Hello my lovely readers! Are you ready for a long, picture-heavy post? I’ve been feeling good about the way our home looks lately. I’ve been making small changes since we first moved here three years ago, switching some decor items around, adding a plant here and there… And recently some of what I considered long overdue “finishing touches” finally got done, so I’ve been really excited to show you how our little Amsterdam single bedroom appartment looks at the moment.
One of the things I love the most is a good interior before and after, even if the changes are small, and I really enjoy seeing how a home slowly morphs over time. If you like, you can watch the initial home tour I did a few weeks after we moved in. Most of the furniture remains the same, but there have definitely been some changes in the details and styling. Back then I still needed to figure out what to do with some awkward spaces, but now we’ve found a good balance that’s both functional and aesthetically pleasing to us.
Welcome to our 2020 updated home tour, aka “IKEA should pay me for this”. Love me some IKEA furniture. Alright, let’s dive in!
Living Room
Let’s start in the biggest space: the livingroom. Although it’s the biggest, it’s still very small, so in furnishing it we prioritised what would suit our lifestyle. We love having friends over, so a large seating area was a must for us. Hence the large corner sectional, which might just be a bit out of proportion, haha! It’s perfect for long D&D sessions and drinking lots of tea :)
My beloved plant corner.
I knew I wanted a huge book case that should serve as a space to display our most precious books of course, but also display some decor, hold the television and gaming consoles, and provide storage. This combination of three IKEA Billy’s is perfect for us right now. Everything fits in it perfectly, and it’s really easy to re-style if I get tired of my current decorations.
Our decor pieces are a combination of personal items, handmade art, plants and purely decorational items we’ve collected over the years. The perfect combination, if you ask me!
Opposite of the bookcase is our sectional and coffee table, all on a nice and soft fluffy rug. We’re shoes off indoors type of people, and this rug is perfect for resting your feet on, as well as sitting on during movie nights (or when we have more guests than seats, haha).
I love the small, curated collection of throw pillows we currently have. They’re minimal, but just what the space needs.
Under the coffee table we have Robbert’s ukelele, our Harry Potter wand TV remote (yes, that’s a thing), and a box of my current knitting projects.
I love how the two guitars come together with the paintings and hanging plant to form almost a galery wall.
The dragon puppet was made by my dad by the way, just like all the other wooden figurines around the house.
On the windowsill we keep a little greenhouse with two plants.
Next to the bookcase is my biggest eye sore, and my favourite part of the house at the same time: our giant rat cage. We have four little boys living with us who are my greatest joy. The cage is bigger than we had calculated when moving in (we decided to replace our smaller old cage soon after moving), so it’s kind of awkwardly wedged inbetween the bookcase and our dining table. It fits though, and it’s the right size for the rats, which is the only thing that matters.
We decided to go for a bar table as our dining table. I found some images of rooms styled with bar tables on Pinterest and loved the look, and Robbert really liked the idea too so we went ahead and got one. It’s surprisingly comfortable to sit by even for longer periods of time, and the great thing is you can use it while standing up as well. This really comes in handy when I’m working on my sewing projects, for example.
Over the table we have one of my grandma’s paintings, which you’ll see all around the house. I adore her work and being able to display it in our home means a lot to me.
Kitchen
Our kitchen is right off the living room, behind the dining table. In this corner we also have the door to the hallway and the door to the bedroom.
Inbetween the living room and kitchen there’s this shelving unit that I’ve found very difficult to style from the beginning. It’s easy to over-fill and it quickly looks very busy in the space. I now finally feel like I’ve struck a good balance between functionality and aesthetics here as well.
The top shelves hold some of our dried goods, our fruit bowl, a speaker and our weather station.
The bottom shelves hold a part of my loose leaf tea collection, some of our dishes and my fermentation pot, accessories for glasses, and our D&D things, medicine and a memory box.
On the countertop here we have a bread box, kettle (my most used appliance by far), and a tray of oils and vinegars. In the far back is where our gas cooker is located
Underneath the counter there’s just enough space for our bin, a step stool and a rolling cart that holds our spices, toaster and produce, and recycling on the bottom shelf.
As this is a rental apartment, there are some elements to the house that I wouldn’t have picked out myself, such as these shelves in the kitchen. But since they’re there, might as well make use of them. One of them holds my little tea set, mortar and pestle, sugar pot and some tins of tea. The other holds the big tea pot and various glassware.
When we rented this apartment, this brown paint colour went all the way through the living room as well. We desired a brighter colour scheme in the living area, but thought the brown looked quite nice and cozy in the kitchen so we saved ourselved the trouble of painting over it. It’s still a touch dark for my taste and I’ve pondered painting it a different colour, but Robbert does like the brown and I can’t quite decide what colour I’d like to paint it anyway since it has to match the beige tile. So brown it is for now!
The kitchen, rather unintentionally in fact, ended up gently tea-themed. I brought these ornaments over from my previous apartment because I just love them too much. Combined with the many tea pots and jars of tea around (as well as the tea pot shaped hooks around the kitchen), we’ve arrived at a tea-themed kitchen. Can’t say I mind it :)
As the counter on the opposite side of the kitchen is quite small, I like to keep it as empty as posible. The only things we have here are my Bosch kitchen machine, a knife block and a water filter.
Bedroom
The next room is the only bedroom in the house, which means it needs to serve as both the bedroom and my home office. I run my business from home full time and Robbert works from home a couple days a week, so we needed a space to house everything work-related.
We decided to get the IKEA Malm bed, which has a headboard that works perfectly as a separation wall between the sleeping area and the office area.
We tried to keep this room as minimal and calm as possible, to serve as both a distraction-free workspace and a place of quiet rest. On the desk I only keep a lamp, some pens and a rosequartz, my computer screen, mouse & keyboard. Next to the desk is a drawer unit where I keep office supplies, and a teapot warmer on top. Which usually has a teapot on it, of course.
I love that I have a view of the window from my desk now. I spend a lot of time here and I really enjoy the feeling of freedom that provides, vs. having the desk up against a wall.
This tall drawer unit holds the majority of my beauty products such as makeup, nail polish, skin care and hair products, as well as my wigs and extensions.
We utilised the back of the door to hang our robes, and on top of the drawers I keep some makeup brushes and a jewellery dish. Next to the drawer unit you can see the side of our closet. We chose a wood-coloured interior and sides, and matte white doors so the large closet wouldn’t be too overwhelming. I’m very glad we made this decision; the front of the closet looks almost like a white wall so it’s unintrusive despite its size, while the inside is really nice and warm looking.
Our bed has one side up against the wall, in order to leave enough space on the other side for our closet. It’s tight, but it works and allows for a narrow passage onto the balcony. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do in a 40 m2 apartment :)
The balcony is currently in winter hibernation mode, but you can get a look at it in its full spring/summer glory here.
Behind the desk, next to the door to our laundry closet, is a pair of IKEA Kallax’. We needed the extra storage for our overflow of books, more of my work stuff (filming gear, hair tools, etc.) as well as our board games, my eyewear collection, art supplies, fabric stash… Anything that needs storing.
Hallway
Let’s move on to the hallway! It’s the tiniest space every, but I’m overjoyed to have it. I lived in a studio apartment before this so having a separate landing space and the opportunity to keep all of this out of sight, feels like a heaven sent.
We hang our coats here, and the shelves hold our hats and winter accessories, as well as my gym bag. Underneath we have a shoe rack where we keep our most worn shoes.
Behind the door to the living room I’ve put up a little gallery wall with some of our favourite photos. There’s also a shoe cabinet here that holds more of our shoes. On top of that I keep my two most used handbags, and we have a little basket in the corner that holds our keys. The phone-like thing is used to open the door to the building for guests, in case anyone was wondering.
It’s not the prettiest of spaces, our hallway, but I’m quite happy with how it turned out anyway. It’s super small and needs to perform certain duties, which it does well and I think it certainly could have looked much worse.
Bathroom
On to the bathroom! This is the last room in our home, and one we feel very lucky to have. Again, this is a rental, so we’re stuck with whatever bathroom we got. We’re super lucky that we got a really nice, recently renovated one that has all kinds of luxuries we definitely don’t take for granted.
The bathroom is rather tiny as well and didn’t come with a lot of storage. Luckily this shelving unit, which was in the kitchen in my previous apartment, fits in this space perfectly. It’s just what we needed to hold the rest of our products and towels.
Decoration wise, since the space is so small, I went for only white and bamboo with little accents of green. I really like the calm, spa-like feel this gives off.
Our shower is hidden away in a little nook, which I absolutely love. It makes the bathroom feel much bigger, as if there’s a whole other space behind the corner. The shower is actually rather small, but we’ve fitted it with a wonderful showerhead that makes showering here a delight. The corner keeps the shower itself out of sight and allows us to hide the plain white shower curtain as well.
Above the toilet I have a few more decorations. A faux plant (the bathroom doesn’t have a window so no real plants for this room), a Rituals reed diffuser, a scented candle and another bamboo box that conveniently holds feminine hygiene products.
And that brings us to the end of the tour! It really is a tiny apartment, a little bit too small for two people working from home, but we’re very happy to be here for the time being. I’m sure as time goes on the space will continue to change as I always have an urge to improve everything, and what that looks like keeps changing every few months, haha! I continue to minimise my possessions as well and streamline everything as time goes by, so who knows, there may just be another tour sometime in the future.
I would never have thought of having the high head-board to separate the work and sleep space – genius. My boyfriend and I both work from home full-time, and we’re about to start apartment hunting, so I’ll keep this in mind haha
You have a beautiful home, just the right balance between looking cozy and lived-in, but not overpoweringly decorated.
I especially like the plants, I’m a huge plant lover myself and these are just the type that I like.