35 Ways To Live Small

Despite the prevailing trends, you don’t actually need a 10,000-square-foot house to live well. Or a bathroom the size of Montana. Or a closet that could hold the fancy-dress department at Saks. The truth is, you can probably fit everything you need into a small house or condo, if you remember a few simple rules: Buy sparingly. Find furniture that does double duty. And look on the upside, like Queen Village resident Denise Fike, who with her husband raised two sons and a Great Dane in her 1,300-square-foot trinity. “I can redecorate every few years without it costing an arm and leg,” Fike says. “My friends in big houses certainly can’t do that.” Of course, the key to living small is in the planning. Here are dozens of tips to get you started.

Plan, plan, plan. “Think of your home like the interior of a ship,” says Cara Carroccia, a Center City architect who specializes in small spaces. “It’s square inches that matter, not square feet, so you need items that do two or three things at a time — like a coffee table that stores books” (Cara Carroccia Architects, 406 South Camac Street, 215-790-1927). To design it yourself, start with a workbook like The Space Planner by Meg Mateo Ilasco, with grids of every possible room and more than 300 movable stickers of appliances and furnishings, so you can try different combinations ($19.95 at AIA Bookstore, 117 South 17th Street, 215-569-3188, aiabookstore.com).

Downsize. “Having less is one way to fit everything into a small space,” says Susan Sabo, of West Chester’s Organizers, Inc. (207 North Matlack Street, West Chester, 610-738-9220, organizersinc.com). “Focus on things that you really delight in owning and using.” The Salvation Army will send a truck for your old furniture (call 800-95-TRUCK for pickup), and several area Goodwill Industries locations will pass on old computers to those in need (goodwill.org for the nearest store). Both donations are tax-deductible. Take your old clothes to your local church or Philly AIDS Thrift, which donates proceeds to the AIDS Fund, a local charity (514 Bainbridge Street, 215-922-3186).

Forget about rescuing a greyhound. Instead, adopt a parrot, or start a small aquarium. Find your perfect finned friend at Levittown’s The Hidden Reef, with its 6,000 square feet of fish (4501 New Falls Road, 215-269-4930, thehiddenreef.com), or Mele’s Pet Shop in Springfield, where you can also pick up a kindly frog for your tank (428 Baltimore Pike, 610-543-5660). For a variety of birds, try Bird Paradise in Burlington (551 Route 130 South, Burlington, 609-747-7777, birdparadise.biz).