Small house thread - Page 9

[sabrinat]

What are your small house holiday decorating plans?

[Stone Fence]

Thanks to Sabrina for bumping up this thread. I have to go back and re-read everything. We may be moving. It's my chance to start over with less stuff and possibly downsize our mortgage.

If we don't move I'd like to declutter enough to have space for the tree without moving furniture. We get a real tree.

[janerose]

Originally Posted by sabrinat

What are your small house holiday decorating plans?

Well, I'm a real minimal holiday decorator anyway. We probably won't do anything for Halloween or Thanksgiving. The girls are still too young to really do pumpkins.

For Christmas we're doing a tree (something we havn't done for almost 3 years) now that DD1 is old enough to enjoy it. Some garland along the room divider between our living room/kitchen. Some cardboard cut outs that I hang on our doors. Ummm...yeah...that's about it!

[momaste]

We're pretty small here, too, at 920 sq. ft., but it feels pretty comfy for our family. It's crowded just because we have too much stuff, but as we pare down and simplify to just the things we use and love, it's really plenty of space for us. My husband grew up in this house, and DS has the room that was DH's when he was a kid.

I'm hosting Thanksgiving for 12 this year and don't think space will be a huge issue. My feeling is, I host for a huge crowd once or twice a year; the rest of the time, it's just us and maybe another family, and that fits fine in our home as it is. I don't need to pay the huge difference that a mortgage on extra space would be just to entertain a few times a year.

Our good friends host Christmas for 20-25 every year, and they extend the table into the living room so everyone sits at one really long table (with folding tables making up the extra space at the end.) They're in the same sized house as us and it's fine - cozy and fun every year.

[Juliacat]

Originally Posted by sabrinat

What are your small house holiday decorating plans?

Our kid is only 2 so we've still got a couple of years of not celebrating the holidays. :

We had 4 people over for dinner the other night and it was ridiculously crowded. This house is totally not meant to hold 7 people! Luckily, they were good friends so they didn't mind eating dinner in 2 separate rooms and eating dessert standing up.

[sabrinat]

Originally Posted by momaste

I'm hosting Thanksgiving for 12 this year and don't think space will be a huge issue. My feeling is, I host for a huge crowd once or twice a year; the rest of the time, it's just us and maybe another family, and that fits fine in our home as it is. I don't need to pay the huge difference that a mortgage on extra space would be just to entertain a few times a year.

I totally agree. I do thanksgiving and we end up with 12-15, it might be a challenge, but everyone enjoys being together and the good food. It doesn't make sense to me to take on the burden of a bigger mortgage right now. I guess too small is really a state of mind.

[Juliacat]

If we had 12 people in our house, I guess we could put two in each bedroom, two in the bathroom, two in the living room, two in the dining room and two in the kitchen. Then they might fit.

[Montana Mom]

This year we moved out of an old 500 sqft house with one closet. It was honestly too small for our growing family. There are (almost ) six of us. We are now in probably a 900 sqft apartment and it seems HUGE! Tons of closets AND a laundry room! :

I have to say, we are incredibly comfortable and fortunate.

[Juliacat]

Originally Posted by Montana Mom

This year moved out of an old 500 sqft house with one closet. It was honestly too small for our growing family.

YOU ROCK!!!!! I love talking to people who live(d) in a house even smaller than mine. And with a bigger family too! YAY!

900 s.f. would seem gigantic to me, too.

[Montana Mom]

Originally Posted by sabrinat

What are your small house holiday decorating plans?

I have clutter-phobia so for us its a few lights outside and a little bit of garland. Last year we had a live tree, but I definately don't want to do that again so this year we will have a Jesse tree.

[wombatclay]

decorating- we cut "ghosts" out of craft paper and tissues and hung them from string from the light in the living room, and cut pumpkins out of craft paper and used tape to stick them on doors. My 2.5yo insisted that our house "needs halloween on it" so that was the goal! The ghosts actually turned out really cute and they don't use up floor space or add a lot of visual "bulk".

[CariOfOz]

Our house isn't teeny, but it's considerably smaller than the place we just moved out of. SO far We're adapting pretty well... the kitchen is actually bigger than the last place, but the pantry is teeny We've gone from 2 full bathrooms down to one but we're coping with that . Will post piccies once we're all in, as I have some good ideas for space saving (if they work out anyway ) Now on to my whinge below:

: I love my small house, I really do. But I'm surrounded by boxes and things that need to go in the storage shed (which is currently taken up by the owners trash and broken appliances and is SUPPOSED to be hauled off by now) and it's getting me down big time. The place feels like such a MESS.. and the living room is weird... it's a good sized square, but about a third of the width of it in one corner is chopped away for an entryway (that doesn't have a closet even so whats the point?) and the opposite corner has a woodstove so I'm having an awful time arranging it so it feels 'right' :

[Babyvan]

800 sf w/ 6 people, 4 cats and a dog

Hi all! new to this thread. We moved 2 years ago from a 1700 sf house to a 800 sf 100 year old country cabin. It used to be a one room house (pre electricity and running water). Later two small bedrooms and a porch were added, then the porch was closed off to form a bath and laundry area. The front door is out of commission so we enter through the back door directly into the messiest part of the house: laundry/mudroom/kitchen. I hate that part.

We have 4 children (14, 12, 8, 3). The three boys share the small room with a triple decker bunk bed my husband made and built in dressers. It's cozy but works for now. But we do need to get out oldest into a room of his own so plan on adding on next spring/summer.

Our daughter is in our room but there's barely room for her so we will build her a room as well.

Our living space is too small for us all to even sit in at the same time. Our kitchen is great, no complaints there, it's actually one of the bigger kitchens I've had. There are NO closets, so storage, not place to hang coats, or put games, etc. Since we live in the country and our power goes off often, we also have to store lanterns, etc so that takes up room.

It's difficult only having one bathroom for 6 people, especially when some take a loooooong time to do their business and one child has a disability that makes waiting impossible.

I don't mind living here as much as I thought I would. We do plan on adding on some next summer. We are looking in to building with cob. We are trying to stay off grid as much as we can.

What I dislike the most about this place is that there is NO insulation, which is about to be fixed soon but it's been a drag because there is so much heat loss and the walls condense and things mold if you aren't careful. We are going to insulate and replace the windows. That will help a lot.

I love that we are forced to live simply so we don't buy a lot. I am always looking for creative storage ideas for the stuff we do have. We have an outbuilding that we keep dh's work stuff and camping stuff, etc but we need to clean that out and pitch stuff. I also love that we have land so the kids can run free. We have goats, chickens, rabbits, and guinea hens. We want to get some peacocks and turkeys.

[CariOfOz]

Originally Posted by sabrinat

What are your small house holiday decorating plans?

nak so pardon lack of caps etc
just reading thru some more of the thread & found this! : i love christmas decorating and i think in our news cozier diggs it will be much easier to get that homey holiday feel. once i sort out the evil lounge room arrangement i'll work out where to put the tree (fake..reakl ones don't do well in the tropics ) We'll have to find a new twig tree as mine seems to have been left behind in the move somewhere : i'm a garland nut so lots of those draped everywhere

[GenB]

Originally Posted by conflictedmama

S

Anyway, I wanted to pass on a great idea I got from Flylady (okay I'm out of the closet!) She says you should only hold on to 2 sets of sheets for each bed in the house and store the clean sets between the matresses. Brilliant! She suggests this in order to clear out the "linen closet" and I wish I had one! But for us it clears out much needed drawer space in the bureau...

.

I am SOOOO glad you shared that tip! Sheets are driving me crazy! Mine get jumbled in my linen drawer. Our house is 80 years old. The rooms are small and we have NOOOOOO closet space at all. Everything is in chests or amoires (sp???). Clutter piles up very fast and I must say, I have become ruthless in weeding it out. Thanks to this website, I am also very thoughtful about what I buy. We just need so much less stuff than I thought we needed when I was young!

I also love that I can clean it in about 2 hours.

[sabrinat]

CariofOz,
It sounds like your decorations will be lovely. I'd love to see pictures when it gets closer to the holidays.

[BuggyBee]

subbing!

[sabrinat]

Hey what have all the small house folks been up to? I've been purging big time and getting ready for christmas. I have lots of plans for the new year...a bit of painting and some new slipcovers and window treatments that I plan to make just as soon as I find the perfect fabric.

[art4babies]

We actually bought a fairly large house (about 1900 sq ft+) but are planning on buying some land and putting a small modular home on it. I saw something about these Scandinavian (I think - ?) modular homes, but I can't find any information on the net on them - ?! I saw a bit on them on HGTV, and I think they are called "Nomad Homes." I did a fruitless search, so if anyone has any information on them (or anything similar in the way of uber-modern modular "green" homes) please chime in!

[MPsSweetie]

Oooh, I LOVE small houses!

We live in a 1280 sq ft house, which is big for us. We have a huge living room and kitchen at the front. Actually the kitchen and dining area are one room, with the kitchen towards the back, kind of u-shaped and small. But since it is open to the dining area it seems huge. Then we have three bedrooms, one smallish room for Asheby, Amethysts room is big and our room is big also. Ours is set up weird though so we will be working on it come warmer weather. Then we have one full bath and one 3/4 bath off the master. We have 6 closets and a large set of cupboards at the end of the hall for storage. Our laundry room also doubles as storage for extra kitchen supplies and cleaning stuff. We have a stackable washer and dryer, front loading. In our living room we have a huge red couch, 3 pieces, then we left the center open for playing. Right now most of Ashebys toys are in there. We also have a large yard, but it needs a lot of work, again come summer. I cannot wait for summer!!

We have lived here for over two years now. Oh and we LOVE having a tiny mortgage. $325, can't beat that.