How We Make a 900 Sq Ft Home Work for a Family of Five

A look at how we make our 900 sq ft home work for a family of five, with practical small-home ideas for flexible spaces, storage, everyday clutter and making the most of the home you already have.

When we bought our little blue cottage, I was 21 years old with two kids (at the time) and absolutely no idea how much this little house would end up teaching me.

Our home is around 900 square feet. There are five of us living here, three growing kids, one bathroom, no spare bedroom, and not nearly enough closets for everything the internet would probably tell a family of five we’re supposed to own.

And no, I’ve never figured out some magical way to make 900 square feet feel like 2,000.

What I have figured out is how to stop asking our house to be something it isn’t.

Over the years, we’ve moved rooms around, changed their purposes, built storage where we needed it, gotten rid of things that weren’t earning the space they took up, and learned to use the space outside our four walls just as much as the space inside them.

Some seasons have worked beautifully. Some absolutely have not. And when something stops working for our family, we change it again.

Because I don’t think the goal of living in a small home is to become really good at squeezing more and more stuff into it.

The goal is to make the space you have support the life you’re actually living.

And after years of raising our family in this cottage, these are the things that have made the biggest difference for us.

We let our rooms change when our life changes.

One of the biggest things this house has taught me is that just because a room started as one thing doesn’t mean it has to stay that way forever.

Our house has changed right alongside our family.

One of the best examples is our old laundry room. As our kids got older, another bedroom became much more valuable to our family than an indoor laundry room. So we moved the laundry outside and started turning that space into a bedroom for our oldest daughter.

Did our house magically gain another room? Nope.

We just looked at the square footage we already had and asked whether it could work harder for the season we were in.

We’ve done versions of this all over our cottage. Spaces have changed purposes, furniture has moved, storage has been added, and rooms that worked perfectly for us a few years ago have been completely rethought because our life changed.

I think sometimes we get so caught up in what a room is supposed to be that we forget to ask what we actually need it to be.

Your house doesn’t have to work the way it worked five years ago.

It needs to work for the people living in it right now.

Things that can do more than one job earn their space.

You probably already know exactly which couch I’m about to talk about.

Our gingham couch turns into a bed, and people are always surprised when I share that.

We don’t have a spare bedroom—and honestly, even if we did have an extra room, I’m not sure dedicating an entire room to the occasional overnight guest would make sense for our family right now.

But a couch we use every single day that can also become a bed when we need one?

That earns its space.

The same idea shows up all over our house. Benches can give us seating and storage. Built-ins can make use of wall space without taking over a room. A kids’ room can be a bedroom, a place to play and a place to create.

That doesn’t mean everything we own has to transform into seven different things.

It just means that when space is limited, I’m always thinking about what something gives back to us in exchange for the room it takes up.

Sometimes the prettiest option is still the one I choose simply because I love it—and I think there’s room for that, too.

But when something can be beautiful and make our home work better? Even better.

We don’t store a bunch of stuff for our future selves.

This is one of those things that sounds so small until you start noticing how much space the “we might need this later”stuff actually takes up.

I shared recently that I don’t keep 15 different boxes of cereal in our house (a little exaggeration, I know)

Usually, I buy two.

If we eat them?

I can buy more cereal next Tuesday. 

I grocery shop weekly, so I don’t need my tiny kitchen to also function as a grocery store warehouse.

And I’ve started looking at a lot of things this way.

We don’t buy everything in bulk simply because buying in bulk is supposed to save money. I’m selective about which hand-me-downs I save for the next child instead of keeping every piece of clothing because someone might wear it one day. Before birthdays and Christmas, I go through toys and clothes instead of trying to figure out where we’re going to cram everything new.

Living in 900 square feet has made me really aware of the cost of storing something.

Not just the dollar amount—the space it costs us.

That doesn’t mean we don’t keep sentimental things or prepare for the future. We absolutely do.

I just don’t want our house packed full of things for a hypothetical future at the expense of having room to live comfortably today.

Everything needs somewhere to go.

I don’t mean everything needs to be perfectly organized in matching baskets with pretty labels.

Trust me.

I mean that the things we use regularly need somewhere they naturally belong.

Shoes go back into closets. Toys have homes. Everyday things need an obvious place to land.

Because in a small house, it doesn’t take very many homeless things before the entire house starts to feel cluttered.

I’ve also learned that when I’m constantly moving the same thing from the kitchen counter to the dining table to the bedroom and then back to the kitchen counter again, that’s usually telling me something.

Either it needs a home, or it doesn’t need to stay.

And sometimes the answer isn’t buying another organizer.

Sometimes we need a basket. Sometimes we need a hook. Sometimes we need to rethink a cabinet.

And sometimes we just need less stuff.

That’s also why I like going through the kids’ things before birthdays and holidays instead of waiting until we’re completely overwhelmed afterward.

I’m not trying to make our house empty.

I want it to feel lived in without constantly feeling overrun.

There is a difference.

We count the space outside our walls, too.

This might be one of my favorite things we’ve learned.

Our house may be 900 square feet, but our life doesn’t have to stop at the exterior walls.

Our porch, courtyard and backyard have become extensions of our home.

We eat pizza outside around the table. We’ve hosted people in the courtyard. The kids spend summer days in the stock tank pool. We sit on the porch. We garden. We play. We gather.

Those spaces have given our family room to spread out in ways our actual floor plan simply can’t.

And I think that’s especially important when you live in a smaller home.

Instead of only looking around inside and thinking, Where can I possibly find more room? I started looking at the property as a whole.

Could this little side yard become somewhere we actually use?

Could the courtyard become another place to eat?

Could the porch feel like another room?

Could the backyard give the kids the kind of space we don’t have indoors?

Not everyone has a big backyard—and you don’t need one for this idea to work.

It might be a tiny porch, a balcony, a patio or just enough room for two chairs and a little table.

Sometimes the square footage you’re looking for is already there. You just haven’t started living in it yet.

We stopped waiting for the bigger house.

This one matters more to me than all the others.

There have absolutely been moments when I’ve wished we had more room.

There probably always will be.

I’m not going to pretend that raising three growing kids in 900 square feet is always easy, or that I’ve somehow reached a point where I would never want a bigger house.

That’s never been the message.

The change for me was realizing that I didn’t want to spend years of our life waiting for the next house before I let myself fully love this one.

Our kids are growing up now.

We’re having family dinners now.

We’re inviting people over now.

We’re celebrating birthdays and decorating for Christmas and spending summer evenings outside and having friends pile onto our couch now.

This is our life.

And I don’t want our home to feel like a waiting room for a future version of it.

So if something isn’t working here, my first question isn’t always, How do we get more space?

It’s:

What could we do with the space we already have?

Sometimes the answer is moving a room.

Sometimes it’s getting rid of something.

Sometimes it’s choosing furniture differently.

Sometimes it’s taking life outside.

And sometimes it’s simply making what we already have a little more beautiful because I think that’s worth doing, too.

I’ve said this for a long time:

If I can’t do it small, how will I ever do it big?

I don’t want to wait for more square footage to become the person who opens her home, makes things beautiful, creates spaces for her family or actually enjoys the life happening inside of it.

I want to learn how to do those things here.

Making room for the life we already have

Somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t just finding random ways to make a small house work.

I had changed the way I looked at our home altogether.

Instead of constantly asking how we could get more room, I started asking how we could make room for the life we wanted to live here.

And that idea has become something I’ve been working on quietly behind the scenes for a long time.

It’s called Making Room.

And if you’ve ever looked around your own home and thought maybe everything would finally work if I just had a little more space—I made it with you in mind.

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