10 Easy Ways To Decorate & Organize (With NO Nail Holes)

March 28, 2014 | By Contributors AuthorMy First Apartment

By Monica Ricci, Manilla.com As a certified professional organizer, I’ve been in thousands of homes and apartments helping my clients take back control of their lives. One theme that always shows up in my work is my advice to look for as many ways as possible to use wall and door space. Your walls and…

Dollar for Dollar: Furnishing Your Apartment at Ikea vs. Target vs. Pottery Barn

November 15, 2013 | By Audra AuthorMy First Apartment

When it comes to furnishing your first apartment, there is always a budget to consider. What you can get with your money is vastly different from store to store. A while back, My First Apartment compiled an excellent list that compared the cost of buying your furniture essentials at several different stores. As a self-professed bargain hunter…

First Apartment Decorating Finds: The Big Box Store Edition

November 7, 2013 | By Audra AuthorMy First Apartment

In the world of first apartment decorating, big box stores like Walmart, Target, and Kohl’s have gotten a bad rap for being too cookie-cutter and too expensive. It’s true that monster chain stores are often guilty of both of those charges, but they aren’t all bad for decorating your apartment. In fact, if you take…

Furnishing on Budget: 4 Useful Websites for First Time Renters

September 24, 2013 | By Audra AuthorMy First Apartment

When you are making the move into your first apartment, everybody and their mother has advice for you about how to move, where to move, when to move, where to shop, how much rent should be, etc. etc. So with your head buzzing with words of wisdom from every person you know, it is really…

Decorating With the Color of the Year: Emerald Green

July 21, 2013 | By Audra AuthorMy First Apartment

Every year the famous color source known as Pantone releases their anxiously awaited color of the year. For weeks before the big color reveal, designers, planners, and artists everywhere speculate and formulate guesses on which perfect shade they will choose. Then the day comes, they finally announce their pick for the color of the year and…

Furnishing on Budgets from $0 – $500

April 19, 2013 | By MFA Editors AuthorMy First Apartment

You’ve saved and saved and finally got your own place. Then the sad reality hits. After you pay your first month’s rent, security deposit and moving costs there is no money left to furnish your place. Are you doomed to sleeping on the floor in an empty apartment? Our bloggers say no. They are so…

4 Tricks to Furnishing a Living Room on a Budget

February 26, 2013 | By MFA Editors AuthorMy First Apartment

Looking to decorate on a budget? Our guest blogger Katie Holland (@hollandersauce on Twitter!) shares her best furnishing tips below. We’ll have one more great design post to share as part of design month before February draws to a close and then, come March, we’ll get back to our “regular programming” as we continue to…

Renting Furniture: Is It a Good Idea?

February 21, 2013 | By Alex AuthorMy First Apartment

In keeping with this February’s Design Month theme, I’d like to answer a question from one of our readers, Jared. He was wondering whether it would be worthwhile to rent-to-own his furniture, rather than buying it piece-by-piece. He made the point that for the expected monthly payment of rentals, he could afford much nicer…

Cheap and Easy Bedroom Fixes: The Crane and Canopy Giveaway Results

February 16, 2013 | By Alex AuthorMy First Apartment

As our readers know by now, February is Design Month at My First Apartment. To help celebrate, we featured a giveaway from the bedding company Crane and Canopy. This online retailer, which has very high-quality products, keeps its prices down by shipping directly to consumers rather than selling through brick-and-mortar stores. As a way of testing…

Designer 101: Answers to Our Reader’s Design Questions!

February 13, 2013 | By Alissa AuthorMy First Apartment

As a reminder, it’s DESIGN MONTH here at My First Apartment! We’re working with Kate Marengo of Arranging Order to share tips of the trade, as well as show how interior design can, really, be quite affordable. Check out the first post of the series here. In today’s post, we’ve worked with Kate to answer our…