

pexels.com

Let’s face it; we’ve all got tons of work to do. In order to do it most effectively it’s best if you have a space in your apartment to do it in. Having that personal space in which you can be your most productive is a true component of what makes your apartment your home. It’s where you get stuff done but it’s also where you get to be you.

Find that space that you can do whatever it is you need to do, whether that be homework, writing, painting, etc. Think of the qualifications you need the space to meet such as its proximity to an outlet, the noise level, the lighting.

Find a space that works for you to get your work done. It can be the soft squishy armchair away from the television in your living room with its own lamp, side table, and foot stool just for you. It can be at the patio table on your balcony where you are inundated with fresh air and plant life. It can be at your kitchen table, where food and snacks are in easy access.

Whatever you need to do to be you, do it. By making your apartment an extension of yourself, you’re one step closer to making it a home.

Follow Uloop

Apply to Write for Uloop News

Join the Uloop News Team

Discuss This Article

Get Top Stories Delivered Weekly

Back to Top

Log In

Contact Us

Upload An Image

Please select an image to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format
OR
Provide URL where image can be downloaded
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format

By clicking this button,
you agree to the terms of use

By clicking "Create Alert" I agree to the Uloop Terms of Use.

Image not available.

Add a Photo

Please select a photo to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format