Small House in a Big House #4

I measured the space in my kitchen/family room. It is less than 500 sq. ft. My goal is to eventually get everything that I personally own in that space. I won't physically move everything to that space, but I will make sure that all that I have will fit. There is no way I will be able to get my entire family's stuff in that space.  The kitchen has tons of cabinet space to store things so I can definitely get all of my items in that space. Most of the small house designs I have seen have a loft for the bed, so I am going to assume I don't have to leave room for that.

I am pondering what do do with the yard and cleaning supplies. I am not going to get my new LG washing and drying machine in the kitchen. I guess there are some things that I will simply have to exclude with the intention of getting rid of them if I actually downsize.

I realize now, this process is going to take at least 6 months. Even with the stuff I have gotten rid of so far, it has hardly made a dent.


Today's project was a small linen closet upstairs, I cleaned out a small linen closet upstairs and was able to identify two full garbage bags.

No one ever looked in the closet for linens.  There wasn't room in it to store clean linens, so they ended up in my closet.

I swear I am not a hoarder. 

Small House in a Big House #3

Continuing my efforts to live in a small house, inside my big house. I am sorting out the books in the family room.

I have sorted out the book shelf.
Books I am taking to the school library

Books I am taking to the thrift store

I don't know why the picture below won't come into the blog the same way it shows up in my camera, but oh, well. 

This is only half of the books I have in my family room. I still have so many more to go in this house.

Small House in a Big House #2

Today I cleaned out my kitchen again. I think I throw out a garbage full of stuff every 3 months, but I still have more.

I threw out a garbage bag full of just junk, and a large box full of recipe books and kitchen equipment.

I also threw out 5 garbage bags full of clothes and other kitchen equipment from my basement. Today I threw out some items that I really didn't want to get rid of. My sister gave me a dish with impressions in it to make shortbread cake. I think I used it once and the shortbread stuck to the dish.

I also got rid of some 1950s vintage baking dishes that were divided in half. I have no idea what anyone used these dishes for. If you have two different foods they would generally have two different cooking times or temperatures. I don't know what you would cook in a baking dish that was separated, unless it was essentially the same food but with slightly different ingredients, for instance baked mac and cheese, with different cheeses on each side. I had 3 different colors of these dishes and they looked great, but I never used them.

Small House in a Big House

I love the idea of the small house movement. Seeing people that live in a 300 ft sq. house is an inspiration. I have a large house and I am not going to sell my large house to move to a small house. I can however have a small house within my large house.

First step, go room to room and throw out at least a garbage bag full of junk.
Second step, eliminate rooms of furniture.
Third step, go to step 1.
Continue until I can fit all my stuff in a van.

Problem 1: I like having CDs of my music. It is very comforting to me to know I have a hard copy of the music. I don't like the idea of having all my music digital because I don't want to lose a password, or have a disk go bad or lose access to the music. This is weird because I am not a music person. I don't listen to music on a regular basis. What I don't know is what I am going to do with all the vinyl records in my basement. Probably KSL.com for all of them.