Living Small.

I've been a little obsessed lately with the idea of "Living Small" - living in a small space. Especially because we're trying to find our way back to Maui. Especially because I hate cleaning a 2,000 square foot house, fail miserably, and have so much wasted square footage. Our house could fit three families in my opinion.

In our household, the kids bedrooms are virtually unused. The closets are empty. They are a shell of a room. We have three bathrooms, which is ridiculous. We have tons of floor square footage with very few usable walls for storage.

When we went to IKEA for the first time, I was intrigued by the idea that walls can be usable square footage. The footprint of a home doesn't need to be big, as long as there's storage. Our master bedroom in our 800 square foot condo in Napili had bedrooms that were so tiny we could fit our bed and one night stand. We had a killer closet organizer, and it was all that we needed. Our bedroom in our current home could literally fit a full size couch, chair, two nightstands, a toddler bed, and a dresser (not that we have all that stuff). All it would need is a kitchen and it would be a complete apartment. LOL.

Anyway, this idea of living small has really inspired me. We could easily live in a two bedroom house. We walked through a 600 square foot two bedroom showroom in IKEA and enjoyed all the ideas. The thing to note with the IKEA samples is that there are no windows.

These were with my phone and IKEA was PACKED. I was trying not to get anyone else in the photos.

This is the bathroom.

 The Kids' room. They should have illustrated with bunk beds I think. What's not in the picture are a wardrobe area that had clothes super organized.

 The floor plan.

 Kitchen area - it was quite spacious, actually!

 Living room. Excellent in theory for older children. Lots at Cruz level!

 The master bedroom - tons of storage and an entire wardrobe wall, with more storage above the bed.

 Little mini office.

 Living room storage.

I came across Smiling Woods Yurts recently on a search for inexpensive homes. Yurts are usually canvas (think glorified tent), but these particular yurts are actual wood structures. If you look at their site, they are amazing inside. Their largest yurt is 35 feet across yielding just over 900 square feet. I did a little search for yurt plans and came across this one (for a 30 foot yurt).

What would I change with this yurt? I would add a loft office over one of the bedrooms. I'd also put a shower in the bathroom with a door next to it. Outside the bathroom would be a lanai with an outdoor bathtub and the washing machine outside (so I could easily line dry the clothes outside).

In more searches for small spaces, I came across this house plan - adore. It's three bedrooms and 901 square feet. What does it need? It needs a lanai off the entire back of the house with a door from the bathroom outside to laundry area and an outdoor tub :)

I really, really enjoying envisioning these things. I realize I am romanticizing the whole small living thing - but really.... smaller house equals less electricity, less stuff, more time outside. I guess the ultimate dream would be to build one of these things. But it's also empowering and wonderful to realize that with shelving and being creative we could find a small place to rent, too.