Finding Happiness in Money, Habits, and Home
When you live in an older or smaller home, you know that storage comes at a premium. Entryway storage in particular can be a problem when you don’t have the luxury of a coat closet, much less an entire mudroom.
Luckily, with a little bit of inspiration and thinking outside the box, you can come up with a functional and stylish storage solution for even the tiniest of entryways.
Regardless of where you live and what “small” means to you, I’m here to tell you that if you’ve considered downsizing, or are in the market for a first-time home, there are absolutely some BIG benefits to living in a SMALLER home.
When Jesse and I bought our house in 2012, we did not view it as a “starter home”. We also did not go into it thinking about whether or not it would be our forever home.
Remember that time that we tore up our only main-level bathroom a few weeks before Christmas and knocked out a complete remodel in about a month, while also working full time jobs, entertaining and visiting family over the holidays, and wrangling a 17 month old?
YEAH. ME NEITHER.
We thought this was a good plan. We did, in fact, demo our bathroom down to the sub-floor, tile backer, plaster and lath walls the second week of December. It is now Mid-February, and Jesse and I are still tip-toeing downstairs nearly naked in the middle of the night when we have to pee because we are apparently 80 years old and can’t make it a full night without getting up.
I’m not sure I can fully claim to be a minimalist, but I do enjoy our small house, love a good de-clutter/purge, and try to stick to a “less is more” attitude. With most of our purchases, we do our research, find deals when we can, and buy fewer (high quality) items that will be well worth the price. Putting together a baby registry with the sheer amount of STUFF on the baby market is an exciting… and slightly overwhelming task for a minimalist mom-to-be. So I’ve put together a list of my very favorite products from our first year with Henry that are big on functionality and relatively small on space.
You’ll notice I titled this post: “Week 6”, rather than “The Reveal”.
I know. I’m disappointed too.
It is, of course, the final week of the Spring One Room Challenge, hosted by the awesome Linda at Calling it Home. It’s been a crazy six weeks, and I do feel like we’ve made some major progress on our basement bathroom. So all is not lost! Even though we’re not quite done with the room, I have to remind myself that we started with the corner of a living room, and now have nearly a bathroom. We built it from scratch.