Invest In This Type Of Furniture To Keep Your Small Space Clutter-Free

Condos and apartments may have less floor area than detached houses, but their dwellers' needs are not that different. Whether you live in a house or an apartment, you might want to entertain guests, host lavish dinner parties, or surrender yourself to a night of peace and tranquility. A house affords enough space to enjoy all these tasks without worrying about clutter or moving furniture around to suit the activity of the moment. Smaller condos and apartments often don't, with the limited floor space constraining your ability to have all the furniture you need without feeling cluttered.

Using folding furniture is a hack that allows you to maximize small spaces, and any part of a smaller home can benefit from folding furniture. In the living room, folding tables and chairs can give you precious breathing room, while a foldout sofa lets you accommodate guests or even members of the household without taking up much space. The great thing is that folding furniture does not need to look cheap, plastic, and institutional. Plenty of furniture manufacturers are getting creative with folding furniture designs that give you elegant pieces you love to look at — even if you fold and hide them from time to time.

Your home's living, dining, and cooking areas are the hubs of entertainment, family meals, and also much-needed quiet time. But if these spaces are small, accommodating all the different functions can be impossible. For example, how do you enjoy a quiet night if the space is cluttered with chairs and a large dinner table takes up half the floor?

Opting for folding furniture is one small living room idea that makes your space look bigger. Take this Trojan Console Table from Expand Furniture. The focal point of the set is the dinner table, which comes with folding side panels. When the panels are extended, the table measures over 5 feet in length and more than 3 feet in width, dimensions that easily accommodate four diners. With the panels folded, the table turns into a storage cabinet for the four folding chairs that come with the set. The wheels on two of the table's legs make it easy to wheel it into a corner when you're done dining.

If you're looking to utilize a small kitchen space for smaller, informal dinners, consider a folding table that provides storage for dinnerware, china, or flatware instead. For instance, this 52.76-inch folding table from Wayfair conveniently folds out when you need to dine, then allows you to fold the panels down to conceal your china, cutlery, or other kitchen and dining items.

In a small bedroom, the footprint of a bed can take up so much space, making the bedroom essentially unusable. For instance, the standard size of a queen-sized bed is 60 inches by 80 inches — that's 5 feet by 6.67 feet, or over 33 square feet. The minimum legal size of a bedroom in a population-dense city, such as New York City, is just 80 square feet. With a bed eating up almost half this space, plus the dresser, nightstands, and other indispensable bedroom furniture adding to the clutter, you barely have enough space to walk around the room.

Murphy beds (and other types of wall beds) offer one of the best ways to make the most of a small bedroom. This type of bed is typically built into a large cabinet that you can use to store other items. In its folded position, you won't even know the bed is there, as the frame and mattress are hidden behind the cabinet doors. With the bed out of the way during the daytime, the bedroom can assume a number of other functions. You can use it as a play area for your little one, a home office, or a gym. Then, when it's time to sleep, you open the cabinet doors and retract the bed from its folded position. The springs (or pistons) attached between the bed frame and the cabinet enable you to perform this task quickly and without exerting too much effort.