In Toronto, it’s hard to find a huge living space to accommodate our desire to have a free-flowing space we can live in with no difficulty at all. In this city, apartments are just getting smaller (even though prices are getting higher). Attempting to find a 1,500 sq. ft. apartment is like finding a needle in a haystack, and if you ever do find it, you’ll realize it’s a needle that has a price tag as though it’s crusted in gold and jewels.

Since you’ve got a strict budget for your living situation, here’s how to make your apartment feel bigger, without paying through the nose for it.

Improve the flow of your apartment

It’s important to understand how you and your guests move through your space and arrange furniture and other obstacles accordingly. If you place a huge leather sofa right next to a hallway, for instance, the apartment will seem smaller as a direct effect. Movement should always feel smooth and natural through your apartment and you should never have to stop and redirect yourself when you could just move in a straight line.

Improve the mood of your apartment by increasing natural light

Keep those windows unblocked and open! The more light a space receives the more inviting, warm and open it feels. It’s important to maximize lighting in your house in order to not feel like a troll living in a cave. The light and airy feel that unblocked windows give goes a long way to making your place seem much more comfortable.

Clear away clutter

The more cluttered a space is, the more claustrophobic it seems and the more it’ll stress you out and make your place seem really small. It’s important to always clear as much out of the way as you can in order to feel like the space is much more open. Don’t tend to use that microwave all that often? Maybe you can store it in a closet somewhere. Look at what you need, what you use often, and what you never use, and see if you can relocate objects.

Take off those huge curtains!

Not necessarily the curtains in your bedroom, or somewhere else where privacy is a big deal, but see if you can take off those bulky window coverings from any window that can be open often. It’s amazing how much a room can open up by simply taking off huge, thick curtains over a sliding glass door, for instance.

Making an apartment seem larger is a key life hack in our day and age where, realistically, we aren’t going to be finding the biggest apartments in the best locations. Figuring out how to make more with less will make any place as big as you need it to be!