“I live in a 300-square-foot condo downtown. Here’s how I’ve optimized the space”

In 2021, Elise Yu bought her 300-square-foot studio condo sight unseen. She’d been living with her parents in Vancouver and itching to move out. "​​I definitely saw myself living that city girl life in downtown Toronto,” she says. With help from her grandparents, Yu, a 27-year-old marketing manager at a media monitoring company, was able to afford the down payment on the small condo.

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Since she was in Vancouver, she had to make her decision based on lengthy videos (taken by a friend) and listing photos. Ultimately, she took the risk, purchasing a studio at the intersection of Queen and University for $465,000. She bought it in October 2021 and moved in shortly afterward. “My initial feeling when I arrived was, Oh my god, this place is so small. This is where all my money went?" says Yu. “It really is just a box in the sky, which freaked me out a little bit.”

The space was barely big enough to do a jumping jack in, but it had everything else she wanted in a home—including a balcony, plenty of direct sunlight, a concierge and an unbeatable location. After the initial shock wore off, Yu was excited to start decorating. “I’m really into interior design, so it’s important that my home reflects who I am.”

There was one issue: the condo came furnished, and most of the furniture was black and austere, which didn’t mesh with Yu’s light, airy aesthetic. “It looked modern and clean but also very cold,” she says. Her first order of business was ridding the unit of its harsh decor. She sold most of it on Facebook Marketplace, keeping only the Murphy bed, before embarking on the tricky task of replacing it. “Because the apartment is so small, it wasn’t like I could buy a piece of furniture, realize it didn’t work and put it somewhere else,” she says. Yu did extensive research and triple-checked measurements before every purchase.

In a single-room apartment that consists of a kitchen and not much else, finding functional pieces was a priority. The first item she bought was a shoe cabinet, to keep shoes from cluttering up the hallway. While it’s right at the end of the entrance to the apartment, it’s also technically located in the kitchen, beside the island.

Every evening, Yu pulls a latch down to reveal her queen-sized bed, hidden within her two-seater couch. In the morning, she lifts it back up, then she hides her pillows and blanket away in a covert container under her kitchen island. She’s a self-professed neat freak, so she loves the Murphy bed’s disappearing effect. “I’m not one of those people who likes to work in bed,” Yu says, “so it’s nice to have it tucked away all day.”

Yu works remotely, so creating a dedicated desk space was a priority. “Having designated areas helps me separate work from life,” she says. She found a standing desk on Amazon that fits perfectly into the nook she dedicated as her home office, a 2.5-foot space between the Murphy bed and the window. She also decorated nearby shelves with ceramics and Pampas grass so she could gaze at beautiful objects while she works.

The apartment is full of plants—half real, half fake—which conjure the greenery of Yu’s native Vancouver. “I’m not good at taking care of plants, and I’ve come to be okay with that,” she says. The plants are also an antidote to the urban environment she sees out her window. “I’m surrounded by tall buildings. Bringing some element of the outdoors into my space makes me feel more connected to nature.” A bird feeder on the balcony also attracts plenty of sparrows.

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Yu’s biggest splurge—and her favourite part of the apartment—is the digital projector and retractable screen she had installed between the kitchen and the living room/bedroom area, which she pulls down whenever she wants to watch a movie. While it was an expensive job (the unit and installation cost close to $1,500), a high-end TV would have cost about as much. “Now every night is like movie night,” she says. “I have no desire to go out to the theatre anymore.”

Clothing storage is an ongoing struggle. “My closet is the biggest challenge,” Yu says. “I have too many clothes and nowhere to put them.” She maintains a small storage unit, where she keeps her out-of-season clothing, swapping her winter and summer wardrobes when the weather changes.

She also misses having a full-size oven—her current kitchen has only a two-burner stovetop, so the microwave does a lot of heavy lifting. “I can cook a frozen pizza, but I can’t exactly bake a loaf of bread.”

Yu picked up a number of clever design hacks from watching interior decor YouTube videos. For instance, she has a rug with an oversized abstract pattern—rather than a small repeating pattern—which helps create the impression of more space. She also hung floor-to-ceiling curtains, another optical illusion that helps the apartment seem bigger than it is.

Now that she’s been in the space for two years, the decor is exactly how she likes it—yet she’s starting to itch for a new space. Yu craves the separation of a real bedroom, ideally one without the sliding doors that divide so many condos. She would also love an accent wall in a moody colour like forest green, but it would make her current space feel even more crammed. So she’s saving up for a future move.

In the meantime, she couldn’t be happier with her tiny slice of paradise. “People definitely widen their eyes when I tell them my place is only 300 square feet,” she says. “What makes me happy, though, is that whenever I bring new people over, they’re always impressed with how well I’ve used the space. That’s the best compliment I can get—that I’ve been able to make my humble apartment into a place I’m proud to call home.”