Category: Small Space Solutions

Small Space Solutions

8/31/2017

Pop quiz! What does the number 2,467 have to do with your home? Is it:
a) the dollar amount of the average mortgage payment
b) the average number of times a homeowner visits a home improvement store in a single month
c) the median square footage of new-construction homes built last year.

If you guessed 'c' - you're right. Nationwide our homes have plenty of space, much bigger than other countries. In fact, 11.2 Chinese houses would fit into the average American House. On the opposite side of the spectrum we have a growing trend towards tiny houses. If you’ve watched any home related shows you’ve noticed these tiny houses. Tiny House Nation. Tiny House Hunters. The tiny house trend has been growing every year. Architect Sarah Susanka is credited with starting this change of heart with the publication of her Not So Big House in 1997.

No matter what size home YOU live in, there are a few lessons learned from these tiny spaces that we all can incorporate into our homes.

Let your furniture do double duty

DOUBLE DUTY: Put your furniture to work. Instead of just having a bench at the bottom of the bed, use a bench that has open cubbies below for slide out baskets. I always like the Pottery Barn ones, but you can also find some reasonably priced benches w/ baskets at Overstock.com. Instead of just having a standard coffee table, build yourself a cube with a hinged lid. Viola! A place to stash all your movies on DVD, for those of us who refuse to go completely digital. Or if you have a window seat or breakfast banquet, consider adding storage there as well.

GO UP: When you can’t go out with square footage, go up. Your walls provide infinite possibilities for storage. If you live in a small space, this is essential. We love this bicycle on the wall.

What can you get up off the floor?

If you use it every day, it's okay to leave out on the counters.

WITHIN REACH: We often times clutter up our kitchen counters with every gadget known to mankind, with countless bottles and cooking items that we may use only once in a while. When space is at a premium, it’s especially important to really prioritize what we have out, within reach. The guideline is that if you use it every day – like your coffee maker – then it’s ok to leave out on the counter. Those things you use only once a week go up into a cupboard or onto a shelf. The things that you use less frequently go in that cupboard above the fridge, and in less accessible areas. THE ONLY things that stay out within reach are the things you use every day. Everything else – stash it out of sight.

Tap into your inner Julia Child, and install a pegboard to get those things up off your counters.

YOU’VE BEEN PEGGED: Let’s say you really are a great cook. (I admire you!) If you love puttering in the kitchen and creating masterful meals, then tap into your inner Julia Child and put up a pegboard in your kitchen. When everything is up off the counter tops, yet in easy reach on a pegboard… you have the best of all worlds. Plus, it’s easier to find things that are organized neatly on a peg board. Paint the pegboard a happy color before hanging, and it’ll brighten your kitchen. If it’s good enough for Julia Child, then it’s good enough for you. That’s economical and practical.

CASE for BOOKS: Instead of just having on small bookcase, consider lining an entire wall with floor to ceiling bookcases. Paint the back of the bookcases the same color as your wall and you have that built-in look. By taking the bookcases all the way to the ceiling you maximize every square inch of storage space. You could also do built in shelves all around the doorway – floor to ceiling and wall to wall. It’s a great way to use an otherwise under-utilized space.

REUSE EXISTING PIECES: Take an existing wine cabinet – you know the type – the one that used to house your collection of fine wines before you went to Celebrate Recovery. What do you do with it? For your nifty knitters, it’s an ideal place to store your yarn, one skein per wine slot. I’ve also seen old CD cabinets used in the same way. Before the iPod changed how we listened to music we purchased those CD cabinets. Look at those CD cabinets as storage! I can see them used as a place for storing your fabric fat quarters, organized by color. Crafty corners, nifty nooks, cozy cubbies.... make them work for you now.

TUCK AWAY RARELY USED ITEMS: What you don’t use regularly goes in that drawer beneath the media cabinet, or in the basket under the bed. Or under the vanity..... You get the idea. This is especially true when it comes to the kitchen. Visual clutter makes the space feel like it's too small. Putting things away out of sight gives you the feeling of a bigger space. Easy!

BE AN EDITOR: We talk a lot about letting go the excess stuff that clutters our homes. When space is limited, this is even more important. Keep the most important items and donate or sell the rest. Think of it this way – you’re blessing someone else with your extra items. Everything you have in your home, supports how you live today. No extra storage needed

SHOE IN: If you can only dream about the enormous closets where you have an entire wall of just shoes, fear not. There are a number of clever cabinets that take up very little floor space, and when you fold out the doors a surprising number of shoes will fit in the tiny cabinet. Check out Ikea online and search for STALL – it’s under 7” deep and holds 8 pair of shoes for less than $100.

No matter what size home you live in, incorporate these small space solutions to make your home work for you.

~Alana

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Double Duty

1/20/2017

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Small space? No problem! When you have a cozy space, your furniture needs to work twice as hard.

Instead of having each and every piece of furniture only perform a single function, let’s have furniture that does double duty. We love this oft-pinned image (above) of a bench / filing cabinet. How can your furniture do double duty for you? Perhaps your old steamer trunk could be your coffee table. Inside the trunk you can store out of season decorating items, extra linens, artwork you’re not hanging right now, and so forth. It can serve as very effective storage. Pop a piece of beveled glass on top and you have a double duty hard-working piece of furniture. We also love this bookcase / crafting table combo (below). When your space is limited, let all the pieces of furniture work as hard as you do.

DOUBLE DUTY SPACES. Remember the old murphy beds? If you have need for an occasional guest room, but don’t want the space dedicated 100% of the time to something that only happens twice a year, consider the updated Murphy bed solutions. There’s a company in Denver called BREDA BEDS that offers a murphy style bed that also contains an IN LINE sofa. It’s less than $3K at the time of this blog. This would allow you to have a sofa AND a guest space. .

We love furniture (and spaces) that do double duty.

Happy Decorating. Give us a thumbs up and leave your comments below.

Alana Light

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Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

1/13/2017

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One of our favorite small space solutions is to use mirrors.

Wherever we see light, whether it’s from a window or from a mirror reflecting light, we have a sense of AHHHHH – a sense of spaciousness. If you have a dark spot in the room, use mirrors to reflect light back into the space. I love to hang a mirror behind the occasional table for that very reason. In our own home we have a dark hallway adjacent to our offices. Each of the offices are bright but this hallway is not. Solution? I hung a large mirror vertically in that hallway, which bounces the offices’ light back into the hallway. Now we never have to turn on the light, and it feels much more spacious.

Where can you hang a mirror to bring in more light? How does your entry way look? Could you use a mirror opposite the doorway? Does your Living Room have a wall of windows? If so, consider putting mirrors opposite the wall of windows, doubling the amount of light, and doubling the space visually.

One of my favorite mirrors is the IKEA Mongstad mirror – it’s 37” x 74” and it’s less than $100. (pictured at left). I've also seen the mirror hung vertically on barn door sliders over a doorway in a luxurious spa in San Diego. Now you know the secret... it's less than $100.

Let there be light, lots of light! Let mirrors help expand your space with light. Let us know how you used mirrors to expand your space in the comments below.

Happy Decorating,

Alana Light

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Small Space Solutions

Double Duty

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

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B L O G

Small Space Solutions

Double Duty

﻿Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

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Archives

Categories

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall