Thoughts on Minimalism

I mentioned in one of my last posts that I thought it would be fun to make this blog about living minimally in a small home.  I've been thinking about ‘minimal living’ since I wrote that post and wondering if my lifestyle really reflects that.  A few months ago I was reading a book about styling your home and there was a "find your style" type quiz.  I took the quiz and the results told me that my style was 'minimalism.'  Interesting.  That is not what I would have picked for myself. I asked a few friends if they thought that it was an accurate description of my style and they all agreed with the quiz.

The Kitchen Reveal: It's finally finished!

The kitchen is FINALLY finished! Hooray! It took significantly longer than expected, but it is done and we love it.

Here she is in all her beauty!

More Kitchen Updates!

Ryan and I bought our house almost exactly two years ago, with the idea that it would be a good starter home.  Mostly, I think, because it is so small (998 square feet to be exact). While we were in the initial stages of thinking about redoing the kitchen we kept asking ourselves if we wanted to stay in this house long term or not.  After a lot of discussion we decided that we love our location, community, and house, and wanted to commit to staying here, in this house. We also really liked the challenge of living small.  1,000 square feet is not a lot of space, especially when you are planning on growing your family. The thing is, this house was built in 1950 which means a family, probably with a lot of kids, lived here at one time.  In 1950 I don't think this house was considered small, it was most likely just an average sized home.  I think in the US we've become so accustom to seeing and living in large homes that to live in anything smaller than 2,000 square feet, especially with kids, seems crazy.  Honestly, maybe in a few years when we have kids I will look back on this and think I was crazy to think that living in a house less than 1,000 square feet was a good idea.  But for now, I like the challenge a small house poses.  Having little space naturally challenges you to live more minimally. It challenges you to think critically about what you are buying since you might not have room for it, or room to store it.  It challenges you to purge and to keep things tidy so that you have space. For now, Ryan and I are up for the challenge.  I think I will use this blog to document how we live in our small space. Kind of like the HGTV show Tiny Homes, but with slightly more space. Ha!