We decided to clean out the garage today. We pulled out EVERYTHING but the heirloom chest freezer (seriously, it's an heirloom, it was passed down from my husband's grandparents to his parents to us when we got married! We think it's from the 1950s.) As we stacked up the stuff in the yard, sorted it, and moved it back in to the garage I realized two things: 1) we will never be the kind of people who park a car in the garage. It is a storage space. And 2) that garage is just shy of 300 square feet, so it's kind of like having 300 extra square feet in the house.
That means we have about 1150 square feet of covered and locked space, which isn't all that small. We don't do any living in the garage, but it holds things like extra food, suitcases, holiday decorations, extra clothes and toys, tools, and some extra furniture. Because we have all that room to store STUFF, the house doesn't have as much in it, and we don't have to be quite as minimal with our things.
We also have a nice-sized shed next to the garage, where we store garden supplies and bikes. That's probably another 50 square feet of storage space.
All told, we have about 350 square feet of storage space, and an 850 square foot house (for my metric friends, that's about 32.5 m of storage and 79 m of house.) We have storage space equaling almost half of our living space. We also have a large lot (for the city) that we live on, much bigger than the footprint of the house.
We may be close together, but we still have a lot of room to roam and to put stuff.
The best space saver of all is stacking things. So, here we stack up the children.
Bed-making: it's a battle I choose not to engage in. Sheets are clean? OK.
My dad made them these lovely bunk beds, which can be separated out to individual beds if they ever want to. We got the ubiquitous IKEA Kallax to hold the toys.
Just enough room to get into their dresser
Arrangement of the play kitchen and desk/table keep getting adjusted, but there's still some play area on the floor.
Lest you think this area looks all nice and airy and clean all the time, here is the day-to-day reality:
Need to store seasonal items? Consider layering your storage. These decorative front door mats live one on top of the other, just switch for the right season!
Summer/Fall
Winter/Spring/Half of Summer till I remember to switch it
It seems funny to write this as it was 37 degrees this morning, but let's just pretend it was 37 degrees celsius and we're baking like a meatloaf over here.
Seattle doesn't do 90+ degrees on a regular basis, but the last couple of summers have been scorchers by our standards. Very few people have air conditioning in their homes. Our house doesn't have a basement, so we can't retreat there. Our usual MO is to open all the windows and doors of the house in the cool morning (luckily, even on really hot days, we usually cool down into the 60s at night) and point all the fans inward to draw in the cool air. Once things start heating up, around 10 am, we shut all the windows and doors and draw shades on the windows that have direct sun. We keep the fans going. Then after the sun goes down and things start cooling down again, we open all the windows and doors for a couple hours before we go to bed. That keeps the house about 10 degrees cooler than outside. When it's less than 90, it works out just fine. But with all those 90+ days, it started to get ugly.
Hello friendly robot friend who brings us the cooling breezes of sanity!
So two summers ago I caved and bought a portable air conditioner. I figured we could use it in the living room by day, and in the girls' room by night. The thing about the "portable" air conditioners: they're really heavy. So it wound up in the girls room full-time, keeping them cool so they could sleep, so we could sleep even if we were hotter.
Which is worse: hot kids who wake up all night, or being hot in your bed?
This past summer I found a better solution. We kept the air conditioner in the living room full time and used a big directional fan to draw cool air into the girls' room. We also have dark, insulating window coverings to keep it cooler.
On the very hot days and nights, hubby and I blow up the air mattress and sleep in the living room, right under the delicious arctic front of the air conditioner.
It's actually a very nice and comfortable air mattress. And we could watch TV in bed!
Then we put the directional fan on the other side of the room, pointing into the hall and into the open door of the girls' room. We'd open their door after we turned out the lights. The big fan is so noisy that it blocks everything out.
Can you guess which door goes to the girls' room?
We kept the doors to the bathroom and our bedroom shut, so we didn't waste precious cool air. With a one-room airconditioner and one fan, we managed to keep two rooms and all four of us cool!
We use our back door as our main door. It opens right into the kitchen and dining area. There is no closet there. We have a coat closet, but it's in the living room, which is too far to go to drop your stuff. By the back door we had a small rack with a shelf, but then we had kids, who keep having things like coats, shoes, backpacks, hats, gloves, umbrellas, sunscreen, etc.
Before kids: aww look how simple and cute!
As with most everything in the house, I looked around for something that had as much functionality as possible. I found a coat rack with a wire shelf that looked perfect: Wire Shelf With Coat Rack
I thought I could stack two of them on the wall, one for adults and one for kids. But because I'm short, I couldn't put the adult one too high, and there wasn't enough room for the bottom one. My husband spray-painted the rack turquoise, to match the yellow/turquoise theme of the kitchen. I happened to find a wire shoe rack for free on the side of the road, so I nabbed that and painted it turquoise too. I found a small IKEA coat rack at a thrift store, and screwed that in down low for the girls to put their coats.
The entire "closet". On top we have bins full of hats, gloves, sunscreen, umbrellas, rain ponchos, etc.
The small IKEA rack that holds the girls' things.
The shoe rack, which holds bins with the girls' shoes, and various bags and junk.
Up top, I got some wire S hooks to hang bags and scarves. Sunglasses and umbrellas hang here easily.
It's a small space. You could probably wall in a closet, or get a wardrobe or a covered garment rack. I like the openness of it because it makes it easy for the kids to put up their things and get them down again. It's functional! As our family grew...so did our coat rack.
Sorry folks, I told you that summer is a busy time. Now that school has started, we're back into a routine, and it's getting dark earlier, I can sit in front of a computer more.
A couple of weeks ago we went on our yearly family camp-out with my side of the family. My parents, their dog, my little brother and sister and their families, and us. My parents have a nice camping trailer that serves as home base, the cooking and gathering area. So we don't have to bring anything other than a sleep set-up, as they have everything we need, and the kids just run around playing together the whole time.
When child #1 was 18 months old, we did this camp-out, and she did not enjoy sleeping in a tent. She woke up with the sun. At 5:30. And would not go back to sleep. And would not sit quietly reading a book or playing. One morning in a fit of utter frustration I decided that if I couldn't be asleep, then we would go for a walk. We wound up hiking up this huge sand dune (we were on the Oregon coast), and by "hiking" I mean I was crawling on one hand and two knees, holding my toddler in my other arm, taking breaks every few feet. I felt like I was in some movie about a mother and daughter escaping across the desert sand, trying to reach the promised land. We got to the top and watched the sun rise over the forest and the dunes. It was gorgeous. I would never have seen that except for a whiny toddler. The next year, she slept just fine.
This year's camping adventures have been similar with child #2, aged 18 months (their birthdays are 12 days apart). After two one-night camp-outs earlier this summer, with #2 not sleeping well in the tent and husband and I running to the car with two screaming kids at 4 am trying not to wake up the whole campground, I had had enough. I decided that since we were going to wind up in the car anyway, we might as well sleep in the car in the first place.
Behold, the mini van camper! We have a 2002 Toyota Sienna, nothing fancy, and in fact a little smaller than newer mini vans. This actually worked out pretty well for us.
We named the van Beethoven! Because it turned into Camper Van Beethoven! Get it? Get it?*
After getting to the camp site, we unpacked our relatively few things (since we didn't need cooking supplies and not as much food as usual), and took the girls car seats out and put them on top of the car. We folded down the second and third row seats, blew up our queen size single layer air mattress, and threw that on top of those. There are gaps in-between the seats, but they aren't very big, and with the mattress on top and two people, it was just fine. That was mommy and daddy's bed.
For the girls, we pushed back the front seats as far as they would go, and then put this toddler fold-up cot over the seats. I made a hammock to go on top, because our backyard hammock broke. I cut an old sheet in half, folded over the long sides by a few inches, and sewed them up so there were tubes a couple inches wide. I put some ratchet ties through the tubes. With the front doors open, we wrapped the tie-downs around the roof of the car. The doors could easily close.
We tried it out at home first, the girls thought it was awesome:
There seemed a little too far down, so I cut off some more fabric and remade it before we left.
So here's the set-up:
Mom and Dad's bed, we didn't use the sliding doors, just the hatch.
Mommy waking up
Front "bunk beds"
Bottom bunk, kid #2, space to put kids suitcases. blanket draped across so pacifiers don't fall to the ground.
Top bunk, kid #1
We popped open the sunroof for ventilation, and put a couple of tarps over the top of the car to protect from the weather (although with everything closed it wouldn't matter) and cover the windows so it would be more dark. We just threw the tarps over the girls' car seats too.
The first night #2 wasn't very excited about it, so she wound up in bed with us, which was a bit crowded, but it was fine. Kid #1 slept great all night. Kid #2 had a few moments, and I was glad we didn't have to think about waking up the camp ground. I don't know that I would like to do it again, and I'm hoping next year #2 does as well as #1 did so we can be a nice cozy tent. But it's not that bad. Only short kids could do it in the front. Luckily we are all short kids.
We wondered how the back would do with taller people, so we threw my 6'2" brother and his wife in the back and shut the hatch. He said it was comfy!
Not everyone has reason to make up a different approach to a screen door, but our doors are slightly smaller than average. Options include getting a customized screen door (expensive), making our own (expensive and time-consuming), or getting one of those magnet ones (don't seem to hold up very well).
So after a bit of internetting around, I was inspired with a very easy, very cheap, completely temporary solution. Excellent for rentals and other temporary applications (trailer doors?).
Behold, the roll-up tension rod screen!
Where's the screen? Can you see it?
I bought some screen material by the foot at the hardware store, used my sewing machine to sew two hems on either end, and stuck some tension rods in either end. We happened to have some shower curtain-type rods leftover from some other household thing, and a couple of cafe curtain rods from the girls room when I used sheets for light-blocking window treatments (oh yeah I have to show you the cool light-blocking window treatments I made recently!). I suppose you could use some sort of glue if you don't have access to a sewing machine, or use safety pins if you're really desperate.
Top
Bottom
Crappily rolled up because I didn't have time.
Easy to roll up, and if you take 30 seconds longer than I did you'll make it so nice and small that you don't even notice it. My husband usually makes it look nice. I just don't have the patience. Or the arm extension.
You can leave the bottom rod unattached if you need to get in and out, just push it aside. We tend to keep both rods in place on the front door, which we use less often, and leave the bottom rod in the backdoor loose.
Here in Seattle we don't really have a problem with mosquitos, chiggers, ticks, no-see-ums and the like. We do get those big nasty flies that come in and buzz around your head. And moths in the evening. So this screen would not be the best for keeping out all critters. I suppose you could make two more pocket hems on the sides and use two more tension rods to get a good tight fit, but with all that work and expense, it might just be best to invest in a real door.
Oh look, I went to all that trouble to make these, and they have them for 20 bucks at Home Depot. Tension Rod Screen Door
Whatever. Because I already had the tension rods, the screen fabric only cost me about $14. So there, I saved money.
