Our house is pretty small . . not quite 1700 square feet. It’s less than half the size of our last two houses and while we never planned to buy such a small house, it has worked out so perfectly for us. When we moved here, as you may remember, we had a heck of a time finding a place. Priorities were:
- At least 40 acres
- A good water well
- No close neighbors
- No restrictions/covenants
We just wanted a place to live our lives the way we see fit and be left alone so when we found this place with 45 acres, the 40′ x 60′ shop, we knew we had found our little piece of heaven on earth. The house was adequate, was only 6 years old, not our dream home but we were elated with the location, the land and the shop.
What we did to make extra storage space was floor the area over the sewing room and anything that doesn’t require storage in a climate controlled area is stored there.
Storage
It isn’t a great picture but there are six rows, each with 4 shelving units. I can get to the shelves from the front or the back. There are large Tupperware type containers that I don’t use often but want to keep, extra canners, FoodSaver bags, foodmills, cake pans, hand crank for the wheat grinder, extra crockpots . . lots of things that do not have to stay in the kitchen but things that I want to keep and do use occasionally. That freed up a lot of space in the kitchen. A lot of these things had been stored in the basements of previous homes.
Empty Jars
Also stored in this area are empty jars waiting to be used. By the end of the summer garden, there will hardly be any empty jars here.
Hopefully we will never move again but I keep all the boxes that I want to save. You can see the VitaMix box in the bottom right hand corner.
Sometimes, it takes getting a little creative to make everything fit and that’s definitely what we had to do here. If I had my preferences, the house would be about 2400 square feet just to give us a bit larger rooms and a bit more inside storage but I’m actually liking having the storage area above the sewing room. Since we have to walk upstairs to get to it, this area doesn’t end up being a “catch all” like our basement storage always did.
I’m thankful for my little house and my little piece of land! 🙂
Sharon says
Thanks Judy for the tips. We are getting ready to move to a much smaller home and you have given me a couple of ideas. Your timing was perfect.
patty says
Wow! That is a lot of canning jars! I admire you that you know how to can, raise chickens, and garden. – all skills that I don’t have.
Dottie N. says
That’s really neat that you have that much storage above the sewing room.
We’re moving to a MUCH smaller house than we are currently in and I’ve been getting rid of stuff FOREVER. It’ll be a challenge to try and store all my “extras”, LOL.
Katie says
Oy, the space in your home would be so nice. We have a 700 square foot home and double garage. Because of building restrictions, we can’t add more storage unless we expand our living space. We don’t want this to be our forever home so for now, we make do.