Think Parisian apartment, not suburban McMansion. And remember that a smaller house means there is less to clean.

Keep the scale of the furniture appropriate to the scale of your house. As tempting as that huge sectional is, don't get it. A smaller sofa and some chairs will fit better. Furniture that is "lighter" will help, too. Skip the skirts on the sofa and chairs; being able to see the legs will add more visual light and space.

Quality over quantity. This goes for clothing, shoes, toys, kitchen tools and gadgets, etc.

Elfa. You can get a lot more usable storage out of a standard closet if you install Elfa. If you have a garage, get industrial-type shelving units and store as much as you can out there. Depending on the ceiling height, you might be able to do shelving across, too, or hang bicycles, etc.

Can you add more shelves to your kitchen cabinets? If they aren't fixed shelves, but adjustable, you can add more. Measure them and go to Home Depot or Lowes for new ones. Made a big difference in our "pantry" and other cabinets, and not terribly expensive.

Don't shop at Costco, unless you are splitting the goods with another family (or several). Who has the storage space for those quantities?

Underbed storage boxes. LOVE these!

Simplify other things. I've started keeping just one or two rolls of gender-neutral wrapping papers. Easier to swap out the ribbons for different looks for different occasions. Glossy white wrapping paper is really pretty, IMHO.

Apartmenttherapy.com is a great site for small space ideas and inspiration. My family of 3 lives in a 630 sq ft one-bedroom apartment (DS is 15 months) and we actually love our home right now. You can make your house work for you. You probably have a lot more stuff than you need or use.

We live in a 2 BR 1,100 sq ft apartment and had our first child while living there. What I have found is that we have gone through several iterations of arrangements of furniture, gradually adding pieces (and giving some away). Every piece we buy gives us more storage. Our coffee table now has storage drawers, for instance. We bought some great IKEA modular storage for the nursery. It helps that our apartment has great closets--no walk-ins, but just lots of them here and there. We've edited our stuff extensively, being honest about whether I'll ever be my pre-pregnancy size, whether we'll use certain things. We keep what has real meaning to us.

Since we don't have a basement or attic, we also have a storage unit for a few pieces of family furniture and baby things to save for our next child. One day we'll have a house and use these things--quite possibly a house the size of yours! This experience has really made me re-think how much house we'll really need--the thing is, keeping down clutter and maximizing space takes a fair amount of time and effort.

I lived in a 1,200ish square foot townhouse for years and it never felt too small, though I did long for a main-floor family room. It helped that the layout and all the rooms were functional, and that over the years I made the house look exactly how I wanted by painting, changing carpets, redoing the kitchen and baths and putting lots of thought into wall decor, curtains, etc. We moved last year into a slightly-bigger house (1,526SF) and I got my family room. You can make a big difference with area rugs, too, if you have hardwood floors. (I found 8x10 rugs at Overstock and Home Depot that are awesome.)

Screens are easy to replace - yes, look at pics on Houzz and see what others have done. Cute furniture, paint, moldings, a nice indoor/outdoor rug...

PP.. Thanks! that was really helpful! We dont have a second story though. We only have the first floor and the basement

I have a 1929 Dutch colonial about that size and love it! 2 adults, 2 kids under 10.

1. Keep clutter to a minimum! If it does not have a designated space, don't let it in the house.
2. Renovate what you can (plumbing, roof, etc) with the idea that space is at a premium and then
3. Educate yourself in decoration (wall and floor tiles, wainscot, paint color, wallpaper patterns, window dressing, etc).
4. Look for small, slender furniture, and multifunctional furniture with storage (think ottoman cube with storage inside, or plexiglass nesting tables to spread out if you have guests). I like to go to estate sales to get period furniture that goes with my house! Modern things are far too bulky.

Do not just walk into a store and buy on impulse. We took more than a year to renovate structurally with a contractor and think about the atmosphere and colors we wanted in our house. I spent hundreds of hours on the internet reading about these things, and bought a color book from Benjamin Moore.

PP is correct: we spent a year+ looking for this house and in the course of visiting many similar-sized houses developed ideas for ours.

We renovated extensively - gutted the ground floor to create a powder room and open kitchen, dining and sunroom. No wasted corridors and lots of light.
First floor has 2 bedrooms, 1 tiny bedroom and a bathroom.
Our dream is to create a real staircase to the attic (in the existing stairwell, no additional space needed) so that we can create an extra attic bedroom. The attic roof must be correctly insulated for this.
We cannot use our basement yet, because all the renovation materials are still stuck there. But there is a bathroom there (and laundry closet). We want to separate a storage area from a guest room area.

The only thing we cannot create is more closet space! Can only add built-ins or wardrobes.

Good luck!

I live in the same size house, a 1950s cape cod. The only thing that really bothers me about it is the lack of a front hall, but oh well. A couple things we do to make it look nice is to never let it get cluttered, and use all the space we've got. I also think in small spaces there isn't the room to have one space flow into another, because that tends to make it look chaotic - so use the dining room as a dining room, not a dining room/study/library. Of course it can be more functional to have cross purpose rooms, but they LOOK nicer and the place looks bigger if the rooms are single purpose. And for your screened porch...I'm jealous! Would love one. Just fix the screens, put one of those cheap outdoor rugs down, and have an extra place to sit and read or play. Or for this time of year, maybe a place for the huge train set or whatever doesn't fit inside well.

If I had a small screened in porch, I'd do something like this:

http://www.houzz.com/photos/268389/Screen-Porch-2--porch-los-angeles

I like the painted floor and ceiling, and the simple color scheme.

good advice guys! i left my computer to go tidy the kitchen and i moved some things around so that some space opened up and the kitchen is a bit more spacious/efficient!


also, how can i make the porch nicer? considering we no longer have seasons around here in the DMV it would be a nice outdoor space for some time to come.

TIA!

(Round of applause for no arguments on here... it seems like all my posts start a frenzy lol....I know its only a matter of time however before that changes because this is DCUM)

Two ideas. One is keep an eye on open houses and visit houses that are similar in size to your house. You may see things that would give you ideas on how to maximize the useful space in your house. The other is spend some time searching online, including sites like houzz.com, where people post pictures of renovations. There might be some ideas that would work for you.

I loved this article in the Post a while back (see link below), showing a very nice but tiny apartment. It's not a house, but might give you some ideas.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/skyla-freeman-living-well-in-425-square-feet/2012/10/23/3da9286e-0bfc-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_story.html

I have lived in many small spaces. One thing that helps is to have furniture that also functions as storage. So, instead of a console table that is just a table with open space between the legs, get one with shelves. Get nightstands that have storage, etc. Also, if you've got any money to put towards renovations, look into expanding kitchen cabinets up to the ceiling.

I live in one of those MoCo brick ramblers and it is fine (bought for $350k in 2003, HHI $92k). I'm a fan of the not-so-big-house.
http://www.notsobighouse.com/

You may find that if the space you have is nicely arranged and decorated that you don't need a 'twice as big' house.

Of course, this is America, so it is easier to put a 1000 sf bigbox addition on the back of the house or buy some 4500 sf McMansion.

before I was a DCUM addict, I actually pined for one of those "McMansions" until I found out that the general populace thinks they are tacky and [insert slew of other words like "tacky"]

But I'm sure it is brimming with charm. Surely you don't want to give up this charming house and move into one of those 5000+ sqft open concept McMansions.

I know I sound bratty already but my house is 1300 sq and i have no idea how to make it nicer. We have a screened in back porch (I dont even think you can call it that because the screens are falling to pieces). We have 4 small bedrooms and the dining room and living room are pretty much one room. There is a basement but it is small. One of the bedrooms is in the basement. I really would like to clean my back porch and put a hot tub, but that is nothing more than a hopeless dream. We have a HHI of 150K if that matters. I guess I am just getting burnt out from the size of this house and then I feel worse when I know that people live in one room homes with 4 kids in worse situations. Does anyone have any links to smaller homes that are decorated to look nice, or ways that they have made their smaller home pass for being bigger?