So you've fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed to get your own place and all you can af­ford is a mi­ni-apart­ment. Pre­sum­ably tai­lor-made for sin­gle adults, child­less cou­ples or re­al­ly, re­al­ly good friends. Find­ing a mi­cro-pad is on­ly half the bat­tle, of course. Af­ter the paint dries, you still have to fur­nish it. But de­spair not: while you may be liv­ing in an area small­er than your av­er­age mo­tel room, some ex­perts say out­fit­ting such tiny sur­round­ings can ac­tu­al­ly be good for your soul. "What peo­ple have no­ticed is that it's stress­ful to deal with a lot of things," said Janel La­ban, the ex­ec­u­tive ed­i­tor of Apart­ment Ther­a­py, the home-de­sign Web site. "Liv­ing more sim­ply, as you're forced to do in a small space, you can find that life is less stress­ful." Be­yond psy­cho­log­i­cal en­cour­age­ment, La­ban al­so of­fered a se­ries of prac­ti­cal tips: em­pha­sis­ing nat­ur­al light, for in­stance, and us­ing high-gloss paint and glossy sur­faces to re­flect it. Wall-hung book­shelves are good; book­cas­es are not. Al­so, just as at a news­pa­per, edit­ing is cru­cial, if some­times painful. That means keep­ing two wine­glass­es around, not a dozen. Dit­to for plates, vas­es and clothes hang­ers. "You're go­ing to need less of every­thing," La­ban said. "And while you might have peo­ple over, you're not go­ing to be hav­ing many sit-down din­ner par­ties."

The Kitchen

There are al­ways ways to save space, start­ing with the most con­ven­tion­al of kitchen­ware: the toast­er. Chomp is a nifty three-in-one gad­get that can make a sand­wich, toast bread, grill a small steak and fit in your av­er­age purse. Speak­ing of mov­able feasts, the in­ven­tor of the mi­ni-mi­crowave iWave Cube, Phil Davis, de­cid­ed to put a han­dle on it just in case peo­ple want­ed to car­ry it around. "Peo­ple have, for the first time, a chance to de­cide when and wher­ev­er and how­ev­er they want to use mi­crowave tech­nol­o­gy," Davis said in a pro­mo­tion­al video on the com­pa­ny's Web site. "And that's the game chang­er." That may be a wee over­state­ment, but the iWave Cube is def­i­nite­ly com­pact, small enough to fit in your av­er­age freez­er. Snug is al­so the word for so-called "nest­ing spoons" by the re­dun­dant­ly named de­sign­er Joseph Joseph. Blaz­ing­ly coloured, the five-piece set is mag­net­i­cal­ly charged to stick to­geth­er, with the largest uten­sil-the la­dle-do­ing dou­ble du­ty as the hold­er. Or you could just stick them on the side of your mi­ni-fridge.

The Bath­room

There are many ways to keep things tiny: con­sid­er, if you will, the Rol­ly chew­able tooth­brush. The what? Hail­ing from Britain (of­ten paint­ed as a den­tal­ly-chal­lenged na­tion), the Rol­ly is a small, spiky ed­i­ble tooth­brush with 276 bris­tles that promis­es to "re­move food de­bris and plaque from the most hard to reach ar­eas." No tooth­paste or wa­ter is need­ed, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny's Web site, though you may need ther­a­py to re­move the in­deli­ble im­age of chew­ing on a sea urchin. It "works like a tra­di­tion­al tooth­brush," the pack­ag­ing promis­es, "but more dis­creet­ly." How very British. An­oth­er space saver is the Show­er Sta­tion, a mul­ti­armed show­er cad­dy that vague­ly re­sem­bles the love child of an oc­to­pus and a Trans­former. Rough­ly two feet tall and a foot wide, it may be the biggest thing in your tiny bath­room, but it promis­es to hold mul­ti­ple bot­tles of sham­poo, con­di­tion­er and oth­er beau­ty prod­ucts. Fi­nal­ly, for those want­i­ng to add a lit­tle-em­pha­sis on lit­tle-green­ery to the bath­room, there's al­ways a bon­sai tree.

The liv­ing room/bed­room

It's dif­fi­cult to imag­ine any small space be­ing com­plete with­out a trip to Ikea. For all of Ikea's spir­it-dead­en­ing vast­ness, the com­pa­ny makes some dandy func­tion­al fur­ni­ture. One ex­am­ple is the PS Havet which comes in a so­fa bed and even small­er chair size. Both come with wheels to al­low for easy clean­ing un­der­neath. La­ban al­so rec­om­mends us­ing the height of a small room to your ad­van­tage. Of course, hav­ing put so much work in­to mak­ing your it­sy-bit­sy apart­ment a re­al home, you will prob­a­bly want to share it with some­one. For that, there is noth­ing like an it­sy-bit­sy pet-a pup­py, for ex­am­ple. And hey, af­ter be­ing in a cage, your new pet will think your 300-square-foot space is a palace. (newyork­times.com)