Creative and Contented: Large Families Living in Small Homes :: Amelia Bentrup from One Catholic Mama

Although her family recently moved, Amelia Bentrup, her husband, and four children lived in 846 feet and lived to tell the tale!  She was so generous to share this post that she originally wrote on her own blog, One Catholic Mama, back in April.  I'm so happy to have Amelia share her super practical and down to earth ideas on making a small home work.  Welcome to Ordinary Lovely, Amelia!  Thanks for joining us! 

 

Small House - (Sorta) Big Family . How We Did It

846 square feet

2 bedrooms

1 bathroom

6 people

1 cat

That is how we lived for about a year.

I'll be honest...it's been difficult.  Very, very difficult.

Somehow we survived.

This is how we did it and in the process, I did learn some tips for small house living.  

1. Minimal Furniture.

This should go without saying.  When you live in a small house, you can't have even one unnecessary piece of furniture.  No coffee tables.  No knick-knack holders.  Nothing that doesn't serve a purpose.  Beds.  Kitchen Table, Couch, Chair, Desks, Dressers, Bookshelves.  That's it! Nothing decorative.  Nothing non-functional.  Nothing that takes up space.

2, Learn to ignore the mess.

One of the biggest problems with a small house is that small messes look much bigger in smaller spaces.  The kids build a fort in the living room.  Forget it.  You can't even walk through it anymore.   Everyone doing school on your one (small) dining room table.  It's GOING to be a mess.  When you have several kids sharing a room, all it takes is a few clothes thrown on the floor, for the entire room to look like a disaster area.   You kinda just have to embrace it, or it will drive you crazy.

3. Kick everyone outside.

Unfortunately this doesn't work when it's cold.  Winter was hard, but once spring hit, it got much easier. Our small house did have a large backyard .  That helped A LOT when the weather was nice enough to go outside.   Or I would just go outside myself and leave everyone else inside.  

4. Save nothing.

You don't have room to save anything.  So don't.  Get rid of stuff quickly. And when I say get rid of it, I mean get rid of.  If you have a bag of outgrown clothes...put them in the car to drop off someplace the next time you are out.  Don't leave them in your house....anything you are getting rid of, get rid of immediately.

5.  Realize that it just takes sacrifice....for everyone.

We all had to sacrifice a little privacy.  Which has been really, really hard.  The kids have no place to do stuff without the toddler getting into it.  No one has their own room. There is no place to talk without kids overhearing.  Everyone is sharing ALL THE SPACE, which is hard.  So, you just have to learn to deal with the lack of individual space.  And realize that it's just as hard for the kids as for the adults.   Think of it kinda like Little House on the Prarrie living.

6. Enforce bedtime.

There are certain children who, if we had a bigger house, I would likely have let them stay up later.  However, we didn’t have a bigger house.  So the only way for us to get kid-free time was after everyone was in bed. So off to bed they went..earlier than they maybe otherwise would.

7. Come up with alternative bathroom arrangements in a pinch.

This is a big one.  Having just one bathroom was very hard.  So, we actually have an old plastic cat litter pan (the cat doesn't use that one) we keep in the garage.  In an emergency, someone has been known to pee in that, and then dump it outside.   Just in an emergency.

However, that can be limited by anyone who is going to be in the bathroom for a longer period of time (ie. for a bath or shower) checking with everyone else first, to see if they need to use it.  It's hard to remember to do that, but when we do, it makes everyone happier.  

Those are my tips. We lived in that house for about a year, and even though we’ve since moved to a larger space, I learned a lot during that time.  It was definitely a period of growth for our family, a time when we grew closer and learned to make lots of compromises and live together. .

 Amelia Bentrup has a master's degree in reproductive physiology of dairy cows.  She and her husband, Ben, met in graduate school and have been married for 14 years. They have 4 children, ages 13, 10, 7 and  2.  Amelia spends her days homeschooling, chauffeuring kids around, working, mothering, laughing and loving. In her free time, she loves to read, hike, exercise and write. Currently she puts all her creative juices into blogging at  www.onecatholicmama.com.

Creative and Contented: Large Families Living in Small Homes :: Maia Jarvis from From Little Hands

Today I'm happy to introduce you to Maia Jarvis (of From Little Hands) who shares on the beauty of delighting in the things that we have instead of making excuses about the things we don't. Welcome to Ordinary Lovely, Maia! Thank you so much for your contributing your thoughts to Creative and Contented: Large Families Living in Small Homes.

Finding Dulce Domum

(and escaping the if-then doldrums)

I’m writing this piece in the midst of a crisis, if you will.  I’d like to tell you about the joys of living small, but the reality is that it doesn’t feel quite so joyful at the moment. In fact, it feels downright anxiety-ridden at the moment. It’s not really a living small problem but more a problem of MY HOUSE IS TOO SMALL!

Hello, my name is Maia and I live in a 1100 square foot, two-bedroom apartment with my husband, three children, and a really big dog. I know for a fact that he is a really big dog because when I take him for walks and we meet new people or go past people we haven’t seen before they say, “Wow. That is a really big dog.”

Two weeks ago, I started reading That Book. You know. The one about tidying up. (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, if you need more specifics.) I made the mistake of reading this book right before bed, and realized that it was having the opposite effect of the normal sort of book I usually choose to read right before bed. Kind of chest-tightening, in fact.

Prior to this point, I was realizing that I was nearing a breaking point, which is why I picked up the book in the first place. Our narrow hallway that doubles as an entryway/laundry room was and continues to close in on me everytime we try to leave the house. Children sprawl in the space as they fluctuate between various states of actually getting their shoes on and passively getting their shoes on. And I think, “If only I had a grand entry way with a Pinterest-worthy bench and coat rack set up...THEN I wouldn’t feel so hassled getting the kids out the door.”

My living room triples as an office (where I work from home) and a dining room (where we eat...from home). Sometimes I think, “If only I had an office...NOT EVEN AN OFFICE,” I exclaim inside my head, “I would settle for one of those tidy, alcovesque office-y nookish-kind-of-places.” (That’s the official term.) “THEN I could put a clearer divide between work and home.”

I have read A Mother’s Rule of Life and ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life and been thoroughly resolved to amend my house and avoid near occasions of disorder and clutter. And it was in the same frame of mind that I picked up The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, thinking, “If I could just find the time to put these ideas into practice, then I would be a much more peaceful person to be around.

And I probably would be. And these books have their merit. And I both re-read them and re-recommend them. And there is something to be said for spacious entry ways and tidy offices. And. And. But.

When you (read: I) fall into the trap of “if only, THEN” my world gets a little green-colored around the edges. I don’t get specifically jealous (necessarily, but, on the other hand, maybe) of someone else’s life, circumstances, entry way, office, or ability to de-clutter, but I do get a little more discontent. Discontentment takes up more square footage than anything I know. It increases clutter. It decreases shelf space. And it buzzes around, taking up any energy that was available to infuse a house with home.

See, my probably isn’t really that my house is too small. It isn’t. It’s actually the perfect size to keep clean - my new standard for this (for me) is if I can plug the vacuum into one outlet and vacuum the whole house, then it is just right! In fact, while not ideal, I know from experience that we can live smaller. I also know (from experience) that we really don’t need anything much larger. We don’t need nicer thing or even different things. While I am not about to tell you that I don’t need to de-clutter (because I do), I also can’t get stuck in this place I am of feeling that “if only” I “had this”/“did this”/“was this” THEN I would be/have {fill in the latest desire thing or state of being}. My life is so much richer than Mad Libs!

My kids and I are reading The Wind in the Willows, currently. My boys listen to this frequently as an Audible, but we are enjoying reading a really fine copy that we found at a used book store. Last week we were reading chapter five, “Dulce Domum”, and I found this bit:

Poor Mole found it difficult to get any words out between the upheavals of his chest that followed one upon another so quickly and held back speech and choked it as it came. ‘I know it’s a - shabby, dingy little place,’ he sobbed forth at last brokenly: ‘not like - your cosy quarters - or Toad’s beautiful hall - or Badger’s great house - but it was my own little home - and I was fond of it - and I went away and forgot all about it - and then I smelt it suddenly - on the road, when I called and you wouldn’t listen, Rat - and everything came back to me with a rush - and I wanted it! - O dear, O dear! - and when you wouldn’t turn back, Ratty - and I had to leave it, though I was smelling it all the time - I thought my heart would break.

Rat and Mole go back, and Mole is reunited with his home. It’s a little neglected and very dusty. Mole is, then, upset and wonders why he’s bothered to bring Rat here when they were tired and hungry and could have been somewhere nice. You will have to go read the chapter, to see the work of mercy and hospitality that Rat undertakes, though tired, before he gets to rest. The chapter ends with:

The weary Mole also was glad to turn in without delay, and soon had his head on his pillow, in great joy and contentment. But ere he closed his eyes he let them wander round his old room, mellow in the glow of the firelight that played or rested on familiar and friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him, and now smilingly received him back, without rancour. He was now in just the frame of mind that the tactful Rat had quietly worked to bring about in him. He saw clearly how plain and simple - how narrow, even - it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence.

So right now, like Mole, I’m having to rediscover my little home and be delighted with the things that are there and not be afraid to offer hospitality even though I’m not quite sure what I have to offer. I’m having to remember that that love and contentment makes this home a sacred space while discontentment and jealousy profane it. I’m escaping the doldrums of the if-only-thens and discovering this place that really is home, little sweet home.  Are you with me?

Maia blogs at http://fromlittlehands.com. Her dream job is Professional Encourager and Idea-Haver and Coffee-Drinker. Motherhood is great resume-builder for these. She is a taker of pictures and a keeper of moments and her children's things. She has a husband (who does not like having his picture taken), three children (who do like having their pictures taken), and a really big dog (who really doesn't care if you take his picture or not so long as you feed him).  You can find her and her photos on Instagram and again on Instagram.

Creative and Contented: Large Families Living in Small Homes :: Christy Isinger from Fountains of Home

I'm so happy to have Christy Isinger (of Fountains of Home) here today letting us in on some of her unfounded fears and assuring us that even if your bedrooms are outnumbered by children, everything will be ok and the kids will be fine! Welcome to Ordinary Lovely, Christy! Thanks for your contribution to Creative and Contented: Large Families Living in Small Homes!

Babies are More Important Than Square Footage 

(or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About a Small House and a Lotta Kids)

There is so much I could say about small house living with lotsa babies - so much! But I'm going to try and share a bit about why the thought of making our house work was one of my biggest fears with each successive pregnancy and how things worked out and the the world didn't end and we're all alive so far -- even though we didn't move.

When my husband and I got married nine years ago we moved into a small, second house on my parents ranch because we weren't sure where we'd end up or when my husband would get his dream job. We thought the "little house", as my family called it, would be a nice little boat-hole for our newlywed life until we moved on to who knows where.

But - when we found out about three weeks after our wedding that we were expecting a little honeymoon baby we started to plan on being in the little house for at least a year or so. My husband's job prospects at the time didn't pan out, and he started working in a completely different field but with the prospect of training, moving up quickly, and dependable hours and money. Then we found out we were again expecting a couple months before our first baby turned a year old. We thought we'd just see what would work out, if God pointed us in another direction we'd move, but right at the time, being so close to my family was literally keeping me afloat as I dealt with colic-y babies and piggyback pregnancies.

By the time we were expecting our third baby in three years I started to freak out somewhat about our tiny house. We had only about 900 sq feet upstairs with three small bedrooms and a semi-finished basement that was mostly being used as storage. How on earth would we be able to put in actual twin size beds for multiple children in these tiny bedrooms? Where would we put their clothes let alone their toys? And what about our six month long winters? What were we going to do trapped inside in frigid temperatures for days on end?

Well, I got pregnant a fourth and fifth time and with each pregnancy this irrational fear about how our house wouldn’t work for our life with a lot of babies kept getting bigger. I didn't want to move away from our desperately needed support system, but the idea of getting babies to learn how to sleep while sharing rooms with 3 or 4 loud toddlers seemed completely looney. Making us all fit was one of those worries I carried around just like I carried around our babies for nine months, it wouldn't go away and it nagged at me no matter how much I tried to trust in God.

But with a little ingenuity we just made it work somehow. At one point we had two cribs and a twin bed in a 6x8' bedroom. We had three little kids aged 4, 3, and 2 sleep together in the same tiny room. I will say that there were nights when they all kept each other up that I honestly wanted to pull my hair out. There were many early mornings where they all woke each other up. But slowly we made progress and sleep started to happen.

When we became pregnant with our fifth baby my husband built a boy cave downstairs for the brothers to move into. It resembles a monk's cell in that it only contains their beds and a rug because we like to keep our sanity and take away anything that could be broken or create noise. That leaves our 3 year old boy still bunking with our 8 year old girl while the baby still gets her own room to learn how to sleep through the night in.

Something else that helped a lot was deciding to put all the kids clothes in the baby's room since that room had only one crib. We have a few dressers in there, since this house is too small to have closets in every bedroom, where all the kid's clothes are found. It cuts down on laundry work while at the same time making a one-stop-getting-dressed-spot for everyone. It's not exactly Pinterest worthy, but so far it's been functional for us and worked out just fine.

We've become experts in getting rid of "stuff". Although the basement is now a great place to throw all the toys, we're still mortally serious about keeping the amount of toys down to a minimum and regularly cull the plastic. We have no junk drawers or extra space for all the annoying clutter that has to go somewhere but really has no home, so our kitchen counters can become stacked. But again, more reason to keep on top of it because if we let it get out of hand we wouldn't be able to cook at all!

There's many times that I silently curse our stupidly small entryway while simultaneously silently praying that one or more children don't topple down the stairs while trying to get in from the cold. And I'm not going to lie that having a little more space to myself in my bedroom would be a treasure, but we've made this small house work with five kids. Somewhere down the line in the midst of all the baby crazy I realized that this house was working even if it wasn't perfect. All my irrational pregnancy worries, were actually solved with flexible solutions that didn't take nearly as much work or money as I had previously built up in my mind. What was most important was keeping my babies healthy and alive, and keeping my sanity with toddlers by living near my family, and that's worth a lot more than square footage.

Christy Isinger is the mom to five lovely, loud young children whom she herds in the northern wilds of Canada. In her spare moments she likes to drink wine and quote Chesterton while watching TV. She blogs about family life, faith, and good books at Fountains of Home, and co-hosts the Fountains of Carrots podcast. She can also be found and followed on Facebook and Instagram.

Creative and Contented: Big Families Living in Small Homes :: Jenny Cook from Life in the Cookie Jar

Today, Jenny Cook (of Life in the Cookie Jar) shares words about acceptance and gratitude that can speak to each heart , whether we have a walk-in closet or live out of a suitcase. Welcome to Ordinary Lovely, Jenny! I'm so happy to have you!

“Be content with what you have, for God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’” (Hebrews 13:5b)

Contentment is not a virtue or value easily come by in our materialistic culture.  In fact, it’s counter-cultural to be content with what you have.  I saw this ad on the back of a Real Simple magazine recently:

How ironic…a “real simple” life apparently can’t be lived well without a very expensive sports car.  As someone who has somehow been thriving without one, I beg to differ.

Our family also lives in a situation which is counter-cultural: we are a family of five making our home in a 500 sq. ft. trailer.  We moved in last summer.  Before that, we lived for a year in a 500 sq. ft. apartment.  

We haven’t always lived in such small spaces.  Some of the apartments or houses we’ve lived in have been perfectly spacious, but those were all when we had housemates (another counter-cultural phenomenon for many American families and a whole different story for another day!)  When we went back to living without housemates, we couldn’t afford a lot for rent, and small spaces were the only thing within budget.  

We never set out to live small, and to be honest, we’re not looking to make this a rest-our-of-lives thing.  It’s something that we need for this season of life and we hope eventually to life in a bigger home on a bigger piece of land.  But for now, this is what works…and it really works a lot better than you might think.

I have some other posts elsewhere on how we make it work in a practical sense, but here I’d like to reflect on how to focus on contentment and gratitude in the often challenging situation of a house which affords each person about 100 sq. ft.

Believe you me, I am not an expert at contentment.  Despite picking Hebrews 13:5b as my “life verse” when I was baptized at age 6, I—like many, I suspect—struggle to remember to be grateful for what I’ve been given.  There are days when living in a small space with three kids under five is really trying.  We have only two bedrooms, which are for the kids.  My husband and I sleep on a futon in the living room.  His clothes are in a suitcase next to the bed; mine are in a dresser in the boys’ room. When my three year old is having a tantrum, I can’t really get away from it.  He shares a room with his one year old brother, and although they sleep at night in there together well, they can’t be in there at the same time for daytime naps.  As a result, there is nowhere for my three year old to go when he’s tired and cranky and his brother is napping except in the main room with me or in the yard.  

A small space doesn’t take long to clean, but it also doesn’t take long to get dirty.  There is nothing dividing the kitchen from the main room, so dirty feet come tromping in all day long, even with a shoes-off policy.  Between tracking in endless pine needles and mud in our rainy Oregon winters (which last about 9 months!) and a toddler who loves to throw food, the floor is usually a wreck by day’s end, if not by midday.  There’s no dishwasher, so dishes are constantly stacking up, even with a double sink.  Because of the lack of storage and counter space, it takes very little to clutter the place up.  It seems counter-intuitive that a small space would be hard to keep clean, but that’s how it seems.  I often notice that if I’m not cleaning all day, the scale of the mess is massively above and beyond what it was when I lived in houses twice or three times the size.  It can get very discouraging.

Those are some of the challenges, but of course there are benefits that are not to be overlooked.  Here are some:

• We own the house outright.  We bought it with a cashier’s check.  Of course, this was largely because it was in unlivable condition when we bought it. Thankfully, my husband is a second year carpentry apprentice and spent last summer working his tail off to get it ready for us.  Because it is in a trailer court, we do pay space rent for the land it is on; but at $430 a month, the rent is dirt cheap (at least for the Portland area) and includes water, sewer, and garbage.  
• Because we own it, we can modify the inside to our specifications, which allows for adding space-saving shelving and other ideas to make the most of our space.  But even when we lived in an apartment—which couldn’t be modified very much and had no yard or shed or anything—we still found ways to make use of all the space afforded to us.  
• We also own both of our cars outright, so we’re not sending any money out each month for car payments. Student loans, alas, are another story…
• We make do with fewer things.  When we first moved into small-space living, we had a huge furniture/toy/stuff sale.  It was kind of liberating to sell a lot of things and let go.  
• On a related note, my kids have fewer toys and we keep a lot of them up on shelves to allow for rotation, since we simply can’t have them all out at once!  And this doesn’t seem to affect my kids one little bit.  They love what they have and never seem to get bored.  
• My kids don’t complain about the small space; I think kids are naturally pretty content.  The few times I’ve heard them say (and they say it very matter-of-factly) that the house is small, I know where they picked it up: from my husband and me.  Children often have to be taught to be dissatisfied.  The come up with lots of creative ways to play. They like sharing rooms to sleep in; it’s cozy.
  
   
• We no longer take “basic amenities” like dishwashers and an in-home washer and dryer for granted.  Last summer and this summer we’ve done some housesitting for friends.  They don’t live in a mansion by any means: a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom ranch-style house with a nice backyard.  But to us, it feels like a luxury vacation. Even being in a bedroom of our own with a door to close (not to mention its own bathroom!) no longer is something that we feel entitled to have.  We know how to live without it, and we appreciate it so much more when we get to experience it.  I know that when we do someday live in a more typical house, we’ll soon forget to be grateful for “the little things” and take them for granted.  
• It’s a practice in patience, humility, and mortification (in the sense of “dying to selfishness”, not in the sense of embarrassment).  For an introvert like me, it takes an extra dose of patience always to share space with my kids. Constantly picking up or walking back and forth to the laundry facility reminds me that my vocation as a mother is not a glamorous one, yet it is my calling.
• It’s a way to sacrifice to make life better for our kids.  Because we’re not spending double the amount on rent or a mortgage in a bigger place, we can use that money to send our son to a Montessori preschool this year.  Isn’t it part of the American dream for parents to sacrifice to provide their children with enriching opportunities? I know my parents did just that; I didn’t really get it at the time, but I do now and I’m very grateful.  

Most of all, it’s a daily (or hourly!) call to holiness: am I going to use my “magic magnifying mind” to focus on what I don’t have or don’t like, or am I going to focus on what God has provided and gratitude?  As I mentioned, I definitely give in to dissatisfaction at times. Yet I am very grateful to have this season of life in which to learn contentment no matter the circumstances.  

No matter the size of your house, you will also feel the call: contentment or restlessness? Gratitude or resentment?  Trust in what God’s given you today or fear that you’ll never get what you want?  I hope that this post can serve as encouragement to you that it is possible, with God’s grace, to be content with what you have in this present season of life.  

Jenny Cook lives in the vicinity of Portland, Oregon with her husband and three kids.  When not trying to keep up with housework, she enjoys writing at her blog Life in the Cookie Jar, writing and editing for Real Housekeeping, and contributing to Shine Catholic.