The Dirty Little Secret of Small Space Living

The Dirty Little Secret of Small Space Living

Maybe you’ve wondered, as you flipped through tours of impossibly uncluttered, impossibly small spaces on sites like ours: where is all the stuff? Do these people really not own anything? And if not, where does it all go? Of course, there are all kinds of different answers: extreme minimalism. Clever storage solutions. A little bit of cheating (aka mini storage). But there’s another solution that a lot of small space dwellers probably won’t admit to, one so simple, in fact, that you may be using it yourself without even thinking about it.
I was reminded of this when I posted my own small space manifesto earlier this year, about how happy and peaceful my little 260 square foot apartment made me feel. I got an indignant phone call from my mother, who wanted to know if I had admitted to the Apartment Therapy community that the reason my small space was so uncluttered and zen-y was that half of my stuff was still at my parent’s house.
Er.
So there you have it: my dirty secret, and, I suspect, a lot of other tiny apartment dwellers’ dirty secret as well — mom and dad’s place as storage facility. Since then, at my mother’s urging, I’ve gotten rid of a lot of the things taking up space at her house, but my childhood bedroom (nearly the size of the apartment I live in now!) is still full of sentimental things I don’t need close but can’t bear to part with, and other less sentimental things that I might need someday and can pick up (or have shipped) if I need to.
The takeaway? Sometimes perfect house tours don’t tell the whole story, and sometimes even the most extreme minimalists need a little help. Is this something that you do? If so, it might not hurt to go down for the weekend and do a little sorting — or just call mom and dad and give them a hearty thank you.