The Struggle of Small-Space Living

I’ll let you in on a little secret – I’m a bonafide city dweller. My husband, our kid, and I live in an 850 square-foot apartment in Brooklyn. Before you start questioning my life choices, let me just say that I’m mostly happy with the situation. Except for one thing – it puts a ton of pressure on my living room.

I would love to be a person with clutter-free countertops and perfectly clear pathways (did I mention the elderly cat who is perpetually underfoot?). But let’s be honest, I don’t have that kind of space. Furnished with a couch, a coffee table, a small dining table, and a TV, the living room is our go-to spot for family dinners, movie nights, hangouts with friends, and endless rounds of UNO. And that’s just on weekends.

On weekdays, after my husband heads off to work and my son goes to school, the room doubles as a home office/private fitness studio. When my 8-year-old comes home, he usually does his homework and various art projects at the dining table (the desk in his bedroom is often covered in Lego pieces, library books, and goody-bag junk). It’s a dizzying amount of activity for one 10-by-13-foot room to handle.

My Organizational Secret Weapon

Contrary to what you might think, my personal aesthetic isn’t “hoarder.” That’s why I need my organizational secret weapon – five tidy baskets lined up under the couch. These well-made woven baskets have lasted for years, and they have a smooth surface and a handle on either end, so they slide in and out of low spaces without catching or fraying.

I bought them because they were the right height (4 inches) and dark enough not to draw attention to themselves. Not all heroes crave the spotlight, and in this case, they’re strong supporting characters that genuinely make my life better.

Baskets to the Rescue

Take my home gym, for example – a few sets of dumbbells, ankle weights, resistance bands, a yoga block, and a Pilates ball. I love exercising at home using a fitness app because I can fit in a 28-minute class multiple times a week instead of figuring out how to jam an hour-long yoga-studio class plus commute time plus a shower into my schedule. Consistency pays off, and I’ve gotten noticeably stronger since I started working out in my apartment. Still, do I want my living room to look like a Planet Fitness? Absolutely not. That’s where baskets number one and two come in, housing a Tetris-like pile of workout gear. When I’m ready to use it, I pull out the baskets, and as soon as I roll up my yoga mat, away they go.

Basket number three is straightforward with a surprisingly big payoff – magazines. My husband and I still enjoy reading on paper, but we’re less enthusiastic about the piles that build up more quickly than we can get through them. A basket is the perfect place to store magazines, and much to my continued delight, I don’t even have to get off the couch to grab one.

The next basket is something I’ll generously call a portable art studio. This is a vestige of the pandemic days when we hosted four kindergartners for a remote-school pod once a week. They’d show up at 8:30 am armed with their tablets, headphones, and lunch boxes. Because my son and his friends were only 4 and 5 at the time, many of their projects involved drawing, cutting, and coloring. Transforming my apartment into a kid-friendly classroom got quite a bit easier when I realized I could toss crayons, paints, glue sticks, and safety scissors into a basket, which I’d whip out every Tuesday and then hide the rest of the time. Now that in-person school is mercifully back in session, my son’s friends still know where to find art supplies on the quick when they come over. This art-supplies basket is also handy for things like making homemade valentines (one of our favorite annual rituals) and lazy Sunday Dogman drawing contests.

Basket number five is dedicated to my work. Now, I’ll be honest with you, when you’ve worked from home for as long as I have (on and off for well over a decade) without a dedicated home office, the spillover is tough to contain. I have a file cabinet and a printer in my living room, which is not ideal from a decorating standpoint, nor does it really say “relax” or “let’s party.” So be it. My cabinets are filled with notebooks and folders and business cards. I’m a writer and editor, and I’ve come to accept that collecting paper is part of the job. But for papers and books that are actively in use, I find an easy-to-access basket helps contain the clutter. Where I otherwise might (and by “might,” I mean I’ve done this frequently) leave a stack of printouts on the dining table next to my laptop and hope my family just ignores them, it takes almost no effort to tuck them away under the couch overnight and reach for them the next morning.

Sturdy, Durable, and Versatile

My baskets are solidly built. They’re not floppy or collapsible like picnic baskets, and they have cutouts on both the front and the back that make sliding them out and putting them away easy. They come in three colors – black, tan, and light neutral – so there are plenty of options to blend in with various couch and rug combos. Mine have lasted for years without fraying or catching on the rug, despite being handled frequently by a wild band of elementary schoolers.

I have the black ones, and I will say that some of the stain has transferred onto my candy-colored neoprene hand weights, which I don’t love. If you plan to store similar items (heavy, matte objects) under your couch, it might be worth going for the neutral choice. These baskets are 4 inches high and 14 inches long, and when I bought them, I wasn’t yet working for Sofas Spectacular. My process for picking them out was decidedly unscientific. Since then, I’ve looked into a handful of lower-priced options, and I’m pleased to say that I’m still satisfied with my choice.

Putting the Baskets to the Test

For testing, I filled the contenders with my heaviest cargo – two sets of hand weights totaling 28 pounds – and then tried sliding them in and out from under the couch. The Hay Recycled Colour Crate looks great, but it’s foldable, which means pushing it under the couch caused the front of the bin to unsnap every time. Annoying. I would use it elsewhere, like in my son’s room, but not for under-couch or under-bed organization.

The same goes for these StorageWorks Large Storage Baskets, which come in cost-effective pairs. Unfortunately, they don’t have handles, and the wicker felt noticeably rough against my living room rug. The Medium Underbed Basket bought at Michaels is a good size and aesthetically pleasing, however, I’m not convinced it would stand up to the kind of repetitive push-pull action I’ve put my baskets through. The raffia is woven in a way that leaves lots of loose ends, and the handles are thin. I wouldn’t call them flimsy, but they’re clearly not meant to support almost 30 pounds of weight. It seems better suited to decorative use.

This stretched-out version from The Container Store looks identical to the one that came from Michaels, just bigger. Actually, it’s enormous – to make it fit, I’d have to position it horizontally, where it would eat up most of the storage space. For me, having multiple small baskets is preferable to one or two large ones because categorizing my stuff is part of the overall organizational strategy. But if you wanted something to stow shoes in under your bed, for instance, this could be a good choice.

Maintaining Order

I keep my baskets tidy by periodically sorting through the magazines, cycling out old art supplies, and sifting through my work pile so the bins don’t become the spot where old junk goes to rot. Like any object that lives on the floor, they can collect dust and pet hair, so occasionally, I have to wipe down the insides with a damp rag or paper towel.

I’ve always been impressed by city dwellers who find endlessly creative solutions to our small-space problems. Do I always love that my living room has to wear so many hats? Of course not. But like so many New Yorkers, I consider the various strange accommodations we make – like stashing important stuff in otherwise dark, dead spaces – to be a badge of honor.