Can you feel the squeeze? If you’re like many Chicagoans, you feel it every day — in your postage-stamp of a bathroom, your tiny living room, your cubicle-size bedroom.
“Half of my apartment is my kitchen,” said Andy Kirschke, 34, who rents a 522-square-foot one-bedroom for $675 a month. “I can only have three people over for a dinner party without being squished, but I guess it makes for an intimate dinner.”
Intimate indeed. Kirschke’s living room, in the garden level of a three-flat building, measures 9 feet wide, with a couch against one wall and a big-screen TV a few feet away against the other.
Though the fight for space in Chicago may not be as drastic as it is in New York, where horror stories about sharing 350-square-foot apartments abound, more Windy City dwellers are downsizing as rents climb.
“The trend in rental apartments is prices going up, so many people can’t afford a one-bedroom anymore. They have to get a studio,” said Justin Elliott, co-founder of chicagoapartmentfinders.com, a free apartment placement service for renters. “The rental market has gotten so hot here, partly due to the cool real estate market. A studio that was $600 two years ago is now going for $750.”
Elliott estimates that 20 percent of the apartments his company rented so far this year are studios measuring 500 square feet or smaller. Most of these apartments are in hoppin’ neighborhoods such as Lincoln Park, Lakeview and the Gold Coast that attract people who want to feel like they live in the heart of the city.
This is why Kirschke said he ended up in Avondale (west of Roscoe Village) — because he wanted to save on rent. “You can’t find what I have and pay what I do closer to the lake,” he said. “And rent is just not something I want to spend my money on.”
For Mike and Mindy Viamontes, both 25, the higher rent and smaller space was worth it to live in River North. The couple, who had lived separately, traded a house and two-bedroom apartment for a 608-square-foot loft when they moved from Manhattan, Kan., two years ago. They said they liked River North’s historic buildings and urban feel. But they what sold them on the loft despite its cost (rent is $1,300 a month) and size, Mindy said, was that it was in an old 1920s shoe factory.
“Our friends have wondered where we put our mail at night, our place is so small,” Mindy said.
Johnny Orth (the name as published has been corrected here and in subsequent references in this text), a Portland, Ore., transplant who recently moved into a 400-square-foot studio in East Lakeview, said he, too, prefers a smaller pad to stay close to the action. “If I found an apartment that was in a different neighborhood and was bigger, I would stay put,” said Orth, 23, despite the $850-a-month rent and the fact that his place is often cluttered and messy after just one day of not cleaning.”
One place Orth likes to escape to is his 4-by-10-foot balcony. “I think of it as a separate room-it’s the best part of my place,” he said. He’s outfitted the space with two fold-up chairs, a metal table and a mini table-top grill that fits on top of his air-conditioner.
Neither Orth nor the Viamontes have let their apartments’ measly measurements cramp their style.
To find furniture that would fit his place, Orth turned to others in his mid-rise building. “I just put up a sign and said I was looking for furniture. A few months later I got a great bright orange couch that fits perfectly. I don’t mind living in a small space as long as it works. A couch, coffee table, bed and table — these are the things I need, not much else.”
Mindy said she and Mike drafted a layout of the apartment and carefully chose what furniture to buy and where to put it. They’ve transformed their loft into a something you’d see in a design magazine and were recently named semifinalists in design Web site apartmenttherapy.com’s contest for small apartments.
“Our place is designed to have people over,” Mindy said. “We use things that have multiple functions, like our stools — they serve as a table primarily, but also as a stool when people are over.”
The Viamontes, who both work as architects, found a lot of their pieces from Craigslist, including a designer coffee table that was more than half off the regular price. But the key to living small, they said, is a lot of careful editing and keeping things organized, which Mindy said the couple are “obsessive” about.
Kirschke, who’s looking to buy a place next year, said he hopes that living in a small apartment now will keep him from accumulating too much when he moves to a bigger space. “I don’t want to be a pack rat,” he said. “That’s the beauty of living in a smaller place. The creativity needed to make a small space work is much more appealing than a big space and a lot of junk.” [
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10 small-space solutions
Just because your pad is puny doesn’t mean it can’t be stylish. Here are 10 ways to make the most of the space you have.
[ J.S.; WASHINGTON POST CONTRIBUTED. ]Show more floor 1. Recessed toe kicks under shelves, benches and other built-in pieces give the illusion of added square footage.
All about scale 2. Lots of large items can overwhelm a small space; too many little pieces can make the room feel cramped. Keep in mind the length, width and height of larger furnishings. A sleek sofa with lower arms won’t stop the eye mid-room. A piece of furniture will look smaller in the store than in your home; shop with a tape measure.
Add reflection 3. Designers love this trick: Place mirrors across from windows. “It gives the illusion that there is another window there and open ups the space,” said Chicago-based interior decorator Amy Lenahan, of Design I Interiors. Get the largest mirror the space will allow. Or for a more interesting look, arrange several smaller square mirrors to look like one larger mirror.
See it through
4. Glass-top tables, clear acrylic consoles and open-back chairs take up little visual space.
Do double duty
5. Dual-purpose furniture is an obvious plus: living room chairs that pull to the dining table, benches that lift up and store stuff, platform beds with drawers underneath.
Lighten up
6. Walls and major furniture pieces in pale neutral colors will get along well even in tight quarters. Bold colors can battle.
Get that floating feeling
7. Wall-mounted shelves take up minimal space; painted the same color as the walls, they virtually disappear.
Supersize it
8. Lenahan suggests mounting the hardware for drapes outside of the window frame. “You can make an entire wall look like it’s a window.” When choosing a rug, go big. A dinky rug can make a place look choppy.
Keep it together
9. “Give the entire home a cohesive color scheme so one room naturally flows into the next,” Lenahan says. You don’t have to paint every room the same color; just add a reference to other rooms’ colors.
Limit. The. Clutter.
10. Personalize a space with what you love, sure, but restrained, thematic collections will look better.
Rent comparison
Think Chicago rents are expensive? RedEye looks at the average cost of an efficiency (or studio) apartment in Chicago compared to other cities. [ STACEY SKOTZKO, REDEYE ]
Chicago: $977
San Francisco (Marina/North Beach/Downtown): $1,835
Washington, D.C.: $1,132
New York City: $2,449
SOURCE: M/PF YieldStar, APARTMENTS.COM. RENTS AVERAGES FROM CHICAGO, SAN FRANCISCO AND WASHINGTON, D.C., ARE FROM THE FIRST QUARTER OF 2007. NEW YORK CITY FIGURES ARE AS OF THURSDAY.
500 SQUARE FEET =
Note: (Calculations are estimations and do not include height.) [ s.s. ]
4 Hummer H2s
115 500-square-foot apartments could fit on a football field.
493 RedEye covers
11 ping-pong tables
57 42-inch plasma TVs
16 elevators
