As Josh and I have house-hunted over the years, it's been soooo tempting to look at new/different houses and think, 'oh if we had THIS house, all our problems would be solved!' when that just isn't true. C
For the record...a three bedroom, two bathroom house is BY NO MEANS 'small'...but as most of you know our 'duplex' + frequent guests + business has us feeling like we're bursting at the seams some days. Calling our house 'small' might be a little dramatic, but you get the idea.
If you have a hard time organizing a small space, you'll have an even harder time organizing a large space.
Smaller spaces are actually an excellent place to practice and master organizational skills. If you have too much space to start out with, you probably won't be motivated to stay organized when you have unlimited space to fill (SCARY). Small houses mean you don't have room for unnecessary 'things' and force you to make optimum use of the limited space you have. I'm constantly re-thinking and reinventing the way I store clothes, decor, outdoor toys, and baby gear until it's the absolute best it can be in our current house-situation.
A few years ago I was a house guest at a literal mansion in Ames. No joke, friends of ours were house-sitting and invited us over to hang out a couple times. One night the bathroom was out of toilet paper, so I looked in a cupboard to find a replacement and I could. not. find toilet paper in any of the TWENTY bathroom cupboards. Aside from that I noticed the cupboards were kind of a disaster. Stuff just thrown together any which-way...which seemed really odd for how put together the house seemed overall. Big spaces are a lot harder to organize! Be thankful for your small space!
If you can't keep a small house clean, you won't be able to keep a BIG house clean.
OH man. There are some days I canNOT imagine having more than two bathrooms clean. Or wash and 'make' the sheets from more than three beds. Or vacuum more than 1,200 square feet daily. It's a darn good thing I've had seven years to practice and master cleaning the space we have, because I'm just barely getting good at it. Keeping a busy house clean is no joke, and doing it with a humble, grateful, hospitable attitude is also something that takes practice.
Find a system that works for you and master it. I don't operate on any kind of 'daily' cleaning schedule or chart, but I do laundry almost every day, vacuum, run the dishwasher, and 'pick-up' every day...I clean the bathrooms, dust, and attempt to switch the sheets once a week. If we're hosting a party or a shower or having overnight guests, I try to do more of a 'deep clean.' Staying on top of all these things consistently means our house is in a constant state of 'ready' to have people drop by (announced or unannounced!).
OH man. There are some days I canNOT imagine having more than two bathrooms clean. Or wash and 'make' the sheets from more than three beds. Or vacuum more than 1,200 square feet daily. It's a darn good thing I've had seven years to practice and master cleaning the space we have, because I'm just barely getting good at it. Keeping a busy house clean is no joke, and doing it with a humble, grateful, hospitable attitude is also something that takes practice.
Find a system that works for you and master it. I don't operate on any kind of 'daily' cleaning schedule or chart, but I do laundry almost every day, vacuum, run the dishwasher, and 'pick-up' every day...I clean the bathrooms, dust, and attempt to switch the sheets once a week. If we're hosting a party or a shower or having overnight guests, I try to do more of a 'deep clean.' Staying on top of all these things consistently means our house is in a constant state of 'ready' to have people drop by (announced or unannounced!).
If you wait to host/entertain until your house is 'finished/perfect,' you probably never will.
You're looking at someone who had mauve + baby blue carpet in her entire house for nearly five years. If I would have waited until we had tile floors and nice furniture to have people over, we wouldn't have any friends. It was hard because I HATED our floors and most of our furniture was hand-me-downs (or found on curbs)...but we have SO MANY WONDERFUL MEMORIES from those days. We even hosted Thanksgiving on gray-sub-floor in the midst of construction while Josh was finishing our floors and it was lovely. If you can throw a frozen pizza in the oven, you can have people over.
You're looking at someone who had mauve + baby blue carpet in her entire house for nearly five years. If I would have waited until we had tile floors and nice furniture to have people over, we wouldn't have any friends. It was hard because I HATED our floors and most of our furniture was hand-me-downs (or found on curbs)...but we have SO MANY WONDERFUL MEMORIES from those days. We even hosted Thanksgiving on gray-sub-floor in the midst of construction while Josh was finishing our floors and it was lovely. If you can throw a frozen pizza in the oven, you can have people over.
If you aren't content with your current house, you won't automatically be content with your next house.
This one is hard. For a looooong time, Josh and I looked at this house as a rental.He We didn't want to put money into anything cosmetic, permanent, or unnecessary because our plan was to move and use this home as a duplex rental property. And renters don't 'need' nice floors and pretty ceiling fans. Little by little we replaced some of the things that bothered us (and would add value to our home/bring more rental income) as they fit into our schedule/budget, but for the most part I just got good and content with exactly what we have. There is nothing I can do to change the fact that our washer and dryer are in our third bedroom...but I CAN fit a double bed in there to create a guest bedroom. The unused closet in our front hallway? It's now a fantastic little closet-office. The weird, unused, empty attic-space above the garage was turned into a pretty incredible Man Cave last winter! There isn't a detectable OUNCE of character/charm in this 1950's ranch so I pulled up carpet, found hardwood floors, and had Josh screw some corbels to the wall...and last week someone said, 'your house has so much character' and I just about passed out. It's forced character, but apparently it still counts.
Stop complaining and get creative.
As Jen Hatmaker says, 'it's just paint.' As long as you're not knocking down walls or busting out cupboards, it's pretty easy to reinvent things with minimal cost/consequences. I painted our kitchen ceiling red once and typing that sentence now makes me physically ill, but I tried something and painted over it three years later! No worse for the wear. Use odd spaces for something you'd never thought of before (see: cloffice). Because it's less square footage, small spaces are usually cheaper to decorate...which means it's an excellent space to practice until you find what you love and feel like you've gotten it 'right.' It took me the better part of seven years to feel this way, but maybe don't dwell on that.
I painted our front door three times. It's fine.
It's good to plan and prepare and research...but also...sometimes...just stop talking about it and get to work. For me, this looked like tearing out our living room carpet + pad with my mother-in-law while I was eight months pregnant and Josh had no idea until he walked in the door later that night. Haha oops. I was tired of being mad at our carpet, I KNEW we had beautiful hardwood floors underneath, and Josh was too busy with work (it was July) to take on an 'unnecessary' house-project. So I found some help and did it myself.
There's a fine balance between obsessing about projects and details to the point where you're constantly unhappy and unsatisfied...and choosing to have a good attitude about what you have WHILE finding creative ways to improve the things you're not so in love with.
So. That's what I've learned. And today I can honestly say, I love everything about our small house.
MmB
This one is hard. For a looooong time, Josh and I looked at this house as a rental.
Stop complaining and get creative.
As Jen Hatmaker says, 'it's just paint.' As long as you're not knocking down walls or busting out cupboards, it's pretty easy to reinvent things with minimal cost/consequences. I painted our kitchen ceiling red once and typing that sentence now makes me physically ill, but I tried something and painted over it three years later! No worse for the wear. Use odd spaces for something you'd never thought of before (see: cloffice). Because it's less square footage, small spaces are usually cheaper to decorate...which means it's an excellent space to practice until you find what you love and feel like you've gotten it 'right.' It took me the better part of seven years to feel this way, but maybe don't dwell on that.
I painted our front door three times. It's fine.
It's good to plan and prepare and research...but also...sometimes...just stop talking about it and get to work. For me, this looked like tearing out our living room carpet + pad with my mother-in-law while I was eight months pregnant and Josh had no idea until he walked in the door later that night. Haha oops. I was tired of being mad at our carpet, I KNEW we had beautiful hardwood floors underneath, and Josh was too busy with work (it was July) to take on an 'unnecessary' house-project. So I found some help and did it myself.
There's a fine balance between obsessing about projects and details to the point where you're constantly unhappy and unsatisfied...and choosing to have a good attitude about what you have WHILE finding creative ways to improve the things you're not so in love with.
So. That's what I've learned. And today I can honestly say, I love everything about our small house.
MmB
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