Sometimes apartment living isn’t fun. Your place may seem overpriced, thin walled, or maybe even super small. But apartment living doesn’t have to suck.

In fact, you can make your apartment feel more like home with a few tricks and save money too. Here are a few tips to make apartment living easier.

Befriend Your Landlord

It’s a smart move to be friendly with your landlord. Not only will this make apartment living easier, but if you ever have a huge emergency, your landlord is likely to put you as a priority. It’s not right for landlords to treat their tenants in a certain way, but it happens.

You don’t have to invite your landlord over for dinner every night, but being polite and letting them know you appreciate them goes a long way. Also, always pay your bills on time and try to be the best tenant you can be. A happy landlord is an easy going landlord.

Know Your Rights

Even if you’re friendly with your landlord, it is still important to know your rights as a renter. For one, make sure you read your rental contract multiple times before signing and ask questions if you have them. You should never sign something that you aren’t sure about.

Knowing your rights makes apartment living easier because you won’t have to worry about your possessions and space. For example, unless it says so in your contract, no one should be able to enter your apartment without your permission. This helps you feel more comfortable knowing that your landlord or maintenance man can’t enter without your say.

Your apartment may not be a permanent living solution, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it like home. And no home should ever make you feel unsafe.

Get an Alarm System

You may feel safer knowing your rights, but you should also invest in an alarm system! It doesn’t even have to be anything fancy. There are a ton of alarm systems that make loud noises and scare off intruders without you having to pay a monthly monitoring fee.

Now, you’ll never have to worry about leaving your apartment and belongings without being secure.

Add Simple Upgrades

Just because you live in an apartment, doesn’t mean you can’t upgrade it to your liking! Add a few shelves for storage, repaint (if allowed), and add a new shower head with all the fixings.

Changing a few things to fit your lifestyle will make apartment living easier, and will keep you from feeling deprived from simple luxuries.

Make Apartment Living Easier with Energy Fixtures

No one likes high energy bills. You may get stuck with an older apartment that has energy draining appliances and light fixtures, but you can easily fix that! For lights, you can always replace the old bulbs with LED bulbs. This may cost a little bit up front, but it will save you money in the long run and make apartment living easier.

If you have an old AC or furnace, try investing in a small heater or fans. These could help keep you cool or warm, and will also help you keep bills lower throughout the year.

Use Your Space Wisely

Using your space wisely comes in handy no matter the size of your apartment! If you plan to shop online, online furniture stores provide dimensions for all their furniture so you can determine the size that works for your space. You don’t want to walk around bumping into furniture or not be able to entertain due to clutter.

You can always add extra storage, buy a slightly smaller sofa, and even skip that extra dresser if you have a bigger closet.

Make it Homey

It can get lonely living in an apartment by yourself or away from family. If you are feeling a little homesick, make apartment living easier by making it feel like home! This could mean adding a few sentimental items, decorating your room like your room at home, or just adding pieces that remind you of your daily routines.

If you want to make bigger changes to your apartment (like installing a TV mount), make sure you have the permission to do so. While Netflix and cuddling seem like fun, it won’t be if you lose your security deposit for holes in the wall.

Create Rules (If You Have Roommates)

If you are going to be or live with roommates, have a set of rules that all need to follow! This will make apartment living easier because everyone will be held to the same standard. Nothing is worse than watching your food go missing or having an unwelcomed guest sleeping in your bed (it happens). Simple rules in a contract that everyone signs will help put everyone at ease.

Solve the Washer/Dryer Dilemma

Having to drag all of your clothes to a laundromat isn’t fun. Neither is using machines that are old, dingy, and most likely filthy. If you don’t have a washer/dryer in your apartment, buying portable ones will make apartment living easier!

There are so many different options to choose from, including automatic or manual options, all the way to a combo portable washer and dryer. Whatever you choose, make sure it works best for you!

While apartment living may not be for everyone, that doesn’t mean it has to suck. These tips will make apartment living easier and make it feel a little more like home.

9 Tips To Make Apartment Living Easier is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

It’s all about the Internet these days, as it’s generally the first place people go to look for properties and the primary way that many people communicate. In a 2016 survey, 78 percent of people in the U.S. reported that they have at least one social media account.

Landlords who put effort into developing savvy social media skills will reap due rewards in the form of better communication with tenants, more eyes on property postings, and an authentic outlet to express who they are and why people should be lining up to work with them. Let’s examine some useful ways for landlords to take advantage of all that various social media channels have to offer them.

Market Vacant Properties

You most likely already list your properties on websites that allow users to filter by parameters like price, size, and location. That’s an excellent start. But without a social media presence to back it up, you may be missing out on key referrals and eyeballs that could help you find interested parties sooner. Make sure your bio contains necessary links and information so people can reach you easily, as well as establish your credibility at a glance.

Facebook in particular lends itself well to displaying high-quality photo albums, and your past clients, friends, and family can easily tag someone they know who is looking for an apartment if your social media postings fit the bill. Or, harness the power of Facebook video. According to one study, Facebook videos get two times the number of views and seven times the engagement as embedded YouTube links. Making concise walk-through videos of your properties may be well worth your while and put you on the cutting-edge of property advertising.

Landlords can even take social media marketing one step further by using advertising features made available by various platforms. If you decide to go this route, you can set a daily spend budget and decide who to target based on your listings.

Connect to Local Community

A strong social media presence involves more than just telling the world about your services. It’s beneficial to establish deep roots with the communities that surround your properties, and there’s no better place to find out what’s happening nearby than social media. Take the time to follow some neighborhood or city groups, and let your followers know if there’s an event nearby that they may want to attend.

Zillow advises that landlords “keep it fun and make your page a resource residents will use to get updates on the 10k race next weekend, local farmers market, or apartment movie night.”

Connect with Potential and Current Tenants

There’s only so much time in the day; why not make your communication more efficient? Inviting your tenants to join a group for their building that includes timely updates may be the best way to make sure everyone stays up to date on what exactly is happening, whether it’s a water shut-off, a seasonal party, an update to the mail room policy, or a simple thank you around the holidays.

In addition to appreciating and staying in touch with current tenants, it’s important to make sure you know who’s moving into your new properties so you don’t run into misunderstandings down the line. However, it’s not always realistic to investigate every tenant to make sure they are who they claimed to be on the application, and many people enact privacy settings that keep their information under tight wraps. Streamlining your rental property management can save time and give you the true story thanks to a centralized online qualification process that leaves no stone unturned.

Manage Reputation and Feedback

People tend to be mightily honest on social media, for better or for worse. You can gain insight into what people like about your services and what you can improve by keeping an eye on your ratings across social media sites. Not every review can go your way, but it’s a good place to gather honest feedback and possibly even respond to certain postings to help tenants resolve outstanding issues.

With a little time invested up front, social media can streamline how you do business with future and current tenants. It’s a great way to let the world know who you are, what you do, and how you can expertly provide your services when it comes to renting property.

How Landlords Should Use Social Media is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

But if you’ve blown your budget buying food and shelling out money for your utilities deposits and your first month of rent, plus a deposit, what are you going to do if you need to buy furniture and accessories too? I’m going to answer that by telling you how you can decorate your first apartment on the cheap.

1 Used Furniture is OK

Sometimes when friends and family find out you are going to be moving, they will offer second hand furniture to you for free (or nearly free). If the pieces are useful to you and not junk, accept them gratefully keeping in mind furniture and lamps can be painted and some pieces can be recovered. I have been living on my own for over 6 years now and I still have some of these hand-me-down furniture pieces in my home. Don’t let your pride get in the way of accepting these free items to help you furnish and decorate your first apartment.

2 Flea Market Style

Shop at thrift stores, flea markets, and garage sales to look for pieces that have good structure. If you buy an item inexpensively, you can afford to try your hand at recovering it, even if it’s the first time you have ever done so.

The internet has plenty of DIY information to help you out. I once bought a cheap thrift store lamp, sanded it, spray painted it, and recovered the lamp shade for a whole new look. It was the first time I have ever attempted such a project, but it turned out great and I still have it in my bedroom today. It’s even sitting on a second-hand side table that I spray painted a fun green color to match with my bedding.

3 Buy Multifunctional

Storage can be an issue if your apartment is a small one, so whenever possible, think about storage in your pieces. For example, a trunk makes a great coffee table and can store extra linens and blankets. A basket under a side table can hold books and magazines. Two short shelving units or two drawer filing cabinets with an old door on top could become a work table or desk. Multifunctional pieces offer storage and help cut down on the amount of money you have to spend to decorate your first apartment.

4 Accessories

One you have your larger furniture pieces, it’s time for the icing. Cheap paintings that are large make great wall art. Put them in frames of the same color or mat them with all black, or white, mats to unify them. Or, Hang three recovered bulletin boards close together and pin photos to them.

I recently made my own wall art for my home office by painting two canvases from Hobby Lobby and Mod Podge-ing peacock feathers to them. They turned out great and everyone that comes into my space asks me where I bought them because they look high dollar. In reality, they cost me less than $20 to make!

5 Group like Items

If you have a collection of cheap thrift store vases or candle holders you want to display, group them in odd numbers on a tray on your table for a visually pleasing center piece. When arranging inexpensive art or photos, put one oversized piece in the center, or even slightly off center, and group smaller pictures around it.

How you furnish and decorate your first apartment is entirely up to you, but I hope these tips will help you. Remember, you don’t have to buy everything at once, so get what you must, take your time with the rest, and have fun with it. You’ll never get another chance to decorate your first apartment.

Can you think of any other ways to decorate your first apartment on the cheap?

How to Decorate Your First Apartment on the Cheap is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

Fast forward into adulthood and living in an apartment makes me lose faith in humanity.

Guys, humans are ANNOYING.

In the past five years of apartment living, I’ve lived in a wide variety. Nice, new buildings, apartments in houses, houses converted into apartments, and old, not so nice buildings. It doesn’t matter what type of building you live in, the annoyingness of human beings just can’t be escaped.

Apartment living sucks!

I get it. I’m annoying too. I bark and growl (loudly) at my dog when we play. Sometimes, I play music really loud when I’m cleaning on Sunday mornings and I’m sorry, but if your clothes are hanging out in the dryer all dry but taking up space, I’m the woman that will take it out (underwear and all) and dump it on the top of the machine so that I can use the machine. Get over it.

But man, my neighbors have really taken the cake. Apartment living is what makes me hate renting so, unbelievably much.

As proof that apartment living sucks, I have, in the span of 4 years, had neighbors that have done or currently do the following:

• I used to live under a drug-dealer couple and their young baby. They would have drug induced parties where they would laugh, at the same pitch, volume, and inflection for ten minutes straight (loudly) at 2:00 AM, with their baby screaming and shut in the next room (the one right above us) and nobody tending to it. And I was told by many people that it would be inappropriate to call CPS.

• A building that J and I lived in had a property manager who was in his 50’s, dating a girl with whom I went to school. He met her because she was his daughter’s roommate. They spent that summer drinking at the pool and he fired all of the groundskeepers in a drunken rage one day. He didn’t hire new ones and that winter, when trying to go down to the underground parking, somebody slid into the garage door because we didn’t have anyone to shovel or salt the driveway.

• A building wherein every Sunday morning, 7:00 AM sharp, like clockwork, a grown man would stand outside by his truck, right outside our balcony doors, and barf.

• This same building, and the same man, would frequently put porn on his 70+” TV screen (which faced the window) and leave the blinds up. And watch it. During the day.

• A building with two dogs that lived above us that never shut up. They also had a habit of pooping by the door that separated us and their apartment, which was neither sound nor smell proof.

• A neighbor who, in a crack-induced fit, yelled at his girlfriend upstairs that he was going to throw her off of the balcony. That fight lasted for over 11 hours, until I called the cops.

• An upstairs neighbour who passed out drunk with the taps still on, causing flooding in his kitchen and therefore our dining room. We woke up at 3:00 AM because the light fixtures were pouring water. When we went upstairs to figure out what was going on, he answered the door naked, left it open, and went back to bed.

• A neighbour who knocked on our door to asked if we had $20 to spare.

While I’m living in these torture boxes, I can’t help but constantly dream about moving into a single family dwelling and getting out of apartments. Truly, apartment living sucks!

What about you – how do you feel about apartment living? Do you think apartment living sucks?

Why Apartment Living Sucks is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.