Chic Up Your Shabby Share House With These Cheap & Simple Household Hacks

Sharehouse

Nesting. It’s a natural human impulse. When you move into a new space – either into a new sharehouse, or into the slightly bigger front bedroom in your current flat – you want to make it into something that’s just so you: a lady den, a man cave, a gender-neutral chill space. It’s about making yourself somewhere that you can come back to after a long day and heave a sigh of relief: all my cute things are here and I feel like totes zen now.

You might even be able to extend the urge to nest to the rest of your house, into the kitchen, bathroom, lounge room – if your flatmates are down with it, you have the same ~aesthetic~, or if your DIY design ideas are too damn chic/practical to pass up. Some of us are just so blessed.

Now most of us can’t afford to go out and buy a slew of fancy as homewares from those shops that smell like ‘spenno candles and the plastic-y scent of $100 bills. But that doesn’t mean we can’t live in a sharehouse that looks nice, nice, real nice. Here’s some quick ‘n easy home hacks that’ll chic up your space.

MAKE YOURSELF A SHELF OUTTA CRATES

Sharehouse
Image: Pinterest

Crates! Not just useful as a bedstead when you have literally no money and are tired of living on a mattress on a floor. No, you can also use ’em – and probably pick them up for free from like any bar or fruit shop or restaurant if you ask nicely enough/are mates with the waitress – to craft yourself a set of shelves to store books, booze or succulents.

INVEST IN FRAMES

Image: Pinterest

We are now officially too old for Blu Tack. If you’ve got an old band poster you love, a print from that exhibition at the MCA, a collage of #inspo, or some weird hand-drawn art from your buddy who is in a band, put it in a frame. A frame instantly ups your chic factor and doesn’t have to be expensive – try dollar stores, Kmart and charity shops.

USE ROCKS AS BOOKENDS

Whoever came up with this is a stone-cold genius. One way to do this with lotsa little rocks is to stack ‘n glue ’em on top of each other on one half of a piece of cardboard, folded up at a right angle. You can paint them if you want first. And then you use them to keep a couple feature books upright, whether on a shelf or your windowsill.

RIDE THE ROPE COASTER

Image: Pinterest

I’m sorry, please forgive that joke. It was just for me, I am very tired. Essentially you can go to a craft store and pick up rope and cork rounds and a hot glue gun and start to wind the rope around and around itself until you have a circular coaster, and become the kind of classy human who does not have ring stains on your furniture.

CHUCK A THROW ON IT

Image: Pinterest

The main event in your living room may be a lounge with peeling upholstery that you found on the side of the road but you can fix that by literally chucking a throw blanket on it. And maybe some pillows. You can also chic up the boudoir with a cheeky throw on your bed. Nothing says ‘luxe lifestyle’ like piles of artfully thrown blankets.

Obviously, you can’t chic up your sharehouse without a reliable internet connection (so you can do things like read this very story, wow!). Luckily Optus Home Wireless Broadband has a convenient, flexible and deceptively simple solution for y’all in Vividwireless. Just plug it in and you’ve got 4G internet in an instant on a month-to-month plan, complete with generous data inclusions, and sans a pesky lock-in contract.

Make it an essential part of your chic and functional living space HERE.

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