What living in a small home is REALLY like.

When most Americans picture their “dream home”, they probably don’t picture a home less than 900 square feet. You’re probably picturing a mudroom, playroom, office, garage, multiple bathrooms on different levels, dining room, living room, pantry space….ALL OF THE ABOVE. And you know what, there’s nothing wrong with wanting those things! There really isn’t.

But, we made the choice to live in a small home. We decided the 10 acres of land we are on was worth sacrificing space inside. We’ve been living in 890 sq feet for the past two years with two adults, a toddler and an 80lb dog, and I can honestly say it’s been one of the best things! Do I have moments where I wish we had more space for things? Yes, of course. But overall we really are happy here and don’t have plans on upgrading any time soon. And even if someone wrote me an a million dollar check tomorrow, moving into a bigger house would not be the first thing I’d do.

So here’s a typical day in our little home:

Morning time: We only have two bedrooms, and Hank’s room shares a wall with our room, so haven’t used a baby monitor for over a year. We hear him when he wakes up! Hank is usually the first one awake, so I usually wake up to the sounds of him kicking and talking to himself in his crib. He’s a “slow riser” like his mama, so he likes to have his time in the morning before getting out of bed. Gradually the noises grow from small kicks and baby chatter to full on bouncing up and down in his crib! That’s when I know he’s really really to get up! Taylor usually starts the coffee and I’ll get Hanky up for the day. The coffee smell fills the whole house (the kitchen is in the center of our home). Our living room is open to the kitchen, so Hanky usually plays with his toys that we keep in the living room while Taylor pours coffee and I make breakfast for Hank. Some days Taylor and I sit on the couch in our living room and sip coffee while Hank sits in his high chair and eats his breakfast. Because it’s all right there, haha. We can be standing in our kitchen and see basically every corner of the whole house. So, there really isn’t anywhere Hank can run off to where we can’t see him.

Midday: Every morning Hank watches Taylor leave from our little window seat in the living room. He loves hearing Taylor honk the horn when he pulls out and has the sweetest little wave he gives from inside. Once Taylor leaves, our living room transforms into the “play room”. We limit Hank to having two bins of toys, both of which fit in our living room built ins. He has two toy bins, and a row of books and that’s it! Never have I felt like he didn’t have enough toys- on the contrary, I constantly feel like there is more we should get rid of! We have a small table in the “breakfast nook” part of our kitchen, which is where I fold laundry, package etsy items to ship, play playdough with Hank, etc… I guess you could say the kitchen table also serves as a laundry room, office and play space! I love the fact that I can sit at the table and read, and Hank can decide to get up and go into any other room in the house and I can almost always see him and CAN always hear him! We don’t have a single baby gate in the house because there isn’t anywhere he could get to that he can’t already go! I love that part of it. The house does turn into a MESS in the middle of the day- toys everywhere with no place to “contain” them, laundry strung out all over the kitchen table, Hank chasing Teddy back and forth from the front to the back of the house. It’s a little chaotic. Our small space gets messy real fast. But on the flip side, it’s quick to clean up. We don’t have a ton of extra stuff so almost everything has a “place” and as soon as Hank goes down for a nap, I can usually get the whole place clean in about 45 minutes. An hour of cleaning means the place is sparkling. Less house means less time cleaning. Less rooms means more room for other things.

Evening: Hank usually plays in the living room while I prep for dinner. It’s nice because he can be doing his own thing with his toys while I’m cooking and I still have eyes and ears on him. We don’t have a garage, but Hank knows when he sees headlights shining into the window, it means “daddy’s home!!!”. It’s the cutest thing watching him rush the door when Taylor walks in. Sometimes we eat dinner at the island in the kitchen, and sometimes we all squeeze into the little breakfast nook and fit around the table. Hank usually takes his bath right after dinner, which means one of sits in the bathroom with him and the other cleans up the dinner stuff. We can still chat from the bathroom to the kitchen and hear what’s going on without hardly having to raise our voice. It’s one of my favorite times of night! I like to sit in the bathroom with a glass of wine and kind of half talk/play with Hank, and half chat back and forth with Taylor whose cleaning in the kitchen. Sometimes we say “ok switch!” or “come here for a sec!”. Sometimes I even fold laundry on our bed while Hank is in the bath, because I can see right into the bathroom from our small bedroom (they’re attached). Next is story time, we all sit on the sofa together and read Hank a few books before bed. The house feels extra cozy at night. After Hanky goes to bed, Taylor and I transform the living room/play room back into what we call “the adult room”. Haha- basically we just clean up all of Hanks toys, put them back in the cabinet out of sight, pour a drink, and get the diffuser going! Our house is small enough that we can plug the diffuser into the kitchen island or put it on the front console when you walk in the door, and we can smell it on the sofa from both places! We turn our twinkle lights on, and everything just feels so cozy and intimate. And when we need a late night snack, the fridge is only a couple steps away!

What we sacrifice in storage, we make up for in coziness!

There’s definitely times where I get frustrated and wish we had more than one closet, a pantry, a second bathroom, a mudroom for the dog- all of those things. But you know what? So much about living is mindset. We don’t NEED all of those things. Are they nice? Sure. But we certainly don’t need them. What we have in our 890 sq foot home is ENOUGH. It’s more than enough, because it’s filled with the people that I love. And isn’t that what a home is suppose to be anyways? A safe place for our loved ones? And you know what, there’s no body else in the world that I’d rather be living in such close quarters with than the two boys I got. I think I’m pretty damn lucky.

“Love grows best in little houses, with fewer walls to separate. Where you eat and sleep so close together, you can’t help but communicate. And if we had more rooms between us, think of all we’d miss. Love grows best in houses just like this.”