Apartment Essentials: Balance

By Lev Novak

Here at uCribs this week, I’ll be updating the blog every day with a special eye to each of five possible priorities: location, price, stuff, people, and balance. Which should you emphasize? Which do you care about?

Today we’ll be talking about balance.

What Is It?

Balance is what ties everything together in your house and life. Balance isn’t just about an equal amount of everything; it’s a term used for the spiritual energy of the apartment that you live in. Balance, in short, is about all the qualities that are hard to define and understand that affects the energy in your apartment.

How to Evaluate

You can evaluate the balance of your apartment by how it feels. Do you want to go back to your apartment at night? Are you happy to show it off? If you were dating someone nearby, would you bring them over, or would their place be the central zone. Look around. Is this a place you could show your parents? I mean, obviously it isn’t- but would your siblings be embarrassed to see it?

Similarly, you have to think about if there’s anything wrong with your house. You’d know if there was; if you were living around an annoying roommate’s schedule, or if you loathed your shower. But another key component of balance is figuring out what’s missing from an apartment. The good news is while these other factors: room-mates, utilities, location and more can’t be changed later, you can alter the balance of your apartment as you go with nothing more than a little time, a touch of ambition, and the sense to work a little harder for a better apartment.

How to Beat The System

There are a lot of ways to improve the vibe of your apartment, but a lot of them would be pretty expensive or difficult. The trick is to find cheap or free ways to make your apartment better without changing anything with the people, place, or things.

First: try and rearrange your furniture. In a small apartment, the floor-use of space can change the amount of usable space you actually have. Next, open up windows and leave your shades up: extra light and air will make your apartment seem cleaner and smelling better, even without any extra work.

Similarly, cool art is immensely cheap and immensely helpful. Get some cool posters for the house- unique, smart, cool ones. Searching online is the most difficult part of that equation: you can get some of the greatest works of art across the world on your wall for less than $15 dollars.

In a desperate situation, clean your apartment: it’s free, modestly easy, and it’ll improve the vibe and feel of your apartment easily. Don’t make a chore wheel: people hate chores. Instead, do it yourself. People are going to follow your lead, and by keeping it as a positive choice you’ll keep the vibe good. Avoid conflict and keep things upbeat: that’ll also help your house, and again, it’s free.

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