Click play for an audio narration of the post below!
Now that I’ve (hopefully) convinced you that settling in to a short-term environment is worth it, I thought I’d give a bit of a sequel to last week’s post by outlining my best advice on how to do just that. If you haven’t read the first part to this teensy little series (“Why Make A Home In The Hallway?”), I suggest doing that first and then coming back – it’s helpful to have the “why” before the “how”.
Before we really begin with the practical tips, I think it’s worth airing out the usual restrictions that can make this effort a challenge. Starting with the obvious – if you’re renting or living in someone else’s house, you probably don’t have free reign over the cosmetic upgrades you might prefer. Changing the type of flooring, the permanent light fixtures, or the size of the room is pretty much out of the question. In many cases, painting or hanging up heavy objects may also be against the rules. Beyond those outside impositions, though, as a point of common sense you probably won’t want to spend too much money or time pouring into a space that you hope to leave behind quickly.
That’s all completely understandable! But fear not – I still have ideas for how to circumvent these barriers to make your living space feel at least slightly more personal.
My final preamble is this: these suggestions will range from “obvious” to “slightly less obvious” – I am not claiming to have any ground-breaking or world-changing ideas here! My goal is to get all these thoughts into one place as a bit of a guide for anyone out there who is tired of living in the hallway (as I have been, over the last several years) and wants to feel at home again.
I’ve also divided these things between two categories – organizational and aesthetic – in an effort to acknowledge that they require different kinds of resources. Some things in the aesthetic category may not be feasible for you, depending on your specific situation or how financially limited you are. But everyone has stuff they already own to organize and arrange, so most things in the organizational category should be applicable to anyone.
So, without further ado:
A Guide To Making The Hallway Feel Like Home
First, Let’s Get Organized
1. Prioritize Order
As I said before, everybody’s got stuff. No matter how small your temporary space is, you still have to figure out how to house all of your important belongings in whatever space is available to you. I think the most important step in making a place feel like home is prioritizing keeping things tidy.
That means different things to different people! For me, it means that 2-3 times a week I make a concerted effort to gather up all my stuff that’s out of place and put it back where it belongs. It’s not realistic for me to keep my space free of clutter 100% of the time! But I can certainly spare 15 minutes (I literally set a timer for it!) every couple of days to mosey around and put everything right – and it makes a huuuuge difference in how I feel at home. There are a couple of other things that play directly into this effort as well… so read on :)
2. Use This Opportunity To Downsize Your Stuff
I have found that one of the most crucial parts in actually executing number 1 is being reasonable about what you do and don’t need. Assuming that your temporary living situation is smaller than you want it to be, this is actually a great opportunity to go through what you own and truly declutter. Sometimes, all it takes to realize what’s really important to you (and, consequently, what isn’t) is literally not having enough space for everything.
It can feel really good to get rid of things that are no longer serving a helpful purpose in your life. Everyone has stuff that they like to collect, even if it’s unintentional – old clothing that doesn’t get worn anymore (or new clothing that never got worn in the first place), knick-knacks that only hold traces of sentimental value, or random files and office supplies that you hold onto on the (extremely) off chance you’ll need them again sometime.
Moving into a place that doesn’t feel like yours is the perfect time to identify what does feel like yours; and then get rid of all the extra junk. All it does is clutter things up, and the last thing you need is extra clutter in a time like this!
3. Give All Of Your “Used Daily” Items A Proper Home
There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re always hunting for the same stuff every day. Not only that, but tidying is completely useless if you don’t have designated locations for all the stuff you’re trying to tidy! Dedicating specific spots for the things you’re always looking for – or for the things you always find laying around – will be absolutely key in successfully (and quickly!) “resetting” your place to order.
There is one really simple thing I ask myself when going about this process: Where does this item naturally want to land? All it takes is a little case study of yourself over the course of a few days, and you can find out what your own patterns are. Once you figure it out, just make a home for that item as close to that place as possible! When you set your keys down somewhere, where do you find them when you’re hunting for them later? On the kitchen counter? Put a hook up – make it permanent!
I find that doing it this way ensures that I’m actually picking locations for my items that will serve me well, instead of forcing myself to conform to a location that doesn’t feel natural. Expanding this system to include as many of your belongings as possible will help you avoid the frustration of constantly cleaning up after yourself – instead, your natural habits do it for you. Just because you won’t be there forever doesn’t mean you should be constantly inconvenienced by simply trying to *exist* with your own stuff!
4. With The Rest… Get Creative!
Sometimes it requires a little bit of creativity to fully utilize all the space you’re given. Finding unique ways of containing and stashing your things is vital in maximizing the storage space available to you – particularly if we assume that you’re in a place that’s smaller than you’d want. There are a lot of stupid organizational hacks out there, but there are also a lot of good ones! You truly don’t have to spend much money to make specialized places for your items to live when they aren’t being used.
You can be creative with where you store your things, too. Make the space under your bed usable for something other than just shoving away your mess; attach things to the backs and insides of doors; hang stuff on the wall instead of putting it on the floor – there are endless ways to take advantage of unused space, and it goes a long way in making things feel more orderly.
Now, Let’s Make It More Aesthetically Pleasing
1. Get Creative With Arranging What You Have
You may be stuck with the size of your space, the color of the carpet, or the hideous ceiling fan; you may even be stuck with what furniture the room, either because you can’t afford anything else or you’re utilizing someone else’s choices (as was the case for us last year). But you sure as heck can rearrange that furniture and give it the best possible chance to be useful to you during this time!
This was very important to me when we were living with our friends from church, because the furniture was provided for us and the room was arranged differently than I would have done it. But we had gracious landlords, and they allowed us to move things around to a setup that felt better for our needs! Doing this enabled us to create different “stations” that accommodated our daily-use items, like making a space for our coat rack and shoe tray to be in the same spot.
2. Bring Outside In!
Nothing does more to liven a space than literally bringing life into it. Buy a plant! Even if you’re not confident in your plant-tending skills, there are so many options out there that are virtually unkillable. Just be aware of your space’s natural light – this will make a difference in what kinds of plants will thrive there. But there are still plenty of plants that can easily live in low light!
If you’re still not convinced, buy fresh flowers a couple times a month. You can make them last 2+ weeks if you get the right type and you’re consistent about refilling the water. Even faux blooms are better than nothing, as long as they’re decently convincing. In any case, flowers or plants will naturally bring color into your home and keep it feeling fresh.
3. Avoid Using “The Big Light”
If your rental space is like mine, the built-in overhead lights (or, as we call them, “The Big Lights”) are kind of aggressive. I used to think that lamps were a waste of time when you can just flip the light switch that’s already built-in… and if your existing lighting is nice and/or adjustable, that may be true! But harsh lighting is all too common in rental spaces – and incorporating a few well-placed floor lamps, plug-in pendants, and table lamps is the best remedy to that. Good lighting is one of the foundations of having an inviting space, and it also goes a long way in covering other imperfections about the space that you’d prefer to hide.
In our current apartment, we avoid the overhead lights at all costs because they’re soooo harsh. It’s not a problem during the daytime, because we get a lot of natural light, but we quickly realized that we needed lamps all over the place if we didn’t want to be literally shielding our eyes in our own home at night or in the wee hours of the morning. The most “unusual” place we put up extra lighting was in our kitchen – we have a plug-in pendant lamp hanging over our sink, under-cabinet puck lights (battery operated), and a little lamp sitting on our counter. Getting your breakfast together at 6 am before work is made significantly worse when your only option for illumination in your kitchen is reminiscent of staring directly into the sun.
4. Only Buy Things You Know You’ll Want To Take With You
Maybe you do have a little bit of free income to buy a few things here and there – and if you do, definitely go for it! But I suggest making sure you only buy décor items that are transferrable to the next place you live. By that, I mainly mean that you should avoid purchasing decorative things just because they’re “good enough” for this place. Because, inevitably, you will move on from this place; but that doesn’t mean you have to scrap everything you buy in the process.
Buying things that you love, that genuinely fit your style, and that feel versatile enough to incorporate into a future space is a much better use of your resources – not to mention the fact that it can help you get excited about your future home, with a tangible way to interact with that excitement in the now. Why waste money on the “just okay” things, when you can buy things you’ll actually like for years to come?
We sort of took this idea to new heights with our last place, and we actually spent the year accumulating furniture from Facebook Marketplace and other thrift stores in preparation for our future apartment. It can take a long time to thrift specific kinds of home items, and we already needed a storage unit for other reasons, so we figured we might as well take advantage of the space! It was wonderful, because then when it was time for us to move we already had almost everything we needed ready to go – and it was stuff we actually loved because we took our time collecting it.
Bonus: Decorate For Holidays!
This is a minor one, so it’s more of an honorable mention, but don’t neglect decorating for the holidays just because you aren’t in a permanent home yet! If you celebrate major holidays like Christmas, then it can feel pretty lame to not have your environment reflect that celebration. We love being festive for Christmas, so even when we we just had our bedroom to decorate we still put up a little tree and got a couple other seasonal décor items to make it feel special.
So those are my best tips on where to start if you’re unsure of how to establish yourself in a transitional phase. These things are only surface level, obviously; the real heart change has to come from prayer and learning to trust in the Lord’s timing. But these things will give you a physical way to fight against constantly yearning for your future home and, instead, move toward living in the “now”. The yearning and dreaming will always be there – but that doesn’t mean we have to live in a state of unsettledness in the meantime.
Have you ever been in a transitional phase? What was something that worked for you during that time? I’d love to hear your story :)
That’s all for now – peace out, peeps!
Love,
One response to “How To Make The Hallway Feel Like Home”
Great tips! I hope you are getting lots of positive feedback♥️