After a weekend of extroverting, this introvert needs some time alone. But it’s not always easy in a small house– especially I am very sensitive to noise and distractions. Here’s what I’ve found helpful to have alone time in a small house.
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Let’s be honest, when we have a small home, we often have to make sacrifices. Maybe we can’t have that home gym or that dedicated home office space. Maybe we can’t have everything we want, but that didn’t stop me from creating a movie theater in my small home.
Blackout curtains, fluffy pillows and popcorn all help, but the key to creating a movie theater in your small home or small apartment is a good projector. A big TV is nice, but a projector truly makes the space feel as if it’s a small movie theater in your home.
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I want my home, although small, to feel welcoming, happy and abundant. Here’s a few inexpensive ways I create a feeling of abundance in my home.
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When I show videos of my home online, I often get comments from folks who can’t believe my home is just 800 square feet. And I take that as a compliment because I use a lot of tips and tricks to make my home seem larger than it is. Here’s 5 ways I make my small space feel bigger.
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Renovating a home is difficult. PERIOD! Renovating while trying to do eco friendly home renovations? Yeah, that makes a hard journey even harder.
When we first went into our home renovation journey, I wasn’t super concerned with being eco friendly. I loved the earth, obviously, but I was more concerned at that time with saving money. I had just spent a 🍑-load on a house! And I didn’t need to spend more than I had to on a renovation! Luckily, saving money and sustainability can go hand-in-hand.
Here’s a eco friendly, budget friendly tips I’ve learned in my over 10 years (!!!) experience in home renovating. (Yes, I’m counting the Airstream as home renovations because it was my home!)
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One of the best parts about having a small home is that there’s less to clean. That doesn’t mean my home is always spotless. In fact, I make a mess most days. And in a small space, small messes can look BIG.
But keeping a clean, tidy space is important for my mental health & over the last 10 years of living in small spaces I’ve learned a few tips and tricks. Here’s some of my best tricks to keep my small space clean and sparkly:
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Our incomplete living room.
I’m sure y’all have heard of the slow movement– slow food, slow fashion, etc. It’s a whole thing. (Check out the Wikipedia post if you’re interested.) But what I haven’t heard much about is slow renovating. It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately because, well, I’m living in a house that we’re slowly renovating.
If you turn on HGTV or even browse home design accounts on Instagram, it seems like everyone is renovating rooms in their homes or their entire homes(!) in a few weeks. WEEKS, people! We’ve now had our small home for about a year and we don’t have even one room completely done. For a long time, I was embarrassed and frustrated that we couldn’t get it done by ourselves in a few months. Then, I was frustrated that we didn’t have the time or money to just pay someone to do it for us and be done with it. I felt like I was going through the five stages of grief, people.
But the more I think about it, the more thankful I am for the slow renovation process. Taking our renovation slower than we had anticipated has given us a chance to make back the money we’ve spent on our home renovations. We haven’t had to take out a home renovation loan and I’m proud of that.
It’s also allowed me to think long and hard about what our needs are and what our style is. The longer we live in this home, the more I realize, it would be nice if we had a small dresser here, or it would be nice if we had a place for coffee cups there.
Honestly, George and I don’t always agree on a style for our home either. I like ultra-modern pieces and he likes more farmhouse. I want us both to be happy and comfortable in our home, so sometimes it takes us a long time to come to a happy medium.
I am also grateful that I’ve been given time to gather pieces that mean something to me. I’m not just going to a big box store and picking out a bunch of meaningless stuff all willy nilly. I’ve had time to search out pieces that I love and in some cases, I’m still looking for the perfect piece to complete the room. And that’s ok.
I’m tired of just seeing the before and after house porn pictures. The middle part is important too. Home renovation is a process and it takes time. So let’s all just slow down and enjoy it.
What do you think? Are slow home renovations just frustrating or should they be celebrated? Chat with me in the comments.
We’re feeling the burn a bit when it comes to our budget. We’ve spent our money on the important stuff and we don’t have much left for furniture and decor. So, I’ve been doing what I do best, shopping the flea markets and the sales.
I’ve seen ads for tons of different mattress-in-a-box companies. I’m sure you’ve seen them too! And even after reading review after review, I couldn’t really determine if any of the companies were different from each other. I also didn’t want to pay thousands of dollars for a mattress from a mattress store.
Enter Amazon Prime Day on July 11th.
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The unfinished headboard/accent wall in the bedroom
For the past few weeks, we’ve been keeping our heads down and attempting to grind out some much-needed home renovation projects. Right now, I don’t have much in the way of tutorials or pretty pictures, but I do have a renovation playlist that we’ve been jamming out to. It’s pretty random, I must admit. There’s a lot of ’90s alternative– George and I still live in that decade, musically. But there’s also some of my girl, Dolly and a little of the King, himself, on there.
Spotify is something I’ve only gotten into recently. I know, I know, I’m way behind on the times. But I’m having fun with it. You can also see my super embarrassing work out mix, if you follow me on Spotify.
Are you on Spotify? Do you have any new artists you are jamming out to? Chat with me in the comments and happy Friday!!!
I’ve been pretty confident in my design decisions up until now. I know what I like, and I’ll search the ends of the earth to find it. (Once a librarian, always a librarian.) But the predicament in our master bedroom has me stumped. There’s no other way to arrange it, the bed in our “master” bedroom has to go in front of a window. The room is fairly small and I think the best arrangement will be putting it under the window on the left side of the picture below.
The “master” bedroom, before we tore it to shreds
Ok, so that’s settled, right? Well, yes and no. Truth is, we’re running low on funds (a huge post on budgeting is coming soon), so I’m not keen on spending even a couple hundo for a bed. I also want a bed that is low to the ground, as to not block all the natural light from the window, so we’re going to build something ourselves. I’d like a bit of storage underneath the bed for socks and undies– a simple box with drawers will do. (Similar to what we built in the Airstream.) Buuuuuut, here comes the hard part, what should we do for a headboard?
Here’s the options I’m thinking: Continue reading