When moving from rental to rental, you can often find yourself feeling a bit at sea and never truly at home anywhere. However, with just a few clever decorating and organizing tips, you can fashion any house or apartment into a home.
Here are eight tips provided by serial renters on how they approach turning their temporary nest into a more homey one.
1. Find Your Own Color Palette
Most rentals tend to use a neutral color scheme. It’s not only easier to maintain, but it enables every tenant to add a personal touch if they want to.
What this means for you is simple: invest in colorful, vibrant, or subdued and understated pieces of your own that will elevate that neutral decor of the rental. As long as your own pieces match each other, chances are, they will match the neutral surroundings too.
2. Know Your Non-Negotiables
When you move around a lot, you soon start to discern what it is you absolutely need in an apartment. Perhaps you love to take baths and can’t imagine living with just the shower? Maybe you love to have a bit of outdoor space and need a terrace in your home? Perhaps you need a place to store your bike?
Write down a list of deal-breakers and non-negotiables. It will help you find apartments that are essentially similar and that provide the same level of comfort you require.
3. Removable Wall Decor
If you don’t like the walls in your new rental, you can easily change them with the help of either removable stickers, art, or wallpaper. It will certainly take some time to redecorate, but as you can easily restore the room to what it once was, no landlord will mind your little decorating adventure.
Consider how much you want to change in a space before you rent it, though. If there’s too much work and you find you really wouldn’t feel at home unless you redecorated thoroughly, perhaps you would be better off in a different space.
4. Bring Your Own Light
Sometimes, carrying your own light bulbs and LED strips with you from rental to rental is what truly makes the space feel more like home. Fairy lights also come in handy. You can easily add them to any room in the new place to create a nice ambience.
On the other hand, you may want to refrain from lugging lamps around. You never know if they will fit, and having to store them off-site will only be an added expense.
5. Invest in a Plant Oasis
Plants are not just a great way to add a touch of personality to any space. They’re also incredibly soothing, and they provide some much-needed air purification. So, having your own plant school can truly take any new space to cozier heights. Ultimately, your plant oasis can prove to be that one connection between all the different homes you lived in.
There are plenty of low-maintenance species that will be happy in different kinds of environments. You can even grow your own herbs if there is enough space in the kitchen window. This added element will also provide that homey feeling to unfamiliar spaces.
6. A Personal History
The one thing that truly makes a house a home is the owner’s personal touch. And even when you are not the owner, you can still let that personal touch spill into the rented apartment.
There’s one caveat, though: try not to accumulate too many decorative possessions, as they will only make moving more difficult. Instead, focus your attention on several key pieces that you honestly adore.
This can be a piece of art, a series of prints, a photo gallery wall you can easily disassemble and take with you, your collection of beer caps, champagne corks, or postcards. Depending on your personal style, these items may be more elegant or more sentimental. But as long as they feel welcoming to you, keep investing in them year after year.
7. A Creature of Comfort
One item that you probably want to buy and take with you to any new place is your mattress. That’s because a mattress in an existing rental are unlikely to be of good quality. And since we spend about one-third of our lives sleeping, having a good mattress is important.
There are lots of options, but hybrid mattresses are usually a good choice as they combine many of the best features. You can also invest in an easy to (dis)assemble frame, and take that with you too. In that case, all you need is some adequate floor space.
8. Making Life Easier
Finally, you also want to ensure all the items that make life easier for you are there at all times. These might be drawer organizers, clothing racks, a specific set of kitchen utensils, a closet organizer, certain cleaning tools, and so on. Whatever you’re used to having, make sure you have it with you from home to home.
Each new space will naturally feel different, but you want to do more than adapt to it. If you manage to adjust the rental to your own needs, you will manage to feel at home no matter where you happen to find yourself.
Final Thoughts
With the help of our tips, you can make any rented space feel much more like home. More importantly, you can make it feel more like you. True, it will mean lugging more boxes around, and you will need to do some minor decorating and re-adjusting every time you move. But this can be a small price to pay for that feeling of being at home with your surroundings. That’s a feeling we all love and thrive on.
