We discussed why we choose to keep things, and what purpose they serve if they are hidden away. We decided that things that we love and want to use or see should be out where we can display them or play with them, but we shouldn't have very many of those things.
Things that we love, but only want to keep to share with someone special someday (like future children) can be stored. But we need to be sure that the things we want to keep tell a special story that we want to share someday. If you've seen Inside Out, my daughter explained to me that she wanted to keep things that were related to her core memories.
Things we don't love should be let go.
Here are a few items that some of my kids let go of during this process. We took pictures so they could remember if they wanted to, but not have the big item.
We've been discussing how to make smaller spaces work for us without them feeling like smaller spaces. It has been important for us to analyze how we actually use the spaces we have now. People on HGTV or other home design shows are always looking for "entertaining spaces." They always seem to want a huge kitchen table to fit a large dinner party, a huge kitchen to hang out in while people are cooking, and a huge family room to relax in after eating.
We don't feel that we need or want all of these things for several reasons.
First, we are always a "large dinner party" even when it is just our family.
Second, when we do host gatherings, we nearly always feed the kids first and send them off to play so the adults can enjoy their meal. Or we send our kids to the outside picnic table for their meal for the same reason.
Third, we have noticed that, in our home, gatherings never seem to move to the family room seating area.
Just this summer we hosted an evening with 10 other people (so 20 people total in our house for several hours) and ZERO people sat down on our couches. We had people standing around our kitchen island, leaning on the banister to the basement stairs, sitting at the kitchen table, etc... nobody sat down on the couches.
In fact, at one point during the evening we wanted to gather everyone together so we could have a little program. Rather than move to the two large couches we gathered kitchen chairs and carried them to the basement!
After much discussion, it has been determined that we do not need a "family room" on the main floor. Instead, in our next home, we plan to use the family room space as a huge dining room, where we can have room for our everyday "large dinner parties." And we plan to create a small, cozy seating space in the traditional "dining nook" (which would never be big enough for our whole family anyway) so that those wishing to converse with the cooks can do so in comfort.
We then plan to have a couch/seating area in a basement family room (since those are SO common here in Utah, and I find it quite a waste to have a huge basement and not use it as part of your main living area). But a basement family room in a smaller house would also double as our play room, and possibly do triple duty as a guest bedroom.
Solution? Daybeds. Daybeds that look like sectionals. Daybeds with linen & toy storage.
I have big plans for my daybeds, but details of that will need to wait.
In the mean time, since we know we won't be using our current couches, and since we don't really like them anyway... we sold them.
They are gone.
The space they left is so open and freeing. We had so much space for Christmas morning. It was wonderful.
We really don't miss them at all.
We have also learned that our daybed couches need to be shorter, at least the backs of them, so they don't take up so much visual space.
It's so wonderful to be free to fill our home with things we LOVE and feel we actually NEED, and not what the design world tells us we should have. :)
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