Seven tips for living well in a small space
THE MILLENNIAL UNDERGROUND: PART 4
Like so many things during the pandemic, our housing situation felt out of my control. We had been preparing, emotionally and practically, to move, to leave behind our low ceilings and postage stamp living room and find a place we could really embrace as ours. And suddenly, we couldn’t.
It’s been frustrating. But even if I can’t change my housing at the moment, I realized I can change how I approach my space.
And this is how I do it: Seven things I can (to some degree) control in order to live well in a basement suite. Some of these have been principles I’ve lived by since we moved in; others I’m just learning to embrace as I accept our new, completely unchanged reality.
- Change my brain patterns
This one is simple: instead of complaining about the suite to friends or family, I try to compliment it. I actively try to counter negative thoughts with positive ones.
I finally realized that my negative attitude toward our suite was self-perpetuating, and all my complaining was normalizing a dubious assumption: that happiness depends only on the perfection of your circumstances. My complaining also reinforced my sense of housing privilege, that I was too good for my space.
Before I could really make inroads on my negative feelings though, I had to acknowledge them in the first place. I had to let myself grieve what wasn’t: my expectations, my desires for something better.
Now, love for my home is a regular on my list of things to pray about. I know I won’t be perfectly content, but now that I’ve acknowledged (and grieved) the need that isn’t being met, I’m trying to rely on the divine gift of brain plasticity to change my outlook.
2. Be ruthless about stuff
Living in a small space with children, it is absolutely essential to be ruthless about stuff: the toys, the gear, the accessories, you name it.
Every item that comes into our home goes through the wringer: how necessary is it, is there a place for it, and what will the process of getting rid of it look like? Then, and only then, is it allowed past the threshold.
This means we’ve had to set some boundaries. We ask for small Christmas gifts and request that doting family members keep our space in mind when buying us stuff (we receive all gifts with gratitude though, even if they don’t pass our rigorous standards for our own purchases).
We don’t shop at Costco, and I keep my time in stores like HomeSense or Target to a minimum, because once I’m there, it’s really hard to remember how little space I have to store things like decorative salad bowls. I say no to free things even when it’s socially awkward. We keep one box in storage for Christmas decorations — once it’s full, something has to go.
Even with all this, you would be remiss to think we live in a minimalist Scandinavian utopia. We do not. We have toys and books falling over in piles and, like any self-respecting millennial, more jars than I could ever use. It’s real life. But if I want even a chance of keeping the clutter at reasonable-for-us levels, we have to be ruthless about stuff.
3. Change the definition of “mine”
One of the key mindset changes as someone who grew up in a house in the suburbs to becoming a mother raising kids in a basement is changing the definition of ours. Instead of seeing ours as “things we own and store full-time in our space,” we prefer “things we have access to at certain times on a regular basis.” By this definition of ours, we have a backyard once a week when we visit Joel’s parents. We have a trampoline when we go to his sister’s. My son’s car ramp and tree fort live at his daycare; my daughter’s extensive collection of toys that beep and sing live at hers. We visit our friends with a backyard to play in a kiddie pool; at church, they bang on a djembe. Gray’s Park, five minutes by foot, is our swingset, slide, and picnic grounds.
As far as we can, we extend this attitude to the things we do own in the traditional sense. When my best friend lived nearby, my carry-on suitcase was also hers. Another friend comes over to use my sewing machine, and our books have been lent to innumerable people over the years. As I write this, another friend is sleeping on our camping mat.
Even if we had more space, society seems to be changing along with us, with the growth of little free libraries and buy nothing swap groups. I think it’s a practice we’ll continue regardless of housing. It allows us to think more sustainably about ownership, and strengthens our connections with neighbours and friends.
4. Find Creative Storage Solutions
Ever since living in both an apartment and basement, we have been storage ninjas. Any and every bit of breathing room is potential storage. It’s pretty much a hobby at this point.
I love the trunk of my mother-in-law’s car: It is completely empty except for a few reusable grocery bags. It’s lovely. But that won’t work for us. Our trunk is basically a shed. Year-round it holds our stroller and stroller accessories and a picnic blanket. In the summer, it is home to beach toys, two lawn chairs, and our bocce ball and Kubb sets. It’s actually ideal: we’re always prepared for picnics!
Our ottoman holds legos. A shelf meant for a single row of books holds double. Each bed in our house is designated for different items: under the crib is art storage, under Owen’s bed is kids’ clothes, our bed is wrapping paper and duffel bags and other miscellany. The bottoms of our closets have bags and boxes configured with tetris like precision.
We also ask for help. My wedding dress is in someone else’s house; so are our winter tires.
One of my favorite storage solutions was from friends of ours, who used to store their books by artfully stacking them on the floor. They didn’t have kids.
5. Invest in one space at a time
Anytime I get frustrated with my space, my first thought is that it’s time to move. To reset the whole damn thing. But recently I’ve started to ask myself, what specifically is frustrating me? Is this really an unsolvable problem? If not, how can I fix it?
Five years ago, we moved into a basement suite and jerry-rigged a pantry by putting a short, 9-cubed bookshelf into the storage unit. It worked for us. We were two people, and when we had a baby, that baby didn’t really eat snacks (I’m as confused as you). Recently, though, I realized my pantry was a source of constant frustration. Why was it overflowing? Why couldn’t I find anything I needed?
I had set up a pantry for two adults who worked outside the home, and now we were four people, working and home, and one of them was a two-year-old who eats snacks all day long.
The space wasn’t working because it was set up with a completely different purpose in mind. So we got rid of the bookshelf and bought a pantry unit that used all the vertical space in our storage closet. The change has been enormous, especially when compared to the effort we put into the change (which was low).
You don’t have to change everything to fix one problem.
This has been a game-changer. Another example: we don’t like the paint colours in our home. So instead of repainting everything (which we’re not allowed to do) we covered one small, dark red wall with reusable wallpaper. I have gotten so much satisfaction from my cute wall, it’s almost embarrassing. When our bedroom (which, for the record, has dark grey walls and 6.5” ceiling) was feeling too dark and cramped, we moved the bed closer to the window and got a white comforter.
There’s always some small adjustment that can be made, as our kids grow and circumstances change. These small, inexpensive changes improve our quality of life without the stress of a move or complete renovation.
6. Add surprises that make you smile
Gretchen Rubin, in her book Happier At Home, recommends adding small “secret” pieces of joy around the house, an idea I have stolen gleefully and endorse wholeheartedly.
For Gretchen, that meant hiring a miniature artist to build a secret model in her kitchen cabinet, which is too bougie even for me, but I’ve started hiding secret art around the house. A small square of a wallpaper sample is stuck behind our fruit bowl. The wall behind our pile of winter clothes reveals a lovely landscape painting once the weather warms up. I rotate napkins I like in the bottom of my bathroom drawer, giving me a small shot of colour and joy every time I grab the toothpaste.
When I come upon them, the secrets hiding in my house give me a small dose of happiness that counteracts, even in a small way, the deluge of frustration that comes from living amid the regular mess and chaos of domestic life with small kids.
The way a spark of beauty can counteract chaos reminds me of the disproportionate way small moments of joy can counterbalance the suffering we witness, and at times endure, on a daily basis. How does a baby’s giggle or a well-timed hug hold within it enough force to push back against the realities of war, the pain of abandonment, the struggle of the every day? Maybe it doesn’t always. But joy has always seemed more potent to me than suffering, like a crocus that breaks through a city covered in snow.
7. See it through the eyes of a child
More than once in the past five years, my son has said, unprompted, “I love our home.”
When I see our front yard, I see someone else’s property we’d better not mess up; Owen and Rosemary see their birthright. They love sharing a room. It’s never crossed their mind that some people have more than one bathroom. They rarely play in their own bedroom because they like to be close to us in our tiny living room.
Yes, we live in a basement. But we live in a city populated with people who rent for life; who live out their biggest joys, deepest struggles, and most mundane tasks in apartments, basements, and laneway houses.
Our kids don’t yet compare our house to the bigger ones in their extended families; neither do they realize that in reality, they are more fortunate (materially) than the vast majority of the world’s population.
Instead, they see the rug they learned to walk on and can spend hours building towers on. They see the room where they play playdough and the innumerable games they’ve made up together. They see a bed they can wrestle on and a pantry full of snacks. They don’t see a house that’s on the small side, or weirdly laid out. They see their home, and they love it.
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This is part four of a six part series about living underground in Vancouver, BC.
- Part 1: Life in a basement suite: an introduction
- Part 2: What you might find when rental hunting in Vancouver, 2016
- Part 3: Are basement suites good enough for Canadian families?
- Part 4: Seven tips for living well in a small space
- Part 5: The beauty of the basement
- Part 6: “Why don’t you just move?”
- Bonus Update: Emerging from the Underground
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