Happy Chaos in a Small House

We live in a small house. A really small house--not like those featured in magazines about living in "tiny" spaces, which actually turn out to be 1200 or 2000 square feet. Ours is right around 650 square feet, with a less than perfect layout and lots of "unique" features.

Now, I know that for many, many people in the world, just four of us in a house this size would be considered the height of luxury, and I try to maintain a little perspective. When I get really annoyed at stepping over the litter box to make the bed or trying to shoehorn the clean laundry into over-flowing drawers, I can always make myself feel better by doing one of those carbon footprint calculators on-line and feeling smug about our reduced footprint (not that it's by choice, exactly, but I'll take credit anyway). Other times I pretend I'm in Japan, where we might be rolling up our beds and putting them away each morning.

Showing friends around the place for the first time (which can be done without even moving your feet if you stand right in the doorway between bedroom and dining area/hallway) is an interesting gauge of cultural perceptions. "How will you have kids if you live here?" one friend asked. Obviously that was a few years ago--if he were here now, he'd look around at the toys scattered here and there, the highchair tucked into the corner of the kitchen and the cute car stickers on the walls in Oliver's room and he'd have his answer--quite comfortably, at least for now. On the other hand, friends from Europe didn't blink an eye. This is a perfectly normal sized abode from their point of view.

On my more positive days, I appreciate the fact that having such a small place forces us to be very conscious in our consumption. We just don't have the room to accumulate too much stuff, and anything wishing to join our household has to meet a pretty stringent set of criteria. Do we love it? Truly need it? How much does it hurt when we stub our toes on it? Can it survive the attention of two small boys and two furry cats? What do we want to get rid of to make room for it? We also have a regular flow of bags and boxes to thrift stores and Friends of the Library book sales.

Living here successfully is like inhabiting a large 3-dimensional puzzle. All spaces have to do double or triple duty, and we do a lot of rearranging throughout the day. The litter box, for example, lives between the side of our bed and wall during the day. At night, because the cats drive us crazy with their scratching when we are trying to sleep, and because Alonso needs a clear path from our bed to Oliver's so he can soothe nightmares and bring drinks of water without tripping, the box goes in the kitchen. I start most mornings by sweeping the bedroom to get rid of yesterday's tracked litter (yuck), moving the box into the bedroom and then sweeping the kitchen to get rid of last night's tracked litter. Some people go for a run first thing, others make coffee--I carry dustpans and boxes of cat litter. Fortunately, Finn finds all of this very entertaining to watch.

The greatest challenge of our space is accommodating guests comfortably. I feel bad that they end up on the floor, where the first light of day and Oliver's pleas to get up and play make sleeping in impossible. Our one bathroom can only be reached by going through our bedroom. And meals are eaten perched around the house, cradling bowls of soup on our laps. I like to cook for those I love, and love eating together around a comfortable, beautiful table, but for now I'll have to be happy to gather around our living room rug instead. High on my list of projects for the backyard includes building a patio and investing in an outdoor table big enough to seat a crowd.

The true saving grace of our home is the view from the living room window. The sky is huge, and in the winter we can see across the wide laguna to the hills on the other side of Santa Rosa. We watch water levels rise with the falling rain, and the tall Lombardi poplars arc gracefully in the wind. When spring comes, green explodes over the trees: oak, walnut, apple, plum, each wrapped in a shimmering coat of leaves. Winter and summer alike, birds hold parties on the bare branches and lush crowns and red squirrels argue and race on the rooftops. Their calls drift in through the open windows and the house breathes out, big enough.