Down Sizing Help!!

[Karen Shattuck]

We are planning on Down Sizing from 2300 sqft to 735 sqft.
From 3 bedrooms with loft, living room, dinning room, Family room, eat in kitchen, 2 1/2 baths, with a 2 car garage
to.....
2 tiny bedrooms, 1 tiny bath, eat in kitchen and a living room with NO garage.

Our house is on the market so we can by a house with land but all the good ones keep getting bought up before ours sells. So we are planning on moving into a cabin at badin lake so we can save up a bigger down payment and wait for the right property to come along.
We are currently packing all of our htings into storage and I am making good use of FreeCycle while our house is on the market. But I am starting to get nervouse about our soon to be very small space!

Does anyone have any tips or tricks to share about living in a small space with kids or on minimalizing the stuff we have?
I have always been one that hates to throw anything away and up in New England with four car Barns with full lofts and full basement under our homes, I just never learned how to let go. I am frugal and you never know when you might need something. I have gotten rid of a lot over the years since we left the north but I just still feel like we have so much stuff.

[Pat]

Could you put some stuff in storage that you could access occasionally to change stuff out as "new". Could you do it when it is warmer outside and you are not all inside all the time? Maybe wait until after the holidays? I don't know if folks buy houses as much, this time of year.

There are always more houses coming on the market, could you trust that the perfect house will come to you when it is the perfect time for you to buy?

Store stuff vertically. Line the walls with shelves, hooks, hang stuff from the ceiling, bunkbeds, simplify and minimize. I can not even imagine us trying this, lol. You've seen our "stuff".


Pat

[Karen Shattuck]

We lined the kitchen with Cabinets.
there is a torage bench for seating.
I plan to line the living room with our book shelves. the walls are about 1 in too short each but DH is just going to have make them fit LOL.

The kids are going to be sleeping in Bunk beds and our bedroom will have the washer and dryer in it with our closet above that LOL..
The kids room is getting lined with white plastic shelving to the ceiling.

I think I am going to get 3 cheap metal sheds from Lowes 1 just for toys for the kids to play.
I am little but toy happy and hate storing them away not to be used.
an existing metal shed will be lawn and garage type stuff. And then I am hoping the furniture we can't fit in the 700 ft will fit in the other two along with our other boxes...... but I don't think it will all fit. SO I need to get rid of something.....

but then I get back to in the house and I just can't seem to fit in a desk or anything like that so our kitchen table will be the end all be all. will be interesting with the computer and Homeschooling!

[Cara Yara]

We did what you are doing when we moved to Charlotte. We went from a 2700 sq ft home with basement, attic, garage and sheds to a in-law suite attached to our friends' house. It was a 2 br, 1 ba with one living area that had our sofas, kitchen table and hutch in it. The kitchen was on one end of the living area and part of the hallway that the girls bedroom was off of. They could have touched the kitchen counter from their bed with a broomstick! It was like a studio kitchen although our friends did get us a large fridge (that took up most of the eating area).

We did this for 6 months when we moved here, hoping that our house would sell in NH. It never did, so we decided to rent it out and now we are renting a 2000 sq ft home in Mint Hill (much better, although zero storage).

Our family at the time was 2 adults, 7 yo, 5yo, 2yo and a black lab. Then I got pregnant which made it even more cozy! :)

What we did to save space:
Under bed storage - We put everything we could under the beds, including things we used frequently, like toys, dress-up clothes, bulky clothing. We had some stuff in under the bed bins and some in just boxes. If you want even more space, raise the beds up even more.
Extra rods in closets - The closets had the usual one rod, so my husband suspended two extra rods at different levels in the girl's closet since their shirts are short. I also found that if you have the right hangers you can hang one item onto another vertically. This worked for some of the lighter stuff.
Use spaces differently - Since we had a large fridge but few cabinets, we stored a lot of pantry items in the fridge. The canned and jarred goods went in there, etc. We stored bulky toys on top of the fridge.
Keep the bare minimum for the kitchen - We kept in storage the majority of our pots, pans, kitchen gadgets, appliances, plates, silverware. Only keep out the cookware you use regularly (you aren't going to be hosting any major dinner parties or making 5 course meals in that little kitchen!), most gadget/appliance tasks can be done the long way if necessary, and you only need 1-2 plates per person, same for cups, silverware. You know how often you will do dishes. We lived without a microwave, blender, food processor, rice cooker, crock pot. I think we just kept a toaster.
Store clothes seasonally - we put all out of season clothes under the bed since we didn't have access to our storage facility. But if you do, I would pack all the summer clothes in a box and put it in storage. We also only kept out a few pajamas/nightgowns since they can wear those a few nights before washing.
Hide boxes with a curtain - we still had boxes leftover after unpacking, with things that we didn't want to put in storage but didn't have a place for. Since we were in an in-law suite there was a short hallway to the main house that we didn't use. We put our boxes in the hallway and closed it off at the end with a curtain hanging on a tension rod. It looked nice and the boxes were still accessible. Maybe you have a corner or some odd space in the cabin that you can do this with.

I'm still racking my brain to come up with other ways we saved space. If I think of more I'll let you know. You can totally do this. We survived and actually have fond memories of the space. It was a very cozy, happy place. Kind of nice it forced us to all be together in the same room.

Cara

[Cara Yara]

You might do this already...but I would suggest putting a basket by the door for shoes. The floor can get dirty fast when there isn't a lot of space to spread it around. The shoes at the door helped cut down on outside dirt, so we just had to worry about inside dirt (the dog helped with dropped food! LOL). It also made it easier to find shoes...

We used our hutch for everything homeschool. Instead of putting pretty china in the top part, it was stuffed full of books! Luckily we use laptops, so we didn't need desk space for the computer. The printer was only pulled out when needed.

We didn't pack away all our toys. We actually kept out the large doll house because it offered so much play per sq ft and my 3 girls would play with it together. It ended up in the hallway/kitchen in front of the curtain. Kinda odd place to put it but it worked. We did pare down toys so that we only had a small batch of each type of toy. For example, we only kept out a few bath toys and they lived in a small bucket under the sink. We also packed away a lot of our leisure books (both grownup and child) and just kept one small bookcase in the kids' room. We could always go to the library if wanted something new to read!

Thank god you have a washer/dryer. We had to go to the laundromat. I hadn't done that since I was first married. It was no fun with a bunch of bored kids!

Cara

[Francie]

I just have to say, Good Luck! We are living in a little condo right now while our house is being built. Most of our stuff is packed in boxes, in corners of the rooms, and to the roof of the garage, plus some in our shed (we have land and a barn and shed, and the house has been started). I can't find anything I need or want, and I'm sick of it. I know some people are "minimalists" that don't need a lot of stuff, but everyone in my family has several of their own interests and hobbies, that require "stuff." We use almost everything we have. Well, we do when we have access to it! I won't even go into my lack of underwear because the movers hid it or something! ;-)
At least you're going into this knowing you'll be there awhile, and planning ahead of time, that's good. Good idea on the outdoor shed storage. Since you have a washer/dryer, how about minimizing towels, clothes and bedding? Also minimize your books. Don't keep anything in the cabin that you could get at the library. Pack up the specialty kitchen gadgets. You don't need that garlic press! Label the boxes really well. Do you have lots of holiday decorations? Box 'em up! Then borrow stuff you need temporarily, like I'm about to attempt to do in this very forum... Cheers, Francie

[Terri Wilson]

If you do put stuff in storage, take a picture of everything in the box and then tape that picture to the outside so you can easily see what is in each box without having to unpack.

[Karen Shattuck]

Any tips on sharing the bathroom with 4 people?
I am a bit nervous. I plan to keep DD's little potty as long as possible. She loves to go at the same time as me. I think this is going to be our hardest adjustment!