Tiny house👍🏻👎🏻

Most of us have seen the tiny house movement on Tv and all the gorgeous, perfectly laid out, updated and beautifully designed amenities boasting a small budget and a green lifestyle, as a trade off for space and debt. But is this realistic  especially with children, working from home and….well,  being an average joe and not a minimalist? I think it is, IF your up for the challenge.

I don’t have a tiny, 200 sqft custom built beauty as seen on HGTV.

But I may as well have as I’ve a family of EIGHT living in 1140 sqft, and most days I can’t seem to tell the difference. Those HGTV beauties average 200sqft for two, and ours divided by eight, we have just over it at 290 sqft per pair.

I‘m definitely accustomed to my modest mortgage and my wood stoves ability to heat my entire home for free, as well as the coziness of always being together vs scattered in far off rooms somewhere alone, but it seems the list of negatives are  pretty heavy too. I’m finding that I coach myself daily just to get through them. “I can do this, I have everything I NEED, just not what I WANT. Space is a luxury not a necessity. I want to spend less and live more. If I do spend, I want to spend on getting OUT of the house not ON the house.” These are things I tell myself to get by. But I frequently have break downs where I scream “That’s it!” mid melt down, when a game of twister takes up the entire living room and the kids homework occupies your WHOLE dining table, and I drop a plate because my tot is riding his scooter THROUGH the kitchen. “I can’t do it” I’d scream  and diffuse by sitting in a corner sulking and scanning realtor.com for a bigger version of my dream house.

But I’m not always sure I WANT to leave my home. Yes there are so many things that don’t work but this is our first home, the home my mother helped my husband and I find and buy. The one my father painted and my brother renovated. I have fond memories of my husband and my nephew building my coveted front walk way, and my wish to be a mason son built me the rock wall in the back yard and every corner holds the memories of our lives here.

So I ask myself for the MILLIONTH time….

“Can…..I…….do this? Can I make it in this tiny house? Can I be frugal, and savy with the space I have? Or will it kill me?”

Small bedrooms are the most challenging….

Did I say bedrooms? I meant closets, because that’s the size space we call our bedrooms; I’ve seen walk-in closets bigger than our bedrooms. My husband and I need to stuff ourselves in a corner or plaster ourselves against a wall to let the other pass if we should both find ourselves in our room at the same time.

Our boys are bunker style with floating beds stair casing the walls to leave a 4×4” square in the center of the room for function space. BTW, its NEVER this neat!

Our daughters fit one twin bed with trundle in the bedroom and a desk instead of a dresser because they found that more functional and couldn’t have both.

So what are my bedroom hacks that are getting us by? No dressers, no toys in bedrooms (and that includes no more than one stuffed animal for the bed) and a capsule wardrobe. This has really helped us manage a minuscule bedroom. That and little creative tricks like storing all the girls stuffed animals, blankets and soft throws in a body pillow cover that sits on their bed. Find extra storage first in all the existing spaces vs adding more furniture.

OPEN FLOOR PLAN!!!!

If your living small, an open floor plan is a functioning illusion. You have the appeal of space that isn’t actually there because the walls aren’t closing in on you making what would be cubicles opened for traffic. This is also beneficial in heating the house.

Multi-functional!!

 Every space has to count for more than one function or it’s NOT working for you.

Our living room quickly converts from homeschool room, to media room, and triples as a guest room by blowing up a mattress and sliding barn doors  close off the doorway to kitchen/dining room. 

Which brings me to BARN DOORS which are another space saving hack. Doors take up much needed sqft. Which is why pocket doors are so appealing. But they are difficult to install. Barn doors are not. We gained much needed space in our tiny bathroom by removing the door and adding a barn door.

The Dining room for us is a focal point as it’s the first thing you see when you walk in the door. I did NOT want this place to boast high function and all the clutter that comes with it. So I’ve merely taken a Martha Stuart trick and put custom built shelves above each doorway to house canning jars for pantry goods, which was SO needed as yup….you guessed it, the pantry is yet another thing this tiny house DOESN’T have.

The kitchen has SO much going on it’s hard to imagine that it could ever handle multiple functions. But figure out what is already going on inside yours and accommodate it. For example mine is also a foyer/mudroom and sitting area for any guest who wants to make conversation with me while I’m cooking. So I added wall hooks on the empty wall for storage and a large rustic wooden bench for a bunch of kids having lunch or anyone who wants to chat with me while working.

Floating shelf office space!

We run two small businesses and homeschool in this tiny house so a functional office space is crucial. Or…maybe just a hole or niche in the wall, because thats all we have to get these jobs done. Between our kitchen and dining room was a free and seemingly awkward corner that we converted with some shelves and brackets. Keeping the space visually simple was a challenge but I’m trying to streamline it with linen magazine files to hold the paper clutter.

MY reason for posting these little get’er done hacks for a small space is I’m assuming I may not be the only one out there that has a lot to get done and little space to do it in. Maybe the lack of space holds you back from your best and most productive moments too. So I’d like to challenge you, to move past those obstacles and use your space to challenge your creativity and make it happen with what you have. We have all spent the same hours, I’m sure, patrolling Pinterest for the gorgeous spaces we WISH we have, but lets take those same hours and put that into the space we actually have. See what happens! You might just be amazed. Be “house proud!”