The best gear for small apartments

This post was done in partnership with The Sweethome, a buyer’s guide to the best things for your home. Read the full article here.

Small homes are fragile ecosystems. Throw in some clutter, and a small space becomes chaotic, cramped, and generally unpleasant. But when everything’s in harmony and organized, even the tiniest space can feel expansive. To find pragmatic solutions that work for tiny-home owners as well as renters who can’t rebuild their space, we reached out to a number of small-space experts for their advice. Some of our picks come directly from these experts or existing Sweethome guides; other recommendations are the result of more than 60 hours of collective research and testing. The following items will help you maximize your space, no matter what your square footage.

Air mattress for guests

The Sound Asleep air mattress is supportive and tall, with excellent customer support.

Entertaining overnight guests in a small home can be challenging. After looking at 21 options that included a camping pad and a futon, we determined that the SoundAsleep Air Mattress (also available in queen) is the best solution for most people. It’s the top recommendation on Sleep Like the Dead, too. The mattress comes with its own pump and a dial to automatically inflate to optimum firmness or deflate completely for storage. The flocked top sits 19 inches above the floor, making getting into and out of bed much easier.

But what really sets the SoundAsleep apart is exceptional customer service. The mattress comes with a one-year warranty, which should cover any leaks you may get (and all air mattresses are susceptible to them). Reviewers rave about their experiences with the company, and Sleep Like the Dead’s 97 percent satisfaction rate reflects that.

Immersion blender

The Breville Control Grip takes up a fraction of the space of a full-size blender. Photo: Michael Hession

Many small kitchens don’t have the room to stow a full-size blender or food processor. The Breville Control Grip can pureé soups, blend smoothies, emulsify mayonnaise, and even chop small quantities of nuts or whip cream (with the right attachments). After testing seven models, we found the Breville had the strongest motor and the best range of speeds, and was the only one with a handy gasket at the base that will keep the blade cage from suctioning to the bottom of the blending container (common with stick blenders).

If you think you’ll use an immersion blender pretty infrequently (once a week or less), we also like the Cuisinart CSB-75 Smart Stick 2-Speed Immersion Blender. It produces chunkier pureés and smoothies than the Breville, and doesn’t come with any chopping or whipping attachments, but we found the Smart Stick performed as well as, if not better than, spendier models in our test.

Cordless vacuum

The Hoover Air Cordless stick vac does great work as an upright and as a handheld. Photo: Liam McCabe

One of the great benefits of living in a small apartment is that you have a lot less space to vacuum. After spending 35 hours researching 50 cordless vacuums and 20 hours testing the top contenders, we have found that we prefer the Hoover Air Cordless 2-in-1 BH52120. It’s one of the most powerful and versatile cordless floor vacuums we tested. It handles like an extension of your arm when cleaning floors, and the actual vacuum part pops out into a stand-alone hand vacuum with a variety of accessories for cleaning upholstery and narrow stairs.

In our testing, an 11- to 15-minute battery life was plenty long enough to clean an entire 800-square-foot apartment in one charge. And because it’s wireless, you can use it in your car, too. Just make sure to clean it if you notice any loss in suction power. Clogs do occur from time to time and will dramatically reduce performance if unaddressed. But at least it’s easy to clean because it comes apart at all the major joints where gunk likes to accumulate.

Wireless speakers

Sonos is easy to use and sounds great. Photo: Michael Zhao

The Sonos Play:1 is designed to fill your whole house with music—allowing you to play different music and podcasts in each room. But it’s great for small spaces too. The benefit to this type of speaker over a Bluetooth or Airplay speaker is that it doesn’t depend on your phone as an audio source. So you can just choose what to play, then move around freely, take calls, watch videos, or whatever, with no disruption to the music being played. We’ve tested every system worth trying and Sonos remains the best one. It supports more streaming services and has a more streamlined search than anything else, and every speaker Sonos offers sounds amazing. The Sonos Play:1 is an affordable entry point to the system that sounds great on its own, but even better as a stereo pair. These speakers may be small, but they’re loud enough to fill almost any room in a small apartment with great sound.

Compact fan

The Vornado 660 keeps air circulating without hogging precious floor space. Photo: Marshall Troy

If you need a fan, the Vornado 660 is hard to beat. At about 12 inches wide and 13 inches tall, the Vornado 660 has a small footprint but can create a 100-foot-long airstream. With horizontal and vertical airflow positions, it can easily blast any corner of a room. User reviews also note that the 660 makes virtually no vibration or mechanical noise, and in our guide to fans, our reviewer found that the lowest of its four settings is whisper quiet. The 660 isn’t cheap, but it is one of the most powerful fans we’ve found in its class. The consensus in most user reviews is that it’s worth the money.

This guide may have been updated by The Sweethome. To see the current recommendation, please go here.