The “Touch It” Rule Is the Smartest Small-Space Tip I’ve Heard (I’ve Been Editing House Tours for 10 Years!)

Written by

Adrienne BreauxHouse Tour Director at AT Media
Adrienne BreauxHouse Tour Director at AT Media
For more than 10 years, I've led Apartment Therapy's real home content, producing thousands of house tours from around the world. Currently, I live in my maximalist dream home in New Orleans, Louisiana, with my partner, a perfect dog, and a cute cat.
published Jul 12, 2024
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Large sectional in apartment living room.

Suzi Siegel is not only an author of a book about the tiniest things in NYC, Tiny New York, she also owns her own tiny piece of NYC — a smart and stylish 500-square-foot studio apartment she’s been living in for seven years. While she hasn’t done too many major renovations to her small apartment (the kitchen and bathroom have remained mostly untouched, for instance), she’d done a lot of little things to make life more functional and beautiful in her petite home.

She’s made sure to avoid a lot of clutter in the space (especially on flat surfaces) and definitely makes sure that anything on the floor has more than one purpose. She also suggests that small-space dwellers “take advantage of vertical space,” she writes. “I have a pink locker that goes almost to the ceiling where I store my workout gear and garden stuff. Some of my artwork also goes up really high, and my plants are on shelves that go to the ceiling.”

But some of her very best advice for small-space living is actually unexpected. And involves asking yourself a question. 

“If you’re deciding whether to spend real money on something or a minimal amount on something, ask yourself this: “Will I touch it every day?” Suzi begins. “If the answer is yes, then you buy the BEST version of that thing you can possibly afford.”

For Suzi, objects that she feels answer that question with a “yes” are things like mattress and bedding, an office chair, a desk lamp, a coffee maker, and a toilet seat (“don’t settle for a plastic toilet seat, you deserve better,” she writes.). She also suggests that if you’re someone who cooks a lot, you should invest in a frying pan and knife. 

For those who live in studio apartments, she also suggests investing in a “good air purifier.” (She says that if the kitchen is in the middle of the space, “it can make everything smell like chicken when you cook. No one wants their bed and clothing to smell like the kitchen.”) For Suzi, because she also believes that anything that takes up floor space should have more than on purpose, she suggests a joint purifier and fan by Dyson. 

“If you cheap out on any of these things, you’re cheating yourself,” she writes as a final bit of wisdom.