Renting First House...

[BellaLuna Rayne]

and its got really tiny rooms with no closets. This house was built in the late 1800s to early 1900s, its 1000 sq ft with most of the square footage in the kitchen. Its got 2 living rooms, is the way I put it, basically when you first walk in the door is the first living room and what we are calling DSS' room off to the left. Then you walk through an archway into another living room, with the Master Bedroom and woodstove (only source of heat) to the left. Then through another archway into the kitchen with the bathroom on the right, the I guess dining area with a door in the floor to the cellar and the back sliding door to the backyard. The things that made me rent this house are the kitchen and the backyard. I am just concerned because our rooms are very small and am afraid not much besides the bed is gonna fit and there are no closets...which I can totally deal with its just gonna take creativity.

The landlord is basically letting me do what I want with this place short of major renovations, like building on to things and such. What do you guys suggest?? DH and I are planning on TTCing as soon as he returns from Iraq and another concern is where does a baby fit into this? How am I gonna homebirth, will there be enough room??

I really like this house and despite the fact that we are just renting hope to fix it up. Do you guys have any suggestions because DH told me not to throw anything away, its not like we have a lot its just large for this type of space...please any suggestions, thoughts, links, anything would help! TIA!

[cee3]

The first place we rented when we lived in Australia was a tiny (about 500 sq feet) house that had no closets (which is actually quite common in older Australian houses). We found two wardrobes sitting out on the side of the road which we used. You probably will not find those just sitting around in the U.S., but you could buy them. Ikea sells them and you could probably find something similar at someplace like Lowes or Home Depot (possibly?). If you don't have enough room in your bedroom, it could go in another room.
You could also get a small chest of drawers and just a hanging rack for your hanging stuff. We stored a lot of stuff underneath our bed, too.

[hibana]

Our house is about the same age, but larger and the few closets it has are teeny. We use footlockers and chests in the odd spaces of the house to store out-of-season clothes and other stuff. I second the pp about wardrobes and underbed storage containers from Ikea.