Small Spaces

I'm always looking for ideas for small spaces. My husband and I have had to come up with some pretty ingenious things in order to survive in small spaces, if I do say so myself. We lived in a 900 square foot cabin for the first year of our marriage. It was beautiful but very cramped. When you live in a space that small, you really have no choice but to get creative.

Our new house is much larger than the cabin, at 1700 square feet. Much larger indeed, but not a huge house by any means. Although most of the living area is spacious and open, there are a couple of rooms that we have had to make into "combo" rooms to make way for the little ones to come.

Our first multi-purpose room is our living room / office area. I love the idea of keeping your family computer in a public area of the house--especially when you have (or are planning for) children. This actually has been working well for us and when I get pics I'll show the before and after once it's completely finished.

The other is a guest bedroom / workout / crafting room. I've been searching the internet to find some great ideas as this room has given me the most difficulty considering the layout of the room. If I ever go back into daycare, this will become the kids' play room--and then I'll have to reinvent the room again. But that's another story for another day...

I've been finding all KINDS of great ideas online. With some creativity and a good layout, I believe combo rooms and small spaces can work efficiently and still look great. Most homes could use more storage. Decorating for small spaces can give you the extra room for the storage you need. Here are some great ideas I found online this morning:

I love the simplicity of this room and it's remarkably small yet doesn't look it. Keeping everything within the same color scheme helps to make small rooms look bigger--this is a perfect example.

I can't even begin to tell you how much we could use something like this if we had a spare wall without windows. I would love to be able to store all of our books like this--taking full advantage of the height of our ceilings. Many times, small spaces can be maximized by using any height that you have when lacking floor space. It's crazy how many books Corey and I have between us. When we were first married, we had more books than all of our other possessions put together. They are still a bit of a storage issue for us, but hopefully with a few built-ins, this should take care of the dilemma soon.

I chose this one because I love the idea of those glass storage jars in the open cabinets. I have some overhead cabinets above my bar that I've been contemplating doing this with. Either this or ripping that out all together...I can't decide. They are high enough that they do not block the view passing through to the dining room. This would be a great idea to do on either side for the openness and yet keep this as a usable space.

Some of the design elements here I don't really love, but I do love the raised sleeping area for a living room that must double as a bedroom. I know many friends that have studios / lofts that could do this and it would look GREAT and double as tons of storage under the platform.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ikea also has a lot of really great ideas for storage and small spaces. I absolutely LOVE Ikea and it's definitely worth a trip to the store even if you have to drive a few miles to get there. But Ikea deserves a post of its own. I'll be working on that tomorrow. You can see a good selection online, but the store has MUCH more to offer. You can get so much for so little--take a minivan or a SUV if you go...you'll need the cargo space. :)

xo