Welcome Rachel! I envy your 2 baths! I have only one, and the toilet was broken for 4 days. Luckily my sister lives on the next street, but it still sucked!

That's how I feel when I see a house with a dining room! WOW - a dining room. I didn't use the hall bathroom for a year. The water evaporated and there was a spider web in the bowl! I also wish I had a basement and a utility sink. Washing big things in the bathtub is not classy.

Hi and welcome Rachel,
I have a small home too (940 sqft), but it is a 3 bedroom, so it seems smaller. I would really love to have your screened in porch! But, it's just me and my doggie, so it's plenty of room for us!

Hi Rachel. I'm Marilyn and I live in a small 1268 sqft house. I would love to screen in my big porch. I just can't talk my DH into it. I DO have a very small cellar type basement for storage. The water heater & furnace are down there so that helps free up space in the main house. BUT I too wish I had a laundry room or area with a big utility sink. I could give my little chihweenie a bath up there instead of having to lean over the tub all the time...lol.
Our house was actually a 2bedroom but we put a wall up in the living room and made it 3. That has proven to be a good choice. The 2nd bedroom was so small that DH's grandmother (whom we bought the house from) had used it only for a dressing room and NOW it's our Office. I did raise 2 children in this house and my oldest, my son, had the "dressing" room for his room. He did complain when he was a teenager but I always told him I wouldn't give him more space to keep dirty cause he never picked anything up....lol.
I'm just so glad there are others out there that LOVE their small homes. I think this forum is a real blessing and we'll all have so much fun sharing photos and ideas.

Marilyn in NM

Welcome! I used to live in Takoma Park, MD (on line of DC/MD). Loved it there!

Welcome, Rachel ;o) I had to laugh when I read...
"That's how I feel when I see a house with a dining room! WOW - a dining room."...I have dining room envy, too!
Our home is under 1500 sq. ft. and 'layout-challenged'. But we do love it, quirks and all. We have 3 bedrooms, living room, 2 full baths, and an eat-in kitchen (sigh). We've totally renovated it over the course of 10 years, and we ended up reconfiguring much of the space. It's worked out very well and suits us just fine! DS is out of the house, so it's just DH, me, our Pug, Tootie, and our two cats, Bitsy and Bundles. We live in Dutchess County, NY, on 7 idyllic acres (well...sometimes it's idyllic, other times overgrown!)

bzyathome ~ "Our house was actually a 2 bedroom but we put a wall up in the living room and made it 3"....OMG, we did the exact same thing! We had an 'L' shaped living room, which made it really easy. How funny is that?

Hi Rachel ~ Welcome to GW and welcome to Smaller Homes forum. This is a new forum only 2-3 weeks old and already it is becoming a neat little haven for all of us who live in smaller homes. DH and I live on 1/4 acre in a 50's cottage. It was only 500 sq.ft. when we moved in, but by opening the kitchen to the utility room and enclosing our tiny front porch it's now a little less than 700 sq.ft. There is only DH and myself and we are decluttering as we are a couple of packrats. I do have a tiny (6'x8') prefab shed that is my garden shed/washhouse also. What was the tiny 6x8 front porch is now our little library plus my computer desk and chair are there. That emptied 3 bookcases and my desk and chair out of our living room. When I look at the living room before YIKES! We eat out of our laps in the living room, something we've done for years and years. DH doesn't even like sitting at a table anymore. We are really starting to love our little compound after living here for 34 years. It has changed over the years to be our little Plum Cottage and we are thankful for it.

This forum is the place to get ideas and inspiration on ways to organize, make space work and decorate our little homes.

FlowerLady

Hi Rachel! I used to live on MD's Eastern Shore (for 12 years)..been in VA now for 7. I've just been a lurker. I'm glad they started a new small house forum! We live in a small house too! It's only 1395 sq ft. It's a 1960's ranch that we totally remodeled...kept the old bones, just updated and MAJORLY fixed it. It used to be a biker pad, there was a shootout, someone died in the hallway. I dug 7 or 8 bullets out of the wall before deciding to just sheetrock it alreay. Okay, okay, yuppers it was DUMP. But it looks great now! As a matter of fact we did so much the mortgage company redated the house to 2005. *LOL*
I like living in a small house. I like it so much we are going to build or rebuild another small house. I don't know about you guys but when I read the building forum I am just floored at the mc.mansions some of the posters are building! They are beautiful, simply stunning but I don't want to clean it & I certainly don't want to pay for it! I'm cheap, cheap, cheap!! I say that proudly, thank you! hehehe We could pay for a huge brick stunner, our realtor keeps pushing but I think there would be hardly anything more comforting in this world then to be mortgage free within 5 years. Heck, with small houses you can always add on right! Plus as Flowerlady suggested, the decluttering, gosh, stuff I never thought I could live without I found out I really, really could do it!! (and boy did both Hubby & I have JUNK when we married, whew!!)
Flowerlady, I love the name Plum Cottage! Too Cute!! Ours is named Leaning Pines (it's a hurricane thing).
You guys under 1k sq feet. More power to you!! I think I could do it, I found some way cool house plans too!!! But Hubby would go nuts. We do have 5 cats & 2 dogs plus one 6 year old (also have a 21 year old who still live in MD).
Okay, I'm done rambling.:)
Cheers everyone!

Hi Rachel! it is nice to *meet* you. :)

Your home sounds very charming---I loved what you said about your home in your post, and I feel much like you do about mine.

Work is very busy this week, but I am hoping to have a bit more time to catch up this weekend. I just wanted to say hello :)

Andrea

Thanks for saying Howdy back!

weed30 - That's what family's for right? I'm actually laughing now.

judithva - It's just me and the 2 cats here too. Enough for the 3 of us.

bzyathome - I'm guessing a chiweenie is a chihauha and a daschund ... whatever it is, it must be 110% personality. As for the screened porch, it was almost required. I was completely trapped in the house during the summer due to those tiger mosquitos and their ability to hone in on me. Having it built really enlarged my space for me. I don't mind being trapped during winter but all summer and fall was too much.

Hi sunrochy. I love Takoma Park too. Wish I could afford it!

mrsmarv - 7 idyllic acres is amazing. That's privacy. I'm not that good with keeping up just 1/16th of an acre!

flowerlady6 - Your house sounds charming. I too am a packrat and don't know where to begin. Okay, okay I know where to begin ---- just don't feel like it. pout.

kimberlyinva - Totally agree with you. Even if I had tons of money to buy a more expensive house, I wouldn't go BIG. I'd want a house with medium rooms, not too many of them, and details like plaster walls and arches and original wood trim. That's what moves me. Not those 3000 sf mansions. They're beautiful on some level, but don't feel homey to me. What everyone here is describing feels more cozy and "real".

Hi southernheart. Nice to meet you too.

Everyone. Thanks for responding. I'm new to posts, and never know whether to expect responses or what.

Rachel ~ It is 'so hard' to get rid of things! We still have a long way to go to be really 'decluttered' but it's an ongoing project that happens little by little.

Kimberly ~ What a change your home has gone through, and I haven't even seen any pictures yet. From biker pad to a home filled with love, happiness, family and critters. We started calling our home Plum Cottage a couple of years ago
after we painted it. The guy who had mixed up our paint called it part of our last name and the word plum, so Plum Cottage it is. I can certainly understand Leaning Pines due to hurricanes. We had one come down last year during Wilma right into our 8'x10' shed. After DH cut the whole top of tree off trunk, the trunk rose out of the shed. We now have a leaning pine trunk as a reminder. We may cut it down the rest of the way once we get our chain saw back from the repair shop. I like your name too, just not the reason for naming your place that. FL lost a lot trees in the last two years, we lost three pines and our beautiful melaleuca is only a fraction of what it used to be.

I used to be embarrassed about living in such a small place, especially in the well-to-do county that we live in but all that changed a few years ago when I realized what we have is a little jewel. I had picked up Mary Emmerling's book of American Cottages and it changed my whole attitude. I am thankful for our little place, no mortgage, cheap to heat and cool. Since then, I've grown to really love our little place and we are working at making it our haven from the crazy world that we live in.

Here is an excerpt from the book 'Simple Abundance ~ A Daybook of Comfort and Joy' by Sarah Ban Breathnach.

"While money certainly helps us express ourselves through our surroundings, creating a warm, inviting home that reflects our own personality doesn't have to begin by hiring a decorator or pulling out our credit cards or checkbook.

Today, no matter where or how you live, look upon your home through the eyes of Love. Walk around the rooms and offer thanks for the walls and the roof that safely enclose you and yours. Pause for a moment to consider all the women who have lost their homes through death, divorce, debt or disaster. Be grateful for the home you have, knowing that, at this moment, all you have is all you truly need."

That's it for now from Plum Cottage.

FlowerLady

I HAVE a dining room, but I envy those of you with two bathrooms!

I live in Maryland, too, just outside of Baltimore.

Welcome, Rachel! "bachelorette hog heaven!" I love it! Happily married here but there are days when I could go for a bachelorette pad. : ) I had a really cool one when I was in my mid-twenties - a 1000 s.f. spanish bungalow with lots of arched doorways and niches in Monterey Park, CA. It would probably sell for around a million $ now. Yikes!

Did you notice we have a conversations forum, as well? Check it out when you get a chance.

Diana

Rachel, you have a castle compaired to my batchelorette days! I had a teensy one room bedsit apartment. At least I could afford to live with out a roommate!!

I'm spoiled I have 2 bathrooms AND a dining room!!

GGG