Life in the Slow Lane

This is Part 4 in my series about living in a small space. If you've missed any, catch Part 1 , Part 2 , and Part 3 . About a year ago the kids and I got home unexpectedly early from a weekend visiting my parents and found the door unlocked and an empty house. Really empty. Like furniture moved out and nothing on the floor empty. Fortunately, I quickly realized SOS had taken the kid-free opportunity to have the carpets cleaned, and sure enough, he showed up a short time later chagrined that he hadn't been able to put everything back before I got home. Four-Year-Old Selfie, with Carpet But I was inspired. There was so much room! Just imagine what we could do with so much empty space! Hold a contra dance! Or put together a 5000 piece puzzle! Or maybe, just maybe, make a comfortable, non-cluttered home for a family of four. With welcoming SmilesBabyGirl and the explosion of accompanying girl-baby accessories, I had begun to doubt our condo really could be a comfortab

This is Part 3 in a series about our small living space. Here is Part 1 and Part 2 . It was one of those moments where any mother would have beamed with pride. We had company over. Not our usual if-you-want-some-water-you-know-where-the-cups-are kind of company, but the kind of company where we actually found our dining table and brought out a wrinkled tablecloth to cover the goop which cannot be removed with mere soap and water. We were doing this company thing for reals. Except we forgot the small detail of sufficient seating. But our guests were graciously making do, and one had found a decent seat on the bottom step of the stairs leading to CutieLittleBoy's bunk bed. Let me sidetrack for a moment. SmilesBabyGirl does an amazing wedge impersonation. For being as robustly chub as she is, she has a unique talent of inserting herself in small spaces and then pushing outward until she is pleasantly comfortable. So our unwarned guest was making as much of a chair as she coul

This is Part 2 in a series about living in a small place. Read Part 1 if you missed it. I chose to take a cold shower this morning. I took one yesterday, too. I have this to say: Brr. The water heater for our building has been sputtering to a painful death for awhile now, and it finally did so early Sunday morning. Eighteen households without hot water on a day when no one is going to budge an inch to fix the problem. Our HOA elections just might have been decided this weekend. But that was yesterday. Today maintenance was going to fix the problem. They just need to turn off the water for a "few" hours. Gentle Readers, water is critical when there are two sticky-fingered, chalk-eating, dirt-flinging, diaper-stripping, juice-splashing children in the house. It turns out yogurt makes some pretty nice splashes, too. A zebra, of course. Just thinking about it makes me want to go wash my hands and everything else the children have touched. So yes. My option

"Do you think it bad," SOS confided, "that one of the main motivations for wanting to invite people over to our house is to hear them say 'Woah, you guys do live in a tiny place.' Is that a problem?" Ah yes, dear husband. I know what you mean. I've been thinking similarly. It could be pride. True. But I also feel as if we are on some sort of crusade to re-educate. When I say my house is small, I am not suffering from a false sense of modesty. Believe me. A studio, 473 square feet. The only interior door is the one on the bathroom. Until a furniture purchase a few months ago covered a built-in, floor to ceiling mirror, it was possible to stand at the entrance and see the entire square footage, minus the bathroom. The HOA documents call our unit "Bachelor's Studio." The official website for the condominium complex doesn't even acknowledge the existence of these smaller units. The previous owner (and perhaps several more before him) wa