Small spaces, big character
Before I could even imagine buying a house, I was quick to profess my love of small houses. Cottages. Bungalows. Whatever you want to call them. After all, they’re cheaper to heat and cool, they’re cute, and they kind of force you to prioritize your junk. Then I actually bought a small house and realized just how much junk I really had!
Figuring out what to do with my small spaces was a challenge. I had more space overall, but the individual rooms in my new house were smaller than the corresponding rooms in my apartment. What that meant was that I had to prioritize when choosing my furnishings and decor, find creative and aesthetically pleasing ways of packing everything I wanted in, and make as many pieces as possible do double duty.
What do I mean by double duty? Take a plain kitchen window, for example. Demesne suggests you turn that window into:
And so on and so forth. Little niches can become mini offices, prettied up storage nooks, or entertainment areas. Ask yourself: Where can I fit some additional seating? How can I display my stuff to its best advantage? How can I make my spaces feel bigger without sacrificing comfort? If you plan carefully–perhaps using some of the software readers recommended here–your small spaces will pop.
Now you tell me…what have you done lately to maximize the appeal of your small spaces?
I’ve always lived in small apartments, and I live by three rules (one of which stolen from elsewhere):
1. Keep nothing that you do not believe to be beautiful or know to be useful. In other words, be merciless when getting rid of stuff. Pare down. Donate. Store at your mom’s if you have to.
2. Get good storage. Bookcases and wall shelves are indespensible. Underbed storage bags or containers are brilliant for out-of-season clothes. Be creative and don’t hesitate to move things around until you find what works.
3. Keep it clean and tidy. Not hard to do once you’ve pared down a lot of your superfluous crap. A small, tidy place feels charming. A small, cluttered, messy place feels like a rathole.
And if worst comes to worst, paint your walls Tiffany blue, add white and silver accent pieces, and you’ll be living inside a dainty little jewelry box!
I’m terrible with “editing”, so I can’t even pretend that this was on purpose – but I do own something cool and space-saving: a little bar hidden behind a painting. My husband found it in an antique shop a couple of years ago. Looking at it dead-on, it looks like a marginally cute Parisian watercolor, but the side view is where the magic happens.
The front (with the painting) flips down to reveal a straight-out-of-the-70′s bar set – highballs, decanters, everything you’d need for your bachelor pad.
I love multi-tasking home accessories. Now if we could only stop collecting them…
Great advice, La Petite Acadienne!
That bar pic sounds awesome, Kit. I’ve never heard of anything like that before, but I now plan to scour eBay to find my own
One of my favorite furniture pieces is a lovely, narrow correspondence desk that I found years ago. It is less than a foot deep and only 2 feet wide, but it has a mail drawer on top, a fold down desk with a few cubbies, and shelves underneath. It keeps me organized and is perfect for a small space. When you find a great piece like that, don’t be afraid to spend a little money, because that is something that you will use the rest of your life and love it!
In my parents’ home, the area under the staircase was used for a bathroom. The sink faced the outside and opposite, on the short wall, was the toilet. Above the toilet was a set of drawers for linens and supplies. Under the sink was a space that my mom used for a cabinet with sliding doors. Outside the bath, on the wall side of the stairs, there was a huge drawer at the floor level which we used for all the hats and mittens, etc. I’ve seen better uses with shelving put there as well. This only worked because the stairs to the basement were on the other side of the house, but it certainly worked well in that old house.
Double duty stuff is good too – like chairs that can used outdoors and also inside the house when you have guests. One of my favorite things is a $5 stool we got at Ikea. Normally it’s in the bathroon as seating and in the summer we take it outside and use it as a side table when we have drinks outside.
The biggest change I made after the first six months in my cottage was in the second bedroom (11 by 10). Quite accidentally I found out that they still make murphy beds — but now they can be bookshelves or entertainment centers and not just cabinets.
So now my second room is a very comfortable office with nine linear feet of floor to ceiling bookshelves that turn into a twin bed for guests. (Two middle sections of shelves move left and right, the bed comes down.) A little pricey, but much nicer than a convertible couch, IMHO, since it’s a real mattress and guests have more privacy than they would on the living room sofa.
That sounds absolutely fantastic, CJ!