One way to create extra storage and make use of the space that you have is by hanging things.

For more of this series click HERE.

We’ve all heard the saying “Less is More” even if it was in the Charmin Ultra commercial. But does anyone know where it came from? 

I really admire his work. What’s ironic to me though is how the man who was famous for saying “less more” had a name that was longer than the quote he itself (25 letters vs 12). Maybe Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe’s was so tired of saying his name that he finally decided to make a declaration that less is more. Who knows? 

Check out my index page for the rest of this series.

Yesterday I talked about bedroom sharing and today I want to touch on bathroom sharing. As you can imagine our 800 square foot apartment only has one bathroom, which also seconds as an indoor pool.

The baby doesn’t use the toilet, but he does bathe so that makes 4.5 peeps sharing one bathroom. Most of my childhood was spent in a home where the 6 of us shared one bathroom and I never thought anything of it. My mom grew up in a family of 8 and they shared one bathroom. My mother in law grew up in a family of 8 as well and they didn’t even have a bathroom. They used an out house and warm water from the kitchen was used to fill a wash tub for bath time. Statistics form the U.S. Census bureau show that the average home had one bathroom all the way from the 1960’s to as late as 1991. Then it increased to one and a half bathrooms. The 2011 Survey showed that for the first time ever the median residence was found to have 2 or more bathrooms and that is still the average today. 

I have nothing against having multiple bathrooms, but it’s not the necessity that most Americans see it as. These days so many of our modern day conveniences solve one problem while creating another. 

Cars and elevators mean we have to make more of a conscious effort to exercise our bodies via gym memberships and exercise equipment.  

Social networking and cell phones present a new struggle in being focused on the people that are in front of us live and in the flesh. 

Families used to have to share a TV, a phone, and a bathroom, and now we have to go to counseling to figure out why our families are so disconnected.

 Of course families in the 1950’s had problems too. I am not saying the good old days were perfect, but there are some aspects of simpler times that we can certainly learn from and apply to our lives today. That or we might as well watch our society go down the toilet! Just kidding. 

How many bathrooms did you have in you childhood home? How many do you have now? I’d love to hear more perspectives. 

This month I am talking about finding lots of hope in a little home. Click HERE to find links to what I have written so far and a schedule for what’s to come.

Today I am talking about the kids room. My kids share a room and a futon for now. 
I’ve never had the privilege of sharing a room with a sibling because I was the only girl in my family, but my friends that did have roommates seemed to have a special bond that I always admired. Since I don’t have any personal experience on the matter I thought I would ask someone who does.

My friend Kathryn has four sisters and one brother and all of the girls shared a room! That’s right, 5 girls in one space. Their dad constructed a special bed Kathryn called the pyramid, which holds 5 twin mattresses on 3 tiers.

 I asked Katherine a couple questions about what it was like squeezing into a small space like that and she said “There were aspects that I loved about sharing a room, like sharing clothes with 2 of my sisters, and all the late-night talks: mostly silly, but the occasional heart-to-heart.”
When I asked her what advice she would give to other room sharers or in my case their parents, she emphasized having something of your own. “It’s nice to have SOME personal space” says Katherine “even if it’s just your mattress (or mattress half – did that too!) or a shelf in the closet that no one else in the room is allowed to access without permission. Being able to personalize my bed space was nice: picking out my bedding and writing on my bunk ceiling.” And parents be warned Katherine says “Talking/playing after bedtime WILL happen…but that’s the best perk of sharing a room”

 She also mentioned that sharing a room has helped in building a strong marriage.

Here is my Sunday quote a day late again. Blogging for 31 days is NOT easy! As for the rest of this week, I don’t even know what’s going to happen, but I still have a lot to share about Hope for the Little Home. So stick with me because I’ll get through this series one way or another.

Here is a cool quote that goes along with my topic.

I talked about how we downsized our living room and cut back to just one couch for seating. Today I am just going to briefly share how we did the same thing with the nursery.

This was our son Z’s nursery and that’s not even half of it!

This is Ezie nursery.

The room is about 5×9 and as I said a couple days ago it does not have a door or a closet. If you lift up the crib skirt you will find some storage though. In fact if you look under anything in our apartment you will “find storage”.

There is a story behind this nursery set that I wanted to share. Every time we have had a need in the midst of these challenging times the Lord has always provided and it’s come together even when things look bleak. Last year when I was pregnant my friend sent me a message on Facebook asking if we needed crib bedding because she had a friend that was giving her set away. I said yes and shipped it from Atlanta along with this painted canvas. Everything was hand made, which I love and makes it all the more special. You have no idea what this meant to me as a pregnant woman that was dealing with guilt because I was so focused on my daughters diagnosis, therapy, surgery and everything else. I felt like I wasn’t able to give much attention to the baby on the way and I certainly didn’t have the means to do much, but our Father made sure he was taken care of. It’s something simple and it’s not even a necessity, but it means a lot to me. This is just another example of how we’ve found hope in our little home!

If you are just joining us the rest of the series can be found HERE!

So the past couple days I talked about how we transformed our dining room area into more usable kitchen space. So where did the dining room go? I am all about eating meals together as a family so don’t think that the dining room got trumped altogether. No.

We were pleased to have found a gem of a table at a flea market right before we moved in.

The dining set and the time that we crossed it’s path couldn’t have been more perfect.

These pictures were taken on my phone (before we changed the floors out or had any other furniture moved in.)

This 5 piece set can fold up like this,

or as a half table/desk,

or a dining table for 4 (we have an extra chair).

It slides around easily and we’ve seated up to 7 people around it using the coffee table as a bench!

We usually have it as a half table next to the couch,

but if we want more space we’ll just move it to the middle of the living room. Or when we want it completely out of the way, like we did for the party last week, we just fold it all up and move it out.

I love this table and even though I had a heck of a time figuring out what it was called I think I finally discovered it’s name. The Linon Space Saver 5 Piece Dining Set.

The new ones run about $330 dollars (ours was $100). We like vintage stuff so it fits our eclectic decor anyway. Yea, yippee skippee for us. Who wants to come over for dinner?

The rest of the series can be found here.

Before we moved into our apartment J was hard at work, along with the help of my sister in law and brother who also graciously allowed us to use their garage.

He made several pieces of furniture that would extend the counter tops of our itty bitty kitchen and, as I said yesterday, double the space. The original kitchen ends where the light flooring begins. 

The first piece is a cutting board counter top (much like the one he made for our last kitchen) which has a space for the trash can, and shelves for some of my kitchen items.

The second piece is something J just found at a thrift store and it adds more drawers and countertop.

The third piece is my favorite and it’s a really long table with open shelving underneath that makes me feel like I am in a William Sonoma kitchen.

Above that is an Ikea shelf

Lastly, next to that is a closet with a water heater in it which we use for a pantry. That project was just as simple as picking up some shelves at the thrift store and hanging a light in there.

Sure the kitchen appliances are dated and the open shelving is sometimes a pain with curious little ones that like to bang on things, but it actually hasn’t been bad at all. I really like this kitchen and it has challenged me to make the most of where we are and focus on what is important. It may not be my dream kitchen, but it’s perfect for the season we are in. Maybe you find yourself in a “transition” season as well and I hope these posts can encourage and inspire you.

“I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

Phillipians 4:11

When we moved into our apartment the kitchen was tiny. I am talkin’ about giving the yellow polkadot bikini some competition in the itsy bitsy teenie weenie contest.  We had a small refrigerator next to an old stove on one side and a sink and dishwasher on the other side. That was it.
. 

Don’t let the photograph fool you, where the floor changes is where the apartment kitchen ended. That arrow is pointing to some drawers that we brought in.When we moved there were only 4 drawers total in the entire kitchen and they are so small that you cannot fit a flatware tray in one. Not even a European style Ikea one! So we had to cut one up to fit it in the drawer.

See, that’s SMALL. I thought about doing a photo comparison of the kitchen we left in our last house, but I didn’t want this post to be too depressing. However, if you want to see what we are downsizing from I do have pictures (or even a video) on here and it was lovely.

I am fine with keeping things simple though. I don’t need an extravagant decked out kitchen to provide some wholesome, delectable, decent meals for my family of 5, but more than two feet of counter space is preferred. So J and I decided to take a look at our floor plan and think outside of the box a little.

On a side note I stated earlier in this series that we had a 2 bedroom apartment. The den/office doesn’t have a door on it or a closet, in fact it’s the size of a walk in closet. I just wanted to clarify in case it looked like I gave false information. 

I went through all of my phone photos from since we moved in, and this is just a little taste of some of the creations that have come out of our apartment kitchen.

and these are some of the people that I have to share it with.

That is why expanding our kitchen was so important. So much so that it will take a second post to talk about all the details. I’ll pick this back up tomorrow when we go from the kitchen that I loathed to a kitchen that I love.

Back in June I did a blog post titled “Apartment Hunters” where I did an HGTV style review of each of the apartments we looked at. Our first choice was the one with the hardwood floors. Not just because they are cute and stylish, but because the messy mom has three very messy kids and I know carpet wouldn’t stand a chance with us.

In the end though we were not able to get our first choice apartment, but it’s okay because our second choice was actually a little bit more spacious believe it or not. Playing the hand we were dealt we were determined to make this space work for us. We signed a lease on a carpeted apartment and that was that. Except, when my husband has his mind set on something you can’t hold him back.

J making a digital floor plan on in the carpeted apartment when we first signed.

A little research, some grunt work, and BAM!

Well, first of all we talked to our Land Lords before we started and assured them nothing permanent was taking place and they’ve seen it, so we’re good. We didn’t “install” anything, we just more or less laid a floor on top of a floor. We found the hardwood for our space from Lumber Liquidators and it was 39 cents a square foot. If you keep your eye on it you can find deals like that frequently.

I’ll tell you right now, it didn’t all go as planned. If you have a low profile carpet such as berber you can lay the laminate flooring right on top. If you have a higher profile carpet that is plush and padded (like we do) you need to lay a solid surface down to make it firm. We learned this the hard way.

After J spent a full day and a sleepless night measuring, cutting, and laying the floor down it ended up being way too “spongy” because of the carpeting. It felt like walking in a bounce house or something and J was worried that it would put too much stress on the flooring and cause the joints to snap. So we pulled it all up and put down a particle board plywood called OSB, which J got from Home Depot for about $6 a sheet. Then we relaid all the flooring.The next issue was making the sure the floor wasn’t too high or else the front door wouldn’t be able to open. So we left more relief in that area, by spacing our plywood strategically to have more give in certain areas.

I wasn’t planning on a full blown tutorial for this so I didn’t take many pictures of the process, but here is a picture that shows the three types of flooring.

More importantly here is the video that J went off of for this little home improvement. This tutorial is great if you have a firmer floor to begin with, if not then take my advice and add the extra step of laying down something like OSB.

If I would have been stuck with the light colored carpet in the dining area, I would have made it work because that’s my life’s theme right now (make it work), but having this wipeable surface is just one less thing for me to worry about. I am extremely grateful and I’ve been very happy with the results.

For more information about how this project turned out and a time lapse video of the entire floor removal process then check out Part Two HERE.