r/SmallHome

TLDR; in seek of tips for living in a small space with a new baby.

Hi all! FTM here.

My husband and I live in a 989sqf house…3 bedrooms, 1 tiny bathroom. It was never meant to be a long term home (I bought it myself before I met him) but life and finances had other plans! We like our house and our neighborhood, and have added on outdoor space, but the lack of inside space has me nervous for when baby comes.

My primary concerns:

\- our closets are TINY. One of our bedrooms serves as our closet/dressing room w/ a vanity table right now, and that’s the one that needs to be a nursery. We bought a bed frame for our bedroom that has drawers underneath, and I plan to purge a lot of my clothes, but still worried about fitting all of our things somewhere else. Our bathroom is not an option for makeup/hair tools/etc - the vanity is too small.
\- additional context: the third bedroom is my office (I WFH) and our bedroom does not have enough room to have a dresser in it + a bassinet.

\- our kitchen is a galley kitchen, and all our cabinets are in use. I’m worried about how much space we’ll need for baby accessories there as well.

I guess I’m looking for tips; what is needed for baby, what could be cut? Anyone living in a small space with tips on how to declutter/organize ahead of a new baby? Our basement is unfinished but we are currently working on cleaning it up for storage purposes. I know people say you don’t need a nursery right away since baby will be sleeping in our room, but I still want a dresser for him with a changing pad & rocker and stuff, if I can.

Thanks in advance!

trying to get decent drinking water at home has made me realize that water filtration is basically just a giant game of spatial real estate. there is no perfect setup. every single option out there demands you sacrifice a specific part of your kitchen, and you just have to pick which area you hate losing the most.

i've been going in circles trying to fix the old-pipe, metallic taste of my tap water without losing my mind, and here is how the math breaks down:

First, you have pitchers (aka the fridge hog). This is the default starting point. Sure, it doesn't take up sink space, but it claims like a quarter of a fridge shelf as its permanent territory. If you have two people working from home drinking coffee and tea all day, the capacity is a joke. You're trapped in an endless loop of refilling it, waiting for the slow trickle, and then finding out its empty right when you need to make a brew. Plus, basic carbon filters don't do enough for really bad city water anyway.

Next is the faucet filter (the ergonomic nightmare). They are easy to screw on, but they turn your tap into a bulky mess. You end up smacking large pots and pans into the plastic filter housing every time you do dishes. The flow rate is agonizingly slow, the filters clog fast, and they barely make a dent in heavy metal or hard water taste.

Then there is under-sink RO (the cabinet destroyer). Obviously the gold standard for actual filtration. But let's be real about the space under the sink. Once you factor in the garbage disposal, the maze of PVC pipes, the drain lines, and the graveyard of cleaning spray bottles, trying to shove a 3-gallon pressurized tank and a massive filter manifold down there is a nightmare. And if you're renting on a strict lease, the landlord is absolutely not letting you drill a hole in the counter for a dedicated faucet.

Which brings us to countertop RO (the counter space tax). This is the weird middle ground i ended up researching. i eventually ended up looking at an Aigerri countertop RO unit because it avoids plumbing altogether, but it basically just trades cabinet space for counter space.

It gets you actual RO filtration and a UV light, which finally got rid of the nasty pool-water smell in my morning coffee, but the physical trade-off is real. the unit is about 16.1 inches tall when closed. It fits under standard 18-inch cabinets, but you need about 22 inches of clearance to actually flip the lid open. So i have to physically slide this 20-pound thing forward on the counter every single time i need to refill the 5L tank.

Then you have the wastewater. its got a 5:1 ratio. That is better than older RO systems that dump 4 gallons for every 1 gallon made, but you still have to manually pull the reservoir out and dump the heavy mineral reject water down the sink every couple of days. It is definitely not maintenance free.

i guess it really just comes down to picking your poison. i'm stuck sliding a heavy machine back and forth every morning just so my coffee doesn't taste like municipal pool chemicals.

Has anyone bought a small dinner table they absolutely love? Hit me with a link!

Under 50 inches 🙏

I keep seeing videos and photos of small homes with folding desks, storage beds, lift top coffee tables, and all these different space saving ideas. they always look great, but i wonder how practical they actually are once you have to use them every day. i could see some of them getting old pretty fast if you have to keep folding things up and putting them away all the time. if you actually own any of this kind of furniture, was it worth buying or do you wish you had just kept things simple?

I live in a small Ohio town and would love a "tiny" house. I've had two 2 bedroom mobile homes, which l've enjoyed, but they are even too big for my comfort. With my back problems, I sleep in a recliner every night and do very little cooking. I feel a studio home would be perfect for me, maybe 200-500 sq ft, only a separate room for a bathroom and a closet.

I would prefer more of a square shape than a rectangle. I would also prefer having it on my own lot/land but would consider going back in a mobile home park as funds are very limited. I've done some research online about different options. One thing l've seen is converting a shed to a house. Other things I've seen are prefab houses and, of course, the actual tiny houses. Does anyone have any thoughts or options you can share with me? Thanks

hi guys I’m wondering if it is better to have a small kitchen and seperate laundry when selling a house? or a larger kitchen with laundry included

house is in first home buyers price range so nothing fancy but functional and solid.

many thanks

My wife and I bought our first house a few months ago. It's a small place, 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Nothing fancy. No kids yet, so we turned one of the spare rooms into a home office. That part was easy

Now we're getting ambitious. We want to open things up. The living room, dining room, and kitchen are all separate right now. We'd like to knock down some walls and make one big open space. We also want to upgrade the laundry room a little and install giant sliding doors or maybe foldable doors that open to the backyard

We found a few home remodeling contractors online. We're ready to start getting quotes

But I have to admit, I'm a little nervous. I don't really know how complex a project like this is. Is it just knocking down a wall and putting in new floors? Or are we talking about moving plumbing, electrical, and dealing with structural beams? We only want to do this part of the house for now

Has anyone done something similar? How long did it take? What surprised you the most?

So I've been slowly working on my bedroom setup after downsizing to a smaller apartment. The room is about 11x12 feet, and I'm going for something clean and simple neutral tones, maybe warm whites or light oak finishes. Nothing too heavy or bulky.

I did order a bed frame through Bedworks a few weeks back and I'm happy with it so far, so at least that piece is settled. Now I'm trying to figure out everything around it.

My main questions are around scale and layout. With a queen bed in a room this size, is a full dresser even realistic or does it make the space feel cramped? And for nightstands do matching ones look better in a small room, or is mixing styles okay if the finishes are close?

I'm working with a modest budget so I want to get the decisions right before buying anything else.

i have been searching for a well made bed frame that has built in storage and feels solid not cheap or flimsy. i want something that will last for years and has a clean look that fits with the rest of my room.

i checked a local brand and really liked their custom timber storage beds. the build quality looked excellent with solid wood and smooth drawers that seemed practical without ruining the design.

has anyone bought a similar storage bed before and what features turned out to be the most useful in real life? any tips on what to look for in the construction so it stays strong over time?