How to Get Organized When You Live in a Small House

How to Get Organized When You Live in a Small House

I have lived in a lot of small spaces in my lifetime. During my first year of college, my dorm room was what they called a “converted triple,” meaning that it was actually made for two people, but they stuck three of us in there. Good thing I loved my roomies– it was close quarters!

Right after we got married, Donnie and I lived in the obligatory one bedroom apartment. It was just the two of us, so it wasn’t terrible, but it was definitely cozy to say the least!

By the time Connor was born, we were living in a teeny tiny two bedroom townhouse where we had to push our dining room table back into a corner to make way for a pack-n-play.

Currently, our family of four lives in a three bedroom townhouse, which is where we’ve been for nearly seven years now. SEVEN! Though we hadn’t planned on being here for that long, it has been fun to have the time to transform the space and truly make it ours. I am so thankful for our home, but there have definitely been times where I have said, “We just need MORE ROOM!!” It’s kind of a tight squeeze with four of us, especially as the boys get older, but we have managed to make it work and we even all still love each other, so I feel like that’s a win!

After hearing from my readers, it seems like many of you are dealing with small spaces too, so I thought I would compile a list of some of my favorite small space living tips to share.

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

1. Purge like crazy. Declutter often.

After years and years of organizing and re-organizing in different homes, I’ve often found that the small space isn’t necessarily the problem.

The problem is that I have too much stuff.

I know. It’s hard to let go of things sometimes because we think, “Well what if I need that someday…?”

I so hear you on this one. I confess: I held on to binders filled with my hand written notes from every college class for 7 years after I graduated. And I’m not even using my teaching degree! But eventually I realized that I wanted a calm, peaceful, uncluttered house more than I wanted to have random notes lying around because I might need them “sometime.” And you know what? There hasn’t been one thing that I’ve thrown out while I was decluttering that I ended up absolutely needing later. If you can push past that mental block of being afraid to throw things away, it is seriously so freeing once you’re done!

{Decluttering our garage last summer… it had to get worse before it got better!}

When I go about decluttering a space, I am absolutely ruthless. Since we don’t have a ton of space to work with, every inch has to be used well. When we were in the midst of our kitchen reno, for example, I gathered up all of my kitchen items– gadgets, small appliances, plates, cups, utensils, everything– all in one place so I could see exactly what we had.

Once I had taken inventory, I got rid of items whose job could be done by something else. For example, I had held on to our George Foreman grill for years “just in case,” but I never pulled it out to use it. I always used the regular grill or our range to cook meat. It went.

I had a beautiful blender that I got for my wedding, but in 9 years of marriage we used it once because we have a Magic Bullet and use that to blend everything. I gave the blender to my milkshake-loving dad who was then able to throw out the old, worn-out blender that he had gotten for HIS wedding over 30 years ago. I had a ton of little gadgets that I never used and was able to get rid of. Sure, there were times I thought, “But what if I need this later?” But I haven’t needed any of the items I purged, and my kitchen is organized and clutter free. Yay!

I’ve had people ask what I do with the stuff that I get rid of while I’m decluttering. Anything that’s broken, worn out, or unable to be used by someone else gets thrown away or recycled if possible. I have done garage sales before and sometimes sell items that are worth a decent amount on Craigslist. We donate some things to our local GoodWill. I try to do a major purge before our church’s annual garage sale and donate a bunch of stuff to them. If I’m waiting to sell or donate items, I keep them in a spot in the garage, but I try to only keep them there for a week at the most. Otherwise I’m just creating a new pile of clutter. Very occasionally I will have an item (like the blender mentioned above) that I know someone else could use, but for the most part I try not to pass on my clutter to my extended family!

Bottom line: The best way to keep a small space (or any space for that matter!) organized is by decluttering like crazy and only keeping what’s really important! Purge, purge, and purge some more!

2. Separate rooms into zones.

Often times in a small space, one room has to serve many purposes. Rather than just throwing everything together, I like to create “zones” within the room to separate the spaces, define their function, and make it easier to keep them organized.

{the living room and dining room “zones” of our main living space}

For example, our main living space is actually one big room, so we divided it up, using part as the dining room, part as the hanging out/TV watching space, and part as the Cs’ toy area. Would I love to have a dedicated room for the Cs’ toys (preferably with a door I could shut!)? Of course. But that’s just not an option in our current house, so we make the “zone” setup work. There are perks to it too– since there is just one main living space, we all tend to spend our free time together rather than breaking off into different rooms. Family bonding!

{the toy “zone” of our main living space}

Maybe you don’t have space to designate a full side of a room to a separate function. My friend Chelsea from Making Home Base was able to create a toy zone for her daughters’ stuff out of a little corner in the room. Donnie and I definitely didn’t have room for an office in our first little one bedroom apartment, so we put a secretary desk in one corner. It worked perfectly because we could have a work zone when we needed it and close it up when we weren’t using it so that it didn’t take up much space at all.

Rolling carts are another great way to create a little “zone.” They’re small, can hold a decent amount, and can be easily moved out of the way when you’re not using them. (One of my favorite carts is the IKEA RASKOG.)

3. Maximize closet space.

This is something we’ve worked at like crazy in our current house that doesn’t have much storage. We’ve recently started putting closet systems in to really maximize the space (you can see how we’ve done that in our pantry, bedroom, and my craft room), but even if a permanent closet system isn’t an option for you, there are still ways to make the very most of the space you have.

The Cs share a room, and space is tight. In order to fit two dressers into their room, I was able to put one in the closet, and it fit perfectly underneath their clothes, making use of otherwise wasted space.

Before we turned our entry closet into a permanent pantry, I put an inexpensive shelf in there to hold items that our former minuscule pantry couldn’t handle.

Our old neighbors’ entry closet in their townhouse was right next to their living room, so they put a small cube unit at the bottom to store their kids’ toys. If you have a lot of empty space at the bottom of a closet, there is probably something you can put in there to utilize the space to its fullest potential!

4. Look for ways to use space creatively.

Just because the house “says” a room is supposed to serve one function doesn’t mean that it has to serve that certain function. We have an 8′ x 8′ space in our basement that was intended for storage, but since we’ve purged and can fit all of our stored items in the garage, we’ve been able to use that space for other purposes. Before Caleb was born, I used it as a workout area. I had a small TV and DVD player to put on my workouts, and there was room for my weights, bands, mats, etc., plus just enough space to do the actual exercising.

When Caleb was born and had his own room at first, we moved Donnie’s office into that little basement space. It’s not gorgeous or glamorous, but it creates a “room” that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

In our current house we also swapped our entry closet with our pantry, giving us a much-needed larger pantry space and a mini “mudroom” so we could still hang coats.

{our front entry closet-turned-pantry}

5. Get items off the floor.

When I asked Donnie (who is actually WAY more organized than I am) what his favorite small space living tip would be, he immediately said, “Don’t put stuff on the floor.” Of course we put furniture or rugs on the floor, but what he meant was to not use the floor as storage space whenever possible.

This was definitely true with the Cs’ toy space. We used to keep all of their big toys in the corner on the floor, but it soon became a dumping ground and looked messy all the time. After some purging (see tip #1!), we brought in some inexpensive shelving units to hold the big toys, and the area feels so much less cluttered!

Our master closet also became way more organized when we were able to get our shoes off the floor. In our previous rental home where we couldn’t install a closet system, we used super cheap pantry bins from WalMart (similar to these) to hold our shoes and keep them organized rather than having a free-for-all all over the closet floor.

{We’ve used the IKEA ALGOT system to organize 3 closets in our home, and we love it!}

Not only does having the floor clear help to tame the clutter, it also makes it easier to sweep, vacuum, etc. because you don’t have to move a bunch of items every time you need to clean.

6. Utilize vertical space.

This is probably an obvious one, but when you are constrained by small rooms and can’t go “out,” go up! We especially do this in the Cs’ room with bunk beds, a vertical shelving unit for toys, and even a vertical arts and crafts corner.

We also tried to use as much vertical space as possible on the storage wall in my office, bringing in book cases and mounting a pegboard on the wall to hold craft supplies. It’s pretty too and doubles as decoration! Win!

7. Be very choosy about what you allow to come into your house.

This one is so key. I know it’s easy to walk down the aisles at Target and want every single thing. I’ve totally been there {like at least twice a week }. I know well-meaning friends and family members will offer you really cool stuff that is hard to refuse. I know your kids (or your significant other!) will want all of those awesome toys and gizmos that you don’t have space for. It’s hard to say no to these types of things. But in order to maintain the decluttered spaces that we worked so hard for in #1, we have to be super duper picky about what we bring into our house.

If I’m considering getting something new, I try to make sure it can serve multiple functions and isn’t a duplicate of something we already have. When we bring new items into the house, I also try to get rid of something else. (This is especially true for toys!!!!) Before I buy something, I think about where it will go. If I don’t have room for it or it will complicate or ruin one of my other organizational systems, it doesn’t come home with me. Be super picky! The clutter isn’t worth it!

Whew! I’m already over 2,000 words and I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface! Do you live in a small house? What would you add to my list? I would love to hear your ideas in the comments!

Living in a small space can be a challenge, but it’s not impossible! When we purge often, get creative, and find ways to make the most of our space, we can definitely make it work, even if the situation isn’t ideal. And hey, small spaces have their share of perks as well– it’s less to clean, for one thing! Let’s embrace our small space!

Have a wonderful day, friends!

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Original article and pictures take justagirlandherblog.com site