Re-paint your furniture
The problem with scouring the garage sales and flea markets for outrageously cheap furniture is that you end up buying your furnishings piecemeal – one chair here, another chair there, a table elsewhere – the end result being that nothing really seems to go together. Re-painting furniture, therefore, can be especially useful if you’ve got a very eclectic collection … painting all the furniture in the room in a single shade can do an amazing job of unifying all the disparate pieces. Don’t be afraid to get bold with your colors – choose a saucy siren red, an outrageous orange … whatever your little heart desires. The great thing about paint is that should you ever get sick of the color, the problem can be easily fixed: just re-paint again. Hint: You’ll want to sand off the old finish on any piece before applying new paint, of course … for small pieces, spray paint makes the whole painting process a whole lot easier.

Fill in the blank wallspace … White space is good, certainly, but too much just leaves a room feeling cold. Back in the college days, the problem of what to do with empty wallspace was solved by large posters, held up by plenty of that crappy school-sanctioned poster gum. While the lure of the
poster (cheap and very big – it seems like you’re getting so much for your money,
doesn’t it?) might be tempting, you might also want to consider some other options – real artwork, if you can get your hands on it, has so much more character than a cheap poster print. If you’ve ever taken an art class in your life, you’re sure to have at least a drawing or two that would like nice on a wall (the simple act of framing and matting really does work wonders in elevating virtually anything to the status of art) – or if you’ve got artsy friends, ask them if they’ve got anything lying around that you might be able to display in your apartment (it would be nice to offer to pay them a small sum for their work … chances are they’ll hand it over for free, anyway). Alternatively, hang small snapshots (above, a framed set of travel snapshots), favorite postcards, even pressed leaves and flowers, in a set of matching frames, then arrange them attractively on the wall.