Tales of a Small House, Part II: The Play Area

I thought I'd share a few photos of Eliza's play area in our house.  It's in the corner of our living room.  It's 4 feet by 5 feet, so of our home's 920 total square feet, it only takes up 20 square feet!  But we pack a lot into the small space for our girl, and she really does seem to enjoy it.  It's proof that you don't need a lot of space to have fun.  

A key to making this space work is limiting the number of toys in it.  We try to rotate certain toys in and out (I keep a few in the dining room closet and swap them out once in a while), but really, Eliza doesn't have that many toys to begin with, and that helps when living in a small house.  It's also part of how we choose to raise her - without too much stuff - but I suppose that's the topic for another post.

I got that mat from the thrift store, and it's nice because it's small, I think it's 3'x3', and cushy for sitting and kneeling on.  I bought the little carpet sample from the car wash, and it's nice for me and hubby to sit on when we're playing, instead of sitting on the hardwood.  The hanging organizer is from Ikea, and I hung it with command hooks (I love those things!).  It's great for storing little odds and ends, and the tea set lives there when it's not in use, too.  The little square cubbies used to serve as my husband's night stand.  Now it stores Eliza's drum, xylophone, puzzles, and a few other toys.

Eliza's bookshelf is the bottom half of our hutch (a girl can never have too many books!).  I use the top of it for the few knick-knacks I have that are meaningful to me, and for family photos.  See?  You can marry kid stuff and adult stuff in (somewhat) perfect harmony!  

As you can see on the left and right sides of the hutch, I hung up a few things - hanging storage is useful because it gets things off the ground and instantly makes things look more organized.  Again, I just used command hooks because I didn't want to mar the wood hutch (it belonged to my grandparents and I love it).  In the corner is a basket - you can barely see it in the bottom right corner - that currently serves as a catch-all for a number of random toys, baby dolls and some baby doll clothes.  I was just thinking this morning that I could probably organize this little corner a bit better, but it works for now.

Eliza's horsey purse from Auntie Kelly.  She adores it.  I do, too :)

She often stands in her fruit and veggies bin :)

There you have it. It's nothing fancy, it's all done very inexpensively, and it's 20 square feet of fun!

Tales of a Small House, Part I

We are doing some rearranging, reevaluating and redoing of our house.  Nothing big, just some organizational and perhaps cosmetic changes.  This was spurred by the fact that Eliza's big girl bed is arriving on Saturday, so we have to figure out where her soon-to-be-displaced-by-a-huge-twin-loft glider is going to go in our small house.  So, we are doing some major rethinking of our living spaces, which is leading to a lot of purging, repurposing and asking ourselves "is this the best use of this particular space?"

You see, our house has 920 square feet.  Not college dorm room or one-bedroom apartment small, but for two adults, one child and two cats (not to mention all of our stuff), it poses a bit of an organizational challenge.  Over the past 6 years, I've become pretty good at handling the challenge, to the point that I actually enjoy it (that is, when I'm not cursing the housing market that makes it impossible for us to move - so much for our "5-7 year home"!!!  Anyway.....).  

Here's what we have to work with in our cozy house:

• Three bedrooms.  This is rare in such a small house.  Even though the bedrooms are small (8'x10'), at least there are three of them - this helps a lot in terms of creating separate spaces and privacy.  One is a non-conforming bedroom which means that it doesn't have a closet.

• One full bathroom with enough storage for towels, cleaning supplies, extra toilet paper and toiletries.  The bathroom is actually where we have the greatest ratio of built-in storage to square footage, maybe with the exception of the kitchen? 

• Kitchen (not eat-in) - plenty of cupboard space, thanks in part to the fact that we don't have a dishwasher! ;)

• Dining room - one tiny closet.

• Living room/entry way - no built-in storage here, but my talented father crafted some beautiful custom hook rails (two of them with five hooks on each one) in the corner by our entryway for coats.  

• Closets: 3 in total.  We have two closets of standard door width (26"), by 30" deep and as tall as our ceilings (8').  They do the job for mine and hubby's clothing (we each have one; Eliza uses a dresser) with the help of some mad closet organization and storage solutions.  We also have one teensy closet in our dining room.  It's not quite as deep as a standard hanger - I know because we use it to hang winter coats and things, and the hangers have to hang diagonally in order to close the door!  Thankfully, it's about one inch wider than my wooden folding chairs, so I can store those there.  

My new motto around the house is: question everything.  For example: Are we absolutely sure we need this {widget/gadget/dresser/random item}?  Or, who says we can't store the food processor on the top shelf of my closet?  It's more easily accessible there than in the basement.  And hey - why can't this wine rack double as a pants-holder when hung on the wall of my closet?? (easily one of my favorites!). We use under-the-bed storage like it's our job, our coffee table is a trunk that houses our extra blankets and hubby's gaming equipment, and baskets line the shelves (also made by my talented Dad!) in Eliza's room that store her next-size-up clothes (only clothes that currently fit her go in her dresser) and other necessities.  We're serious about alternative storage in this house!

In addition to storage solutions, living in a small house demands efficient use of space.  So, even if the answer seems unorthodox, I always ask: how could we better arrange this room to get the most out of the space?  An example: our bedroom isn't being used to its full potential - but for years we thought we didn't have any other options because "this is the only configuration that allows our nightstands to fit next to the bed! what about our nightstands? WE NEED NIGHTSTANDS.  Right? Right?"  It took a while for us to see that - hmm - maybe we don't need nightstands!  Huh. What would that be like?  Could we install a few corner shelves instead to store our alarm clock/kleenex box/kindles there?  Then, we could move the bed over there to the corner, and then look how much floor space is opened up.  Then we wouldn't have to SHUFFLE SIDEWAYS to get past the end of our bed (we currently only have 11 inches between the end of our bed and the wall).  How novel.  We're moving the bed tonight and we're going to try it out.  I'll let you know how it goes!

Does anyone else out there live in a cozy, er, spaciously-challenged home?  What are your tricks?  I have a few that I'll share in my next post.  I'd love to hear yours too!