Category Archives: downsizing

Downsize: Living Large in a Small House by Sheri Koones

By Claire Posted in downsizing, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , ,
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Author Sheri Koones downsized from a nearly 7,000 square foot house to 1,400 square feet when she and her husband became empty-nesters. So she has personal experience with downsizing, and brings that knowledge to this book.

It’s packed with photos of a variety of houses, some small, but others not so small at 1,800-2,000 square feet. (Perhaps the book’s subtitle should have been “Living Large in a Smaller House.”)  Nevertheless, this book offers all sorts of inspiration for those who need or simply want to downsize their living situation.

One very useful aspect of this book is that it includes some homes with separate living space for an adult child or an elderly parent. That’s a common situation these days but you don’t often see it addressed along with downsizing.

Many of the homes are new construction, which won’t be affordable for many people who are downsizing for financial reasons. But the color photos of the interiors offer plenty of inspiration for anyone who is considering furniture arrangements, use of artwork without going overboard, and how to put your personal mark on a home without filling it with clutter.

The author notes that she and some others highlighted in the book went through several purges of belongings before finally settling down in their new, smaller home. Nice to know we weren’t the only ones!

Arranging Furniture in a Small Living Room

By Claire Posted in downsizing, Personal, Small-House Living Tagged , , , , ,

After we moved here, we spent hours trying to arrange our huge furniture in our little living room. No matter what we tried, nothing looked right. In the end we only kept a loveseat, two recliners, two end tables and a wooden chair that we put near the front door. In the years since, we moved them around a few times but never found just the right set-up.

Now we’re starting over. We’re planning to buy a small-scale sofa, a smaller recliner (the two we have are huge!) and an occasional chair or two (one of us wants one chair and the other wants two). Of course, we’re also spending time figuring out where everything should go.

One of the few books that survived the Great Purge when we moved here is a book from the 1990s called Use What You Have Decorating by Lauri Ward. I used that book on our large house and loved it. I’m so glad I saved it because it’s still useful: since she recommends arranging your furniture into groupings (as opposed to spreading it apart and pushing it up against the walls as many people do), it works well for this small house as well as our former large one.

Of course, the photos in the book look pretty dated now, but the principles are still good. I highly recommend this book for anyone who feels like their furniture is just not in the right spots.

The Furniture Hunt Continues

By Claire Posted in downsizing, Personal, Small-House Living Tagged , , , , ,

I’m back on the hunt for new, smaller-scale furniture for our living room. So far, it hasn’t been easy.

One problem is that there are still so many huge overstuffed pieces of furniture for sale out there. That’s not for anyone with a small house.

Of the sofas that aren’t huge and overstuffed, many are quite long. Again, that won’t work in our 12’ X 16’ living room. Although I’ve noticed while looking inside local homes for sale on Realtor.com (a habit I can’t seem to break) that many people with homes like ours buy a large overstuffed sectional, fill the room with it, hang a huge television on the facing wall and put a floor lamp near the sectional and call it a day. That’s not for us.

I’ve discovered that websites like Wayfair.com and Overstock.com offer filters so that you can weed out the wrong sizes and styles while wading through literally thousands of sofas and sectionals. That’s very convenient; the problem is that we haven’t seen a sofa we really like, and I suspect that, while affordable, the quality isn’t there and most won’t last very long.

But we’re getting closer. We just visited a higher-end furniture store with sturdier furniture. It’s not inexpensive, but we’re willing to pay for quality. Unfortunately, the colors and fabric available now aren’t very appealing to us. But we’ll keep looking.

We’re also looking for modest-sized chairs and a small stand for our television that will hide our DVDs and our DVD player. This appears to be another challenge: there are so many huge televisions out there that most stands are nearly as wide as the wall we want to put one on.

Redoing the living room is going to take longer than I thought.