Diet-on living space, possessions

[Kiwi Stoker]

I have gone from a 3 bedroom, 2 bath and double garage terraced townhouse to----

one room! AHHHHHH

DH and I are living in one bedroom of his grandmas apartment. Of course there's a seperate bathroom and our bikes are stored in another room. All my stuff is in another country but boy do I miss having my own kitchen, longue, people over for dinner, not being trapped in this room for quite a bit of the day. Grandma is the kind of person who is territorial, she doesn't go back into her room to rest during the day but moves from the dining room to the living room sleeping, watching TV etc all day and it is really her space. It's almost two years living like this for DH's career. I wanna go home so bad.

However it isn't as bad as the apartment I saw on a BBC doco about being poor in Japan. Imagine a small room, no windows except in the door, kitchen and washing machine at the entrance, small bathroom and a hanging rail for clothes over the double bed. The couple that lived there were so cramped, but there was no way they could afford to move.

[lph]

We live quite comfortably in an apartment (house? row of small houses attached by the side walls) of about 550 sq ft, two adults and our 13 yr. old, and if we didn't have kids or if I were single it would be no problem to live in a smaller space. But, and that's a big but! we have a small garden front and back, a veranda that opens directly from our living room, and a terrace that opens from the kitchen, that give extra living space in summer and storage space for our two kayaks. Plus an outdoor shed with room for bikes and skis, and a crawl attic for all the rest of our stuff.

I don't mind living compactly, but as long as we have such gear-craving hobbies we use all the storage space we can get.

[tulip]

I live and work in my 892 Sf house. I knocked out one wall andput in a new kitchen with more cabinet space than I can fill. It's a small kitchen, but plenty of storage. One bedroom is my office. I work there, live in the open kitchen-living area, an sleep in the other bedroom. I don't have alot of stuff. That makes all the difference.

[Becky]

DH and I live in a ~1200 square foot house, and it's just about perfect for our needs. We're fortunate to have a usable basement and a garage, so bike/ski/tool storage is manageable. We'd be in trouble otherwise

I wouldn't mind a slightly bigger kitchen and a second bathroom, but these are wants, not needs. (I dream of redoing the kitchen so that I can fit a dishwasher in, though!)