My neighbour Marcus stopped me in the hallway yesterday while I was hauling up another grow light from Amazon (don’t judge, Patricia and her friends needed an upgrade). He looked genuinely confused and asked, “How is your place so… not depressing? Mine feels like a prison cell.”
I mean, same building, similar layouts, same terrible lighting situation. But I get what he meant. When people peek into my studio now, they’re usually surprised it doesn’t feel as claustrophobic as you’d expect from 400 square feet. It took me forever to figure out, but turns out there’s actual science behind why some spaces make you want to hide under blankets forever while others somehow feel… livable.
I spent my entire first year here just accepting that apartments in my price range were going to suck. Then the pandemic hit and I realised I could either learn to make this work or completely lose it. Spoiler alert: I almost lost it anyway, but plants helped.
The biggest game-changer wasn’t even plants, though everyone assumes that’s where I started. It was light. My one sad window faces that brick wall, so I was basically living in a cave with electricity. I finally broke down and bought some daylight bulbs and a cheap LED panel I found on Facebook Marketplace. Sounds weird, but mimicking natural light patterns actually helped my sleep get less terrible.
I learned this from following a bunch of urban gardening accounts on Instagram – your body’s circadian rhythm is basically broken when you never see real daylight. No wonder I was exhausted all the time but couldn’t fall asleep at night. Now I have my “sunrise” lights on a timer, and I actually wake up feeling less like death. Who knew?
Once I could actually see my space properly, I started noticing how everything felt… fake. Like, aggressively artificial. Laminate floors, plastic everything, that horrible popcorn ceiling. I couldn’t afford to replace major stuff, but I found out you can trick your brain with textures.
I got this reclaimed wood cutting board from a thrift store for twelve dollars, and suddenly I had something real to touch while making coffee every morning. Sounds ridiculous, but there’s research showing that touching natural materials actually reduces stress hormones. My friend who’s in grad school for psychology sent me a whole study about it. Apparently our nervous systems can tell the difference between wood and plastic at like a cellular level.
Now I have little bits of actual nature scattered around – smooth stones I collected from the lakefront, a piece of driftwood from a trip to Michigan, some pinecones from Lincoln Park. Took me months to gather this stuff, but it cost basically nothing and makes the space feel less sterile.
The plant situation started simple because I kept killing everything. Turns out most houseplants need way more light than my cave provides, even with the grow lights. I learned through a lot of expensive mistakes that snake plants and ZZ plants actually prefer neglect and dim conditions. Perfect for someone who travels for work and forgets to water things.
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My bathroom has this tiny frosted window that gets a little indirect light, so that’s where I put my more dramatic plants. The humidity from showers creates this mini greenhouse effect that ferns actually love. Cost me maybe sixty bucks total and now I feel like I’m showering in a spa instead of a concrete box.
The weirdest addition was a tiny water fountain I made using a YouTube tutorial and about forty dollars of supplies from Home Depot. It’s literally just a small pump, some river rocks, and a ceramic bowl I already had. But the sound completely changes everything – instead of hearing every conversation in the hallway and traffic from the street, there’s this gentle bubbling that somehow makes my brain think I’m somewhere peaceful.
I read somewhere that humans are hardwired to find water sounds calming because finding fresh water used to mean survival. Don’t know if that’s true, but it definitely works. My mom visited last month and kept asking if I had moved apartments because it “felt so different.”
Colour was another thing I had to figure out through trial and error. I painted one wall this deep forest green I mixed myself from sample paints (total cost: eighteen dollars), and it made the whole space feel bigger somehow. Green is supposed to be easier on your eyes and help you relax, but mostly it just looks alive in a way that white walls never did.
What I wish someone had told me earlier is that you don’t need to spend thousands or have a huge space to make these changes work. Some of my favorite improvements happened with stuff I found on the curb or bought secondhand. It’s about being creative with constraints, not having unlimited money.
The air quality thing was accidental but ended up being huge. I started researching which plants actually clean air instead of just looking pretty, because my building has terrible ventilation and I was getting headaches constantly. Turns out spider plants and Boston ferns can actually filter out formaldehyde and other gross stuff that comes from furniture and paint.
Now I have this little ecosystem going where the plants clean the air, the humidity from their watering helps my dry winter skin, and taking care of them gives me something to focus on besides work stress. My mental health is still a work in progress, but having living things to nurture has genuinely helped.
The biggest lesson I learned is that you have to work with your specific situation instead of trying to copy those gorgeous loft apartments on Pinterest.
Those people have floor-to-ceiling windows and unlimited budgets. I have one sad window and student loans. But I can still create a space that doesn’t make me want to cry every time I come home.
It took about six months of gradual changes before I really noticed the difference. Better sleep, less anxiety, actually wanting to spend time in my apartment instead of just crashing here. Marcus is starting with some plants and a daylight lamp after seeing my setup. We’ll see how it goes, but even small changes can shift how a space feels.
The goal isn’t to pretend you’re living in a forest cabin – it’s just making peace with urban apartment life while staying connected to the fact that humans are supposed to be around natural things sometimes.
