I recently reconfigured the way my apartment is laid out with lots of help from my friends Claudia & Scyld, and it’s a HUGE improvement; what was previously the almost unused living room is now the bedroom; the former bedroom now has my desk and laptop (thanks to the freedom of wireless networking); and the room at the back that used to be both the dining room and workspace is now a combined dining/living space.
I also turned the unusably small bedroom into a giant walk-in closet, and spent almost $1,000 at Ikea — and you can get a lot of stuff at Ikea for a grand! I got a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, two dining room chairs, a bedside cabinet, a bookshelf, a rug, and numerous other nicknacks like lamps and a mirror and picture frames etc. etc. I bought so much that we couldn’t fit it all in the car, so I had to return some things. I was building furniture every night for a week!
But perhaps the most exciting thing for me was a kitchen cart to put just outside my tiny kitchen, which has effectively tripled the amount of food preparation surface I have, AND allowed me to get this funky little “digital” toaster oven!