We have lived in houses that are 1000sqft since May 2011 (previous houses in our marriage were 400-1700sqft of finished living space). We are now a family of 9.
We live in small homes very comfortably. I am sharing a few tidbits about how we make our small home work for our large family because I know some of you are curious!
First of all, it is important to keep stuff to a minimum when living in a small home with a large family. As long as I can stay on top of the clutter and continuously work on organizing every square inch (or so ot seems), our house feels very comfortable. It is almost a never ending job, though.
Thankfully, I really enjoy organizing and decluttering! I love reading blogs that include tips on organization for large families, simplifying, and decluttering.
This house tour is from when we lived in our city rental house from 2011-2019. We are now living in a 1000sqft house on 1 acre in the country with a different layout and actually feels smaller since it has just 1 bathroom and no garage.
How A Large Family Lives In A Small House
House Plan:
Our living area is quite large. We spend most of our time in the living room, which has my desk for paying bills, our piano, our furniture set, our computer armoire, a bookshelf, and a storage chest used as an end table. Most of our homeschool stuff is kept in our master bedroom, which is the next largest room in the house.
The rest of the house is quite small. We jokingly call our kitchen a “two-butt” kitchen, because it is difficult to fit more than two people in it at a time.
Our kitchen and dining are connected as one. They are both long and narrow. Combined, they are about 160sqft (8 x 20).
Our kitchen table is meant to comfortably seat 4, but we have 7 gathered around it for meals. A cheap bench from Amazon placed between the table and wall can fit 2-3 kids, leaving 4 chairs plus a highchair. We make it work.
We have young children; 4 boys and 3 girls. We have bunk beds in each of the kids’ rooms: a boy bedroom and a girl bedroom.
In addition to the closets in each bedroom, there is a nice-sized linen closet in the main bathroom that is used to store extra toiletries, board games, and light bulbs/batteries; a coat closet near the front door stores our vacuum; and an attached 2-car garage has our storage bins for clothing not currently in use, my husband’s tools, and also acts as our laundry room and storage room.
We also own several cabinets which we use for a pantry in the kitchen/dining, school supplies in the master bedroom, Abigail’s medical supplies in the garage, and extra blankets in the girls’ room.
We desire a simplified life without a lot of “stuff”. Living in this small house has helped us stay grounded and remember what is important: the people who live here.
I noticed that your kitchen is small but the space has a lot of storage. We have 3/sometimes 4 in our girls room 2 yrs. to 17 yrs. I have found that having teens makes it a lot harder to fit in a small space(although it is do-able). We feel cramped here! I always seem to be getting run over by a teen. We are in 1250 sq. feet plus a full unfinished basement, a garage and shop. My teens just seem to take up space, LOL. They get big… big feet, big words, big dreams, big things etc…:-D
My kids are all little, so I'm sure it's different with bigger kids.
I agree on the teens making it harder to fit. I can’t wait until our house is done, tho not huge, I think we will fit nicely!
That’s funny that it is the opposite for me with teens. (They are boys; so maybe that is part of it-they do not want a lot of clothes.) The teens take up less and less space belonging-wise, while the younger they are the more space filling “stuff” they have, the more they need of me, and the bigger messes they make. While the teens are bigger, they are helpful, quieter, great conversationalists and good at keeping their things put away. It might have something to do with rules 🙂 but they even appreciate the rules that apply to keeping spaces in order. And they are allowed to make big messes, as long as walking paths are clear and things are cleaned up before they move on to the next adventure.
LOVE this! My husband swears that we have no more room for anymore kids, I say let's go for it! People do this ALL the time, and I love when they share how they make it work:)
We really love having a small house!
How many bathrooms for all those people? May find it more difficult when they become teenagers.
2 bathrooms
Having just moved into a smaller house,(not that much smaller but it doesn't have a garage or hardly any storage at all) I shake my head at our much "stuff" we have! But I would agree with Missy, we have teens(and Marissa who is 22) and they take up so much room! When we had 4 little ones we rented a 800 sq ft house and did just fine. There was a tiny storage shed there but no garage and it didn't seem to be as full as this place. I always dream of down sizing even more and getting rid of more "stuff". I think this move has been one step closer 😉 I enjoyed this 🙂 🙂
I enjoyed this. Our house is smallish (bigger than what you are posting about) and it is neat to see how you are making it work. I giggled a little at the first comment about teens and big feet. SO TRUE. I have especially noticed the size difference with our older kids when we are all wanting to use the kitchen at once. Sometimes I get a giggle when I'm in the bathroom getting ready for church or something and there are 4 other bodies in there as big as me. We make it work,