Friday, October 10, 2014

LIVING SMALL: THE JUST ENOUGH LIVING ROOM

St. Helena, CA


After living for four years onboard our beautiful Cara Mia, with all her warm teak and built-in furniture, setting up camp on land has been more challenging than I anticipated. Our tiny, 512-square-foot house seems so cavernous, echo-y and stark white.

We don't want to own a lot of stuff, but we want to be comfortable. When we moved in, we made a commitment to living small, an exploration of the foggy space between stark and too much.

What is the minimum requirement for living comfortably? Is clutter a human condition? Is it possible to live small, to avoid the escalation game?

In this Living Small experiment, I've listed the contents of the bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, but the living room hadn't reached that heady space of just enough. We were lacking a table.

Our tiny space called for a flexible table, small enough to be inconspicuous, but big enough to seat four in anticipation of all the new friends who will grace it. That flexible table also had to serve as my desk by day and our dinner table by night. A contracted search for a vintage drop-leaf table tried my patience, so after five months of going table-less, IKEA came to the rescue. I thought I'd outgrown IKEA, but that's just one more of life's happy surprises.


This beaut has the perfect dimensions and blends right in with our gold/black/red motif.

Here's how we ended up:

Couch
Trunk/coffee table
Rug
2 barstools
1 table
2 chairs
2 posters
1 lamp



Voila! A tiny room with two spaces to eat and work, room to entertain and lounge in comfort.

We might be one comfy chair short, but stay tuned. For now, I'm calling it just enough.


And now the real challenge: NO MORE STUFF!

Today, I'm grateful for: a table and pumpkins.


1 comment:

  1. This is just no good what so ever. What are you going to do with all that space. You will be lost.
    I have some ideas though which may well bring back some memories and allow you to live life as it is supposed to be lived.
    http://www.cygnus3.com/how-to-liveaboard-a-boat/
    Have a wonderful time in the house (I love those Swedish meatball from Ikea)

    ReplyDelete