Do Something About It!
[THIS POST IS PART OF A 31 DAY SERIES. START HERE IF YOU'RE NEW!]
A big pet peeve of mine is the constant complaining about a problem that can be solved. If you don’t like it, do something about it. Sooooo…
Problem? Nearly every issue we have with our house circles back to the fact that our house and our property are too small.
There is an average of 3.5 feet from each side of our bed to the walls in our master bathroom (I measured that just for you). Getting from one end of a room to the other almost always involves an obstacle course of furniture, toys, books, dogs, and of course children. It feels like there are never two spaces that are clean at the same time, and any room that does happen to be clean is only clean because I’m in the process of cleaning it. By the way… I’m sorry, but all those people that say a small house is easier to keep clean… I call bull...
Well, I can’t grow the place and moving isn’t an option yet, so those are out as solutions. What’s left?
Get rid of the extra stuff!
There is barely room for the things that we need, let along anything that we don’t. I’ll get into this more later, but basically I ransack the house constantly, bagging outgrown clothes, unwanted toys, underused dishes… it’s a never ending task, but one worth being a slave to.
In a perfect world we could start from scratch with the big stuff; pieces selected with our space and measurements in mind. We are newly-ish-weds though, so we still have plenty of furniture on its second life. Furniture that we are incredibly grateful to have, and have no real desire to replace. Key pieces like our couch, recliner, and kitchen table are non-negotiables, so we are extra diligent about the pieces we surround them with. Everything serves at least two purposes: surface plus storage. Bonus points for being pretty.
Expanding on the multipurpose concept, many of our decorations do more than one thing as well. I love rustic wood, antiques, and old things like metal buckets, so that’s what I use for storage.
A wooden crate holds the baby’s toys.
A wooden crate holds the baby’s toys.
Right now it hides behind the recliner. It has casters on it, so it's easy for the kids to roll out and dump onto the living room floor.
An old horseshoeing toolbox contains my little boy’s books.
A perfectly beat up old wash tub hold up to dirty shoes and cute miniature cowboy boots alike.
[THIS POST IS PART OF A 31 DAY SERIES. START HERE IF YOU'RE NEW!]
Probably the most important step toward contentment in your home, it's there to help you. Unless it's haunted, but you should probably find a different kind of blogger for tips on that...
Have you had to learn to work with your home to get around a less than stellar house situation? I'd love to hear! Add to the list in the comments!
See the rest of my 31 Day of Writing series:
Day 1: Challenge Accepted
Day 2: Choosing To Love It
Labels: 31 Day Challenge, 31 Days of Contentment, Solutions
posted by Unknown @ 6:12 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Work with my home? Oh, yes. We live in an old house that is a little crooked in spots. I've had to be real creative with furniture placement. I have one table that has a couple of legs propped on little wood blocks. So, I put a cloths over the table to hide the blocks. It looks level. I try not to complain about this, but sometimes it is frustrating to find a furniture arrangement that works with everything. I like a good challenge. I'm still working on storage and we've traded rooms a few times to make things more efficient for my husbands in home piano studio - he teaches lessons out of our home. So, I always have a plan marinating, just in case we need to switch things up...again! I probably need to start getting rid of stuff too.
I know what you mean about small a small bedroom. Ours isn't that small, but put in a wardrobe and chest of drawers, bedside tables and a queen sized bed... and you're shuffling around the edges as well. :( I'm always using things with dual purpose, moving things and repurposing them when needed, and getting rid of piles of stuff I no longer need, want or use.
"Home" is an evolving concept! Even if we have goals that we are working toward with our space, there's really no finish line because our lives are always changing. Thanks for reading :)
It took me a while to let go of our matching set, but we just didn't have room for furniture that size. We have a hodge-podge of furniture in there now, but the space functioned so much better once I put in pieces that were functional instead of what was "supposed" to be in there!
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