Making My House Fit My Life, Not My Life Fit My House

There are so many times I hear, "I'll put that up when we buy a house," or "we'll throw a party when we have more space," or "we can't have a baby until we move someplace larger," and it makes me feel sad. Our home is also small – 1200 square feet and only a sliver of deck space. No yard, no basement, and we share one wall with our next door neighbors and live above our downstairs neighbors. It's less than perfect in a lot of ways. But I'm 31 and living my life now. And I'm known for being impatient. I don't want to wait until I have a house to do things, like have children and throw them birthday parties. So we do the best we can with what we have. We make our house fit our life, and we don't change our life to fit our house.

This weekend we had M's family over for dinner to celebrate Father's Day. It was lovely, and we didn't need a bigger house to do it. We actually keep our old dining room table (the one we had before we made over the formal dining room into a play room) disassembled underneath our bed. When we're going to have a large dinner gathering, we just drag it out, put the legs on, and we're good to go. It takes about 10 minutes to do, and allows us to have these larger gatherings without having a place to keep a big dining room set permanently. I don't want to wait to sit around a big dining table sipping wine and eating grilled steaks, laughing with my in laws about what Matt and his sister were like as kids. I want to do these things, make these memories now.

I don't want to wait until we have a yard to plant flowers and herbs, and create a little outdoor living area. So we work with what we have – lots of containers and small furniture and a little electric grill. It's a little messy and cramped, but it's also welcoming and cozy.

We still have big parties at our house … my birthday party was a crazy gathering of 23 adults, four toddlers and two babies. It was pouring rain that day, so everyone circled around the peninsula in the kitchen, perched on the sectional, played with toddlers at the train table, nursed babies in the nursery, or sat on the floor eating pizza and drinking beer. It was loud and boisterous and fun. In theory, we totally don't have room for 29 people, but we did it anyway.

That's kind of how we operate. We just go for it and figure it will all work itself out. Because it usually does, and then we've had a lot of fun on the journey instead of waiting.

"Thursday" Dinner

It's been three years or so since our "Thursday" Dinners with our dear friends and their son have actually been held on a Thursday, but we have continued the tradition of a weekly dinner night. It started in March of 2005, where we gathered for the first time to watch the pilot of the American Office and eat homemade lo mein at A and B's apartment. A tradition was immediately born, and we started rotating dinner and Office nights. In six years two homes were purchased, four new jobs started, two children born and many, many vegetarian meals and bottles of wine consumed.

These dinners ground our week. No matter what we have going on, whether it's a big project at work, or the birth of a new child, we always know we'll have a dinner with friends to look forward to. (We actually did not stop weekly dinners even when A and I each gave birth. I went into labor on a Friday, was out of the hospital the following Wednesday, and we hosted weekly dinner on Thursday!) Our sons are the best little buddies, and now that we're parents, these dinners are punctuated with little boy giggles and the occasional tantrum. With the boys running about, we don't have time to watch TV together anymore, but we still gather to try new recipes and sample different beers and wines.

It's traditions like these that I'm so happy to have, and that I never had growing up, where we moved every four years or so. To be able to look back and remember eating off TV trays before A and B had a dining room in their new townhome, the first meal I cooked in our condo's kitchen, how A announced she was pregnant during dessert on our night, and how A and B brought baked pasta to our house and came to hold newborn S (while I enjoyed my first post-pregnancy glass of wine) makes me feel so much more connected to the place I call home. There is such value in that history. Our boys will hopefully someday remember eating things like this and playing trucks together as kids.

Spray Painting!

I'm home a bit earlier than usual, to pass the parenting baton as I come home from work and Matt heads to his summer job. Sebastian decided to take a ridiculously late nap, so I jumped at the opportunity to bust out the can of spray paint. Three picture frames are drying on our deck, having gone from silver, black and brown to glossy white.

If all goes well, a gallery wall is in my future.

Letting Go

The hardest part, for me, about becoming a mother has been the letting go of my perfectionist, neat-nik tendencies. This lovely little post I read this morning http://www.soulemama.com/soulemama/2011/06/soulful-mothering-with-ashley-english.html says it really well. My carpets right now are absymal, there are little trucks and Thomas trains on every possible surface, but there's that silly little smile with the wrinkled up nose, and that's all I really need right now.

Finally - New Blinds

A lot of times when I complete a new project around the condo, I can't keep my eyes off it. I love to go into whatever room I've made over and sneak another peek, even if I've already peeped at it a million times. This project I didn't really do that. Not because it didn't make a huge difference in our house, and not because I didn't love it. I think the reason I wasn't quite as giddy about putting up new blinds in our bedroom was because I'd imagined this so many times in my head, and it turned out exactly as I'd imagined, that I'd already seen it a jillion times in my mind's eye.

This is what our bedroom looked like before. I don't usually show this angle of the room, because I hated those curtains so much. Our setup there before was plastic white mini blinds, and maroon black out panels. Blech. The panels were made of a really stiff fabric, and they matched the color scheme of our old Morroccan themed room, so they weren't working here at all. But, as many low budget makeovers go, it took us awhile to get around to changing the blinds (we did small changes, like adding new art and accessories first).

I'm not ashamed to show this angle any more! Here's how things are looking now.

It's so much lighter and airier in here now. The blinds are black out roller shades from JC Penny. Black outs are a must in this room, because there's a bright parking lot light that shines in at night, making it seem like we're snoozing under a spotlight. The curtains are panels from Ikea in a crisp, white linen.

I was inspired by these two photos. I love the texture of the bamboo shades here paired with the airy white curtains.

From www.younghouselove.com of course.

I found this pic on Apartment Therapy, and loved how similar it was to our room - same bed, similar bedding, a kitty. I liked the casualness of the tab tops and breezy linen.

From www.apartmenttherapy.com

The new curtains make the room so much brighter and pulled together. And they look like they've always been a part of our cozy, warm, eclectic bedroom.

Our master bedroom went from one of my least favorite rooms in the house to a relaxing retreat. Maybe I'll head back in and take another peek.

A Hard-Working Space

I attended a seminar about email writing on Friday afternoon. In the discussion, the presenter showed us an email that promoted the company’s website, had a place to opt-in for the newsletter, talked about the latest news and included testimonials from happy customers – all in an uncluttered fashion. “This is a hard-working email,” the presenter said.

Later, when I got home from work, I opened my front door and hung my keys on the keyhook on the wall right inside. I sat on the bench in our mini-mudroom and took off my shoes. I placed them in the larger wicker basket, hung my purse on a hook and then turned to place the mail I’d brought inside in our mail-sorter. And then I thought to myself, “This is a hard-working space.”

When we first set out to create a mini-mudroom, I had no idea how much it would make a difference in our day-to-day lives. This tiny little space is a real workhorse in terms of keeping us organized and tidy. It makes getting out the door so much easier - which as a parent of a 2 year old is no small feat. 

Here is what this hardworking 20 square feet provides for us:

1) A place for our shoes, coats, and other seasonal gear, as well as purses, diaper bags and the like. The nook is outfitted with five hooks along the main wall, mainly used to hang jackets, and three hooks on the inside walls for bags. There's even a small hook at child level for our son to hang his things all by himself.

2) Extra storage on a shelf, where we keep reusable grocery bags, sports equipment and extra hats and mittens. Things we might need on a somewhat regular, but not daily, basis.

3) A place for our keys and mail. I don't even know how long I've owned this wrought iron mail sorter/key hook station, but it's been in at least our last three houses. It becomes automatic to hang your keys on a hook when it's right next to your front door. I haven't misplaced my keys in years! A few spots to sort outgoing and incoming mail is handy as well.

4) A place to catch one more glance before we walk out the door. On the wall to the right of the closet-turned-mudroom is a mirror, where I can check my hair one last time before heading out for the day.

It's amazing how much function we've been able to get out of this really small landing area in our condo. And that we achieved it simply by removing the entryway closet door, and spending only $52 on paint, hooks and baskets (more on that here). It's a great little space that works hard for us.

How to Create a Small Outdoor Oasis

The time when I feel most vindicated in my choice to buy a condo over a single family home is during the winter. I get to stay toasty in my PJs reading a book while those with detached houses have to brave the elements to shovel the driveway. But they always get their comeuppance in the summer, when they're a step away from their yards and I'm stuck schlepping my kid to the park like a sucker.

But our condo does have a small deck off the living room, but it's a tricky space. It's narrow and surrounded by pine trees that shed their needles. We face north, so we don't get a lot of sun. And it overlooks a parking lot, so it isn't the most private. The last five summers always start with me hoping that this is the year we'll use the deck, and ending with shriveled up plants and us realizing we haven't gone out on the deck in a month. It's not been the most usable space.

Until now! Here's what we did to revamp our small outdoor living area. These tips can help anyone create an oasis … even if you only have a sliver of outdoor paradise to work with.

1. List your priorities. Think about what you want your outdoor space to achieve. For me, a big priority was giving my son a place to play outdoors – one he could access by walking out the back door instead of having to make the trip to the nearby park. So we found a great deal on a sand and water table that happens to fit nicely on one side of the deck. Sebastian loves it, and I'm amazed at how much more time we're spending on the deck just because he has something to do other than trying to dig up my flowers.

I also wanted to have a comfy place to sit and read a book. While our previous bistro set was nice for dining al fresco, it wasn't a great place to read outside with a glass of wine, so we swapped the dining table for a lower one, and the stiffer chairs for chairs with a slight recline. If growing herbs and vegetables are high on your list, planting will take priority over furniture.

Finally, we needed to address the privacy and safety issues. Surrounding the railing with wood lattice was an affordable and attractive way to make the deck safer and make it harder for people in the adjacent building to see what we're up to.

2. Define areas. A small space will look bigger if there are clearly defined areas with a little breathing room in between them. On our deck we have a conversation/lounge area on one end, with two chairs and a table. The side of condo is used for the grill, and then we have plants lining the railing. Finally, the far end is where my son's sand table resides. There's enough floor space in the middle for sidewalk chalk drawing and navigating the narrow 6x9 space. Someone can be sitting in a chair, someone can be grilling, and my son can be playing and we're not bumping into one another.

3. Think about scale. Before setting up our conversation area, the left end of the deck was completely filled by a glider. The glider was a freebie from our previous downstairs neighbors when they moved, and while it was nice, it was took up far too much space. Now we have furniture that's more to scale for our narrow deck, and also lends itself better to rearrangement.

4. Research alternatives. We're not allowed to have gas or charcoal grills due to our association bylaws, but I came across this great electric grill and snapped it up with birthday gift cards. One of the things I bemoaned in the past about not having a yard was the inability to grill out. And now we can! Think about what you'd like to do if you had a yard, and try to find ways to adapt it to the space you have. We'd love to host bonfires, but instead are making due with a small, propane-fueled fire bowl. And a vegetable garden would be nice, but our north-facing deck only allows us to have a couple pots of herbs instead. 

It's amazing how different our home feels now that we have a little extra living space outdoors. We're looking forward to a summer enjoying the great outdoors!