Top Tips On Creating Space In A Small House

This year we have made it our mission to declutter, reorganise, refresh and update our home.

Due to a Daddy Lambs career change we aren’t going to be able to move house for at least 2 years. This is because he is now a self-employed apprentice, so not only is he on a dramatically lower wage, he also needs 2 years of tax records for us to get another mortgage. So we have created plan b.

Make space.

We are lucky to have a little bit of money saved so are using some of it to make home improvements that will help us fall in love with our house again.

Actually, we do love our house. The location, the schools, the garden, are all perfect. It’s just the size. We only have 2 bedrooms, so this makes having a second baby rather difficult. We struggle for space already, so adding another person to the equation will be hectic.

This week we made a few changes to our home that gave us a lot more space, and the vibe in our home is much more positive. It’s so nice to feel decluttered!

Living Room

I have said for a while that we should put our TV on the wall and get rid of the TV stand. As we have such a large Panasonic ultra HD TV Daddy Lamb thought it would look too bulky. I finally convinced him and we are so happy with our decision. The Virgin box is on a shelf, the Playstation is on the fireplace under the TV and the DVDs are in the cupboard.

Ta da! We have a living room you can dance in! Seriously, it has made such a difference. Everyone has commented on how much bigger our lounge looks. We love it. Highly recommend buying a wall bracket if your TV is suitable.

Kitchen

We had our kitchen refitted when Lmab was a couple of months old, so this isn’t something we have done recently, however it’s still a useful tip if it’s something you can do in your own home. We are lucky to have a cellar. A large space great for storage. I have partly turned our cellar into a utility room. When we designed our new kitchen we decided to take out the freezer and tumble dryer, and put these in the cellar. There are the two appliances we use the least so felt it wouldn’t be too much of a burden having them downstairs.

Doing this gave up much more cupboard space, which we desperately needed, especially at 2 whole cupboards are dedicated to Lamb!

Obviously very few of you will have a cellar in your house, but you’d be surprised what spaces can be used for utility. Do you have a large cupboard under the stairs? Perhaps you could put your tumble dryer in there? We have a condenser dryer which means we don’t need a vent outside, there it can be placed absolutely anywhere in the house.

What about outside space? Do you have a shed or outbuilding with electricity? Moving the freezer and tumble dryer in there will give you lots of space in your home.

Dining Room

When we bought our house the previous owners sold us their dining room table and chairs. We were moving from a flat so the table we have was compact and much smaller. We let my brother borrow this when he rented the flat from us.

We’ve lived here for 3 years now and hardly use the table. SO why have something so big taking up so much room? We got the compact table and chairs back from my brother (he no longer needed them) and sold the large table and chairs. Again, another decision we are really happy with. It has created so much space in our dining room!

This room doubles up as an office and playroom, the more space the better.

Is this something you can do to create space and declutter? Perhaps you can but a folding and expandable table? To be honest we will probably end up buying one of these when our family expands. The small compact table is fine for the three of us right now.

Bathroom

While we are on holiday we are having a new bathroom fitted. This includes removing the 45 year old water tank and getting a new combi boiler put in the loft!

Taking out the tank gives us so much extra space. The layout will remain he same as we have a sloping ceiling so are quite restricted. However by adding cupboard space and shelves we can keep the bathroom clutter free.

We have bought an new vanity unit from Ikea that gives us cupboard space for our toiletries and cleaning products, something that is normally scattered around the edge of the bath and in the window sill. We will also put up extra shelves and have some lovely baskets for the window to keep bath toys for Lamb.

Bedroom

Last year Daddy Lamb and I got married and we were very lucky to be given some money from our friends and family. With this we decided to buy a new bed and mattress. Compromising on size with my bed is never going to happen. I’ve got to have a king size. So we decided to buy an ottoman bed to give us plenty of new storage space.

If you don’t want an ottoman that lifts you could always buy a bed with drawers underneath. I honestly can’t think of a reason not to buy a bed like this. Even though standard beds give you plenty of apace underneath I always find it turns into a jumble sale under there! At least with drawers or a lift up mattress you can be a little more organised.

We got out bed from Homebase and you can read about it here.

Nursery

With the same concept in mind we also have a cot bed with a drawer underneath for Lamb. Cosatto were very generous and offered us a cot bed to review last year (read our review here). This cot comes with a drawer (Lambs previous cot didn’t) and I highly recommend buying a cot with one. At the moment we store most of Lambs clothes in there as he doesn’t have a wardrobe. It’s a huge amount of space and is ideal for anything from clothes, to bedding, to books.

The Cosatto cot bed also comes with a changing table that fixes to the top of the cot. As Lamb was a toddler when we received his cot we didn’t get to use it, however we will definitely be using it for our next baby. Not having a separate changing table gives us the space we need for a second cot, if we ever decide to have that second baby!

I hope you have found these tips useful, please let me know any tips you have that can help us create space and declutter!

Ax

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