Living in a smaller home has its perks. Lower energy bills, yes, please. Less space you need to clean. Who wouldn’t love this? But being able to wash the dishes while sitting on your sofa and having your leg hanging out of bed touching the bathroom floor isn’t fun, and life can and will get pretty cramped pretty quickly.
Tiny homes and living in small spaces are having a moment and for good reason, but living with less square footage presents some unique problems that need creative solutions.
Because oftentimes, no matter how ruthless you are with decluttering or how many items you put into vacuum-pak storage bags, space will always be something you’re short on.
The good news is that there are ways to make your home feel bigger and less cluttered without having to knock down a wall and take over next door’s bedroom.
Furniture That Works Twice As Hard
When you’re short on space, you don’t want to be wasting it on lazy furniture. A bed that is just a bed? Amateur move. You need an ottoman bed that lifts up and offers you hidden storage for all those items that need a home or you don’t use frequently. Your extra bedding, seasonal clothes, and those trophies you won in primary school, you can’t bear to part with. Under the bed it goes.
But it’s not just beds that have hidden storage, you can find coffee tables that double up as storage or have drawers to hide things in, or sofas with storage under the cushions or pull-out drawers underneath. Basically, what we’re saying is if it’s not pulling double duty, it’s not worth the space in your home.
Space Saving Furniture
We’ve given you duel-function furniture, but what about space-saving furniture? Depending on how little space you have to work with, you might find that some furniture takes up too much space to easily move around.
Let’s start simple with the dining tables with folding sides and chairs that slot nicely underneath or fold down and slide into a cabinet in the middle of the table base. This way, you can have people round to eat, but put the dining table away when they leave. Then there are the chairs that look nice inside each other, so you can stack them when not in use and pull them out for guests.
Wall desks are another good idea for those who work from home but can’t afford dedicated desk space. Simply attach them to the wall; some come with a drop-down feature, meaning they can be dropped flat against the walls when not being used.
Or how about the Murphy bed? They fold up into the walls so you can move around more freely during the day. Some even have shelves or a desk attached so that when you put the bed up against the wall, you can use the desk, and when it’s sleep time, you just pull the bed down. Sounds like a win-win, doesn’t it?
Make The Walls Work
It’s not just furniture that needs to work hard. Your walls are wasted real estate, and they need to be doing more than protecting you from the elements or holding the roof up.
You want to be thinking along the lines of floating shelves over doorways, a pegboard in the kitchen for utensils, that odd gap behind the door can fit in that wall-mounted shoe rack thing you saw on that Temu ad on Facebook. Think hard, get creative, and look at the space you have and how you can use it. And yes, you can put bike hooks on your living room wall, and no, it doesn’t look odd, it’s quirky.
Seasonal Swap Outs
If your wardrobe is busting at the seams, now is the perfect time to revisit the vac bags point from earlier. You need to make time to go through seasonal swaps with clothing or blankets, etc, and put the things away you’re not using or don’t need for a while.
Vac bag storage means you can fit more in less space, ideal for those bulky winter coats or jumpers. Not so much the Christmas tree and decorations. But where do you put them if you’re already low on space? This is where storage units are your best friend. You can pack up all of those seasonal items you are struggling to find a home for because, yes, the Christmas tree still beingl up in February; is not festive, it’s sad.
Pack it all up safely and transfer your seasonal items to a storage unit to leave your room safe at home and keep everything safe and secure. Then all you need to do is retrieve it when you do your next seasonal changeover.
Tiny Corners, So Much Potential
You’ve seen those stackable shoe storage boxes on social media, haven’t you? They’re ideal for shoe storage in that little corner behind the door or by the window that can’t fit anything else in. Or that cubby under the stairs that you have written off, that can be the perfect place for hiding the box of dog toys you keep tripping over. That cupboard behind the front door with the empty wall above it? Coat hooks would work well here.
Look at all of the awkward spaces in your home and see what you can put in them. Empty space is wasted space, after all.
Visible Storage
Visible storage is the storage you can use as decor. Not everything needs to be hidden behind doors, as closed units can make small spaces feel even smaller.
Think woven baskets in the living room, the coffee table with the open base, you can put baskets in or have a lid you can open to put stuff in. Open shelving in the kitchen that you can use as a make-shift pantry or to store your dinnerware on. Make a display of your storage, so it’s open and out there for a functional and organised look that just adds to the charm of your tiny home.
