Space Matters

Not all small homes require the adults to dine at the kid's table!

 Part of moving in to our own construction project means not having everything completely dialed right away.  In some ways this is good-it gives us time to be there and see how it lives.  Right now we are using Mason's table and chairs as our dining set. (We set it and everything, just like a normal diner routine.  Except our knees are confused about where to be.)  Soon we will have some sort of built-in eating space.  We are currently re-designing it, of course!

I am learning this small space demands we think about every motion of our daily life.  This may sound cumbersome, but I'm looking at it this way: we are doing this work now, one time, so we don't have to do it over and over.  We are thinking hard about the role of stuff in our life so that we will be free to think about and do other things with our time.  

The built in coat rack.  Looking forward to cycling jacket weather.

 My friend Meg Bently, who owns an organization consulting business, helped me when she said draw concentric circles around your space. The stuff you use daily should be on the inside circle, followed by the weekly use stuff in the next orb, with monthly use on the most outside circle.  With this in mind I just designated a cabinet drawer to dog food.  I took out the appliances I use weekly,  relocating them above the fridge.  

I've been hard at work on our storage unit, with the hopes of having nothing in it!  The matrix I use for downsizing our stuff is the use:size ratio.  How much do we use the item versus how much space does it take up?  Take the Christmas stuff for instance.  We had 3 rubber-made bins designated to this holiday that consumes (pun intended) one month of our life.  Under my matrix, I decided we could have one bin.  Anything we want and don't have once the holiday arrives can be purchased at the second hand store, which is usually overwhelmed with red and green items.  

A fantastic article on storage units in America can be found at: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06self-storage-t.html?cp=1&sq=storage+units+magazine&st=nyt

If I sound righteous, I shouldn't.  I come by this downsizing effort honestly.  I've been a "stuff" person nearly all my life.  I wish I could show you a photo of the home I occupied in my 20's.  It was CRAMMED FULL of stuff.  It has been incredibly hard to part with many of my things.  But once I did, I felt so liberated!