1 Family in a 1 Bedroom House: Bedroom

Welcome to the first post in my 1 Family in a 1 Bedroom House series! To begin, I thought the best place to start would be our bedroom.

When we decided to move into this house we started looking for creative storage/bed combo ideas. We found great toddler loft beds, under bed storage, and platform twin beds, but nothing that really would work for the space we were working with. We really needed to be able to combine everything together we possibly could. Cameron worked at a furniture store (and got a great employee discount), and they had a supplier that would do custom designs, so we took advantage of that. 

Now, while looking for ideas on how to make this house work we found posts with storage solutions, only to find they were solutions only if you had a fat wallet. That was frustrating. And now I feel like I'm kinda doing the same thing here at first, but don't get out your throwing tomatoes yet! If we were braver DIYers/furniture customizers, and had a bigger area to craigslist/thrift/yard sale from we could have probably done this much cheaper by doing it ourselves. But we didn't trust ourselves, so we went the just-pay-for-it route. We were able to raise the $900 needed for this with a combined moving sale with did with Em and Chip, and we still think it was worth the money, but we realize that price tag definitely doesn't put this in the cheap DIY options. Don't throw tomatoes at me! I don't show this to you all to say "Neener! Neener! Look what we have!" I show this to you because maybe it'll give someone an idea for what they could do if they are in a space bind. 

The Bed finally arrived last week and it has made a world of difference in our house; I feel like it makes this house doable. Before this we had the mattresses on the floor, ours next to Darrow's, an open white plastic shelf for our clothes, it was always a mess, none of us had our own space, and it wasn't working. I was ready to move somewhere else even if it meant higher rent. Now, this feels like we can make this work for a long time.

The pieces all assemble into the one combination of our queen bed, Darrow's toddler bed, 1 dresser, 2 shelves, and 1 cabinet. But for someday when we aren't all in one bedroom they can be disassembled into a dresser, a large shelf, a small shelf, and a cupboard (and one piece of plywood that the mattress actually sits on).

And because showing it to you is just easier than trying to explain, here's a walk-through video: 

So there it is! If you're interested in our "plans" and "design", you can find our layout with measurements here.

Well, that's our room! I've been waiting to decorate much until the bed was here, so now I get to start that journey! It looks pretty bare in there with only these three pictures on the wall:

Eventually I'd love to take advantage of the vertical space we have on the wall at the foot of the bed, and maybe over the closet, but for now our system works. I love having the laundry "station" there at the foot of the bed. It's easy to fold the clothes and be able to immediately put them in drawers if I turn the left and hang them up if I turn to the right.  

The white bins for my fabric in the closet are from Ikea, but if you don't have one in the area there are some similar options on Amazon* with the Suncast Recycle Bin Kit or the 24-Quart Stackable Bins with Hinged Lids.

And in case you were wondering...the shoes have their own built in shelves on either side of the closet...it's perfect!

For my curtains, I had one large full length white linen panel with tabs on top. I cut it in half length wise, put a hem on it, added tabs to the bottom half, and created 2 curtains for these weird sized windows. Later, I definitely want something a little prettier, but for now this was a cheap and easy option!

*Marquette Mower is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. This post contains affiliate links.