living smaller

I've lived in mainly small places all of my life. Two bedroom apartments with a mom and five kids, a dorm for four years, and two 1 bedroom apartments. Until we moved into #18, I had never had a spare room for a guest. Now we have three. Two of those rooms I barely ever step in. But that's not going to be the norm when we move because there is no way Matt and I will be able to afford the square footage of the place we live in now when we move out of here. No way.

And know what: not scared, not intimidated. I figure we'll be fine if we find a three bedroom, two bath house. One for us, a room for the office/guest room and the other as a formal guest room. And if we could only afford two bedrooms, then we'd take one room for us, another as the office/guest room. Not a problem.

In fact, I am looking forward to the challenges of living smaller. It's way more interesting. Anyone can make a place functional and great when they live in a big ass house. It takes a special person to squeeze a life into 1000 square feet less. I loved the challenge of squeezing everything in our apartment and if we had to do it again, I'd freaking do it.


I am very drawn to living in smaller quarters and am really impressed when people can pull it off well. In fact my all time favorite article in the now defunct Blueprint (RIP) is all about how they made over someone's tiny tiny apartment into a livable home for a single gal: http://www.marthastewart.com/article/small-space-makeover

Maybe it's the Tetris player in me that LOVES being able to squeeze a lot into a little, maybe it's almost my philosophy in life, put as much into my life as I can and live with the tight quarters. After all home isn't about size, it's about what and who is in it.

I guess it's easy to say all this now with all the extra space we have but believe me even in a large home, I was thinking small.