Our Small Home and where I've created Space!

According to the listing of our house when we purchased it we have about 836 square feet in our one and half story 2 bedroom home.  That is above ground, they aren't including our basement.  It was the perfect size home for me when I bought it as a single gal back in 2007.  Though, I then got married  unexpectedly in 2007 and we've just added a son this year.  We still fit quite perfectly in our small house, with the exception of changes I've made to our home along the way and I have changes in mind for when our family continues to grow.

This is our house.  16 feet wide, not very long, I don't exactly remember that part.  I know the width because of certain rooms within our house that I've measured for carpeting, shelves, or just plain old rearranging furniture.  Yes, I measure before I rearrange furniture, why go thru all the trouble to rearrange furniture for none of it to fit like you thought?  Graph paper is my friend, I always have a tablet or two lying around the house.

When you walk into our door you are in our front porch.  Its seasonal.  Its about 4-5 feet deep.  Then you are truly at the front door not just the screen door.  When you walk into this door you are in our living room.  When I bought the house the house didn't have a dining room.  The kitchen wasn't big enough for a table either.  So that poses the question...where do you eat?  I have since then fixed that problem which I'll share in a future post.  From our living room if you continue to walk strait you come to our kitchen and off the kitchen to the right is our stairs to go up and the one and only bathroom.  From the kitchen continuing to walk straight you are in the back entry with a door going to the back yard and steps to the right going down to the basement.

We have tons of wonderfully built in storage in the basement that was there before I bought the house.  But if you're like me, especially in cold Minnesota winters you don't want to go downstairs if you don't have to.  We have a rather small kitchen with not enough cupboards for food.  I wanted a pantry so I designed one:

Right over the radiator in the back entry.  Radiators need to be "shelved" anyways to keep the heat from going straight up.  I always design up never out.  Same goes for gardening...again I'll leave that for a future post.  Directly across from our pantry I designed and created every day-on-the-go cubbies vs having to hang our coats in the closet and leaving everything else around the house like: purse, wallet, keys, bags, hats, mitts, etc.

So as you can see with out the two projects above we didn't have much organization and a lot of stuff with out a proper home.  I love to be organized and I love organizing.  My next project I'm hoping to do is wall to wall shelves on one entire wall in our living room.