Being in a small space really sets you up to weed out the things that are just there to fill space. I tell people how small it is. I think when they first come in, they think, wow, it really is that small. I'm Michelle James, and I'm a product photographer. And this is my 311-square-foot apartment in the West Village in New York City. So I moved from California. I had 1,500 square feet there and just had no time to keep up with it, because I worked so much. I didn't want to spend every single weekend cleaning my condo. I wanted the New York kind of feel. I didn't want a box in a high-rise. I grew up in Florida, so I'm sort of a beach girl. I don't surf, but I love being on the water or being by the beach. The painting that's on the wall here is where the colors cheme sort of came from--the plum that kind of makes the outlines, the green in the shirt has kind of become the table. A dress that I had that I had worn for a Christmas card one year, I was like, why is it in a box? It's a beautiful piece. It needs to be something I can look at every day. By really using paint, I think that helps to pop some of the moldings. It's nice and open, but I also have a living area where I can have guests over, we have seating. There's a couch that becomes a queen size bed. I can also--I have the table that's on the wall. I can pull it down. It can become a two- to four-person eating/dining area. So the chairs I found on eBay. I had been looking for a specific chair. And then I basically gutted them, stripped, sanded, repainted, reupholstered, and they're the new dining room chairs.
On the one windowsill, I have a Tic-Tac-Toe board of Paris. I have a small little garden and a container of sand from my hometown that's a little piece of home that I'm able to bring into my small space. So another thing that I am really passionate about, obviously, is photography. I collect vintage cameras. And then I also had some space above, where I decided to use it as storage for my shoes, because a girl loves her shoes. So the apartment is not a studio. I think it's technically a one-bedroom. But it is 12'x8'. So based on the size of the space itself, all that would fit in there is a full bed. I think it would just be bed if there were any larger-sized bed in there. We built this out of just plywood. We put drawers underneath so I had space for clothes. And then I have a shoe cube to help, again, use some of the vertical space to put some storage in for that. Based on some of the moldings that I have in the room itself, I kind of got the idea that I believe it was part of the hallway, originally, because when you go outside, it's the exact same molding on the ceilings, and it's about the size of a hallway, when you look out there. So they just put a wall and said, we could make this a bedroom. When people come over here, I think at first they're taken aback by all the color and how small it really is. But I can clean in 10 minutes and go out and do fun stuff in the city. I don't have to be a slave to my space. But I also have created an environment that I really feel at home in. The comments that I've gotten are like, this apartment represents you and your hobbies and your loves and the things that you're passionate about. I feel so good in this space because of the colors, because of just little elements that I really, truly love. So I'm surrounded by those things, and it makes me really feel at peace to be in this space. TRACY METRO: Are you a social media darling? Do you like to hang out on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or even Tumblr? If so, you can check us out at all those places, or of course you can just click Subscribe right here to see what we've got going on. MICHELLE JAMES
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