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How To Love Living in a Little Home with a Big Family: A Fall Home Tour

I started creating a fall home tour video for Instagram and my initial impulse was to subtitle it with all the unfinished things I saw as I walked around our home.

See that paint color there? I’ll be painting that soon.

Or,

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These steps here are getting a facelift eventually.

Or,

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This kitchen is not my style and we’re saving up to redo it.

But the reality is, this is where we live right now. Sure, there are lots of projects I want to tackle. We’ll never be “done” fixing on our home. But if I’m always looking ahead and daydreaming about what’ll be, I am missing the current. We’ve done a ton of work to this house, and we’ve got a lot more we want to do. The following is a fall home tour of what our house looks like right now. No subtitles or sidenotes. It’s on the smaller side, and it forces us to live together.

We share bedrooms. But it creates sibling bonds. There’s limited storage. But it keeps us from hanging on to things we don’t love. The rooms are small. But it cuts down on the expense of upkeep.

We live in every single room of our house, which I think helps make a home feel cozy–the living part.

Our Cozy Fall Home Tour

(Video tour at the bottom of this page)

Fall brings us inside and my fingers start itching to organize, rearrange, fluff and tackle inside projects.

Want to see how a family of six gets cozy in their smaller-sized home? Here's a fall home tour with tips on smaller living and creating a cozy home.

This is when I start layering blankets and pulling out the board games. It’s so easy to create a cozy feel with blankets and pillows!

READ THIS: 104 Ways to Create a Cozy Home

In Minnesota, nature takes the fall decorating into its own hands. We usually grab a few heirloom pumpkins from Trader Joes and call it good! The days are usually warm enough to let the outdoor potted plants hang on for a while longer. I love Kimberly ferns because they’re so big and showy!

This year, I grabbed a preserved leaf wreath from Trader Joes and hung them with some wooden beads from Hobby Lobby.

With a smaller home, there’s not a lot of space for storing seasonal decor. I’m honestly super OK with that because I love to pull in some real pumpkins for decor instead.

I will usually layer some extra-cozy throws and warm up the pillows with some darker colors.

Fall Home Tour: Living Room Sources:

Living in a smaller home means every room is multi-functional. Our dining room is where we eat, do school, do art projects and more. Also, finding furniture that pulls double duty is a must! Our buffet holds extra tableware, napkins, and art supplies.

Dining Room Sources:

Main Floor Master Bedroom

There are larger bedrooms in our house, but we oped for the small, main floor bedroom so the kids could be on one floor. Recently, I did a board and batten project on the walls to add a bit of interest–and I love how it turned out!

To save space, we switched to one tall dresser for Jarrod and I slid my dresser into the closet. Paring down to a capsule wardrobe, I don’t need a ton of space for clothes.

Fall Home Tour in the Kitchen:

Our kitchen is small, and not very functional but there are things about it I totally love. The afternoon light, the windows that look onto the deck and backyard, and how cozy it feels.

Kitchen sources:

Fall Outdoors

We’ve been focusing a ton of time and energy into the backyard lately. This past summer, we actually got grass to grow in our shadier-than-anything backyard! We built a fence, a fire pit, a patio. There’s always more to do, but it looks so much better than before!

Shared Kids Rooms

I shared a room with my sister for most of my childhood and we have so many memories from those days–so many laughs! 🙂

The girls’ room is teeny. They have their beds bunked right now to save floor space. But we’re thinking about un-bunking them for ease of making the beds.

They share a large dresser and use the closet for the rest of their clothing. We try to keep their toys to a minimum because 1) they just don’t play with a ton of toys and 2) there’s not space for them 😉

READ THIS: Gift ideas for kids who have everything for non-toy gift ideas

Fall Home Tour Video

Thanks for coming on the home tour with me!

Basement

Our basement is hardworking too. Our laundry room, school room/office/guest room, and family room/2nd guest room are down here. There’s also a really helpful storage closet that holds a ton of stuff!

Over the summer, I did a quick update in the laundry room. It was a sad little room. The floor was painted concrete and we had water come in in the spring and caused it to peel. We painted the walls, hung some cabinets from IKEA and laid some peel-and-stick tiles on the floor that made a huge impact.

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Want to see how a family of six gets cozy in their smaller-sized home? Here's a fall home tour with tips on smaller living and creating a cozy home.

One Comment

  1. Thank you for the fall home tour! I loved it so much! Your home is beautiful and you have a talent for creating a welcoming space. I appreciated that you shared your thoughts about loving the space you are living in right now. Sometimes I feel myself getting caught up in what I’m hoping to change or how it will better when we do the next project and I miss being content with my home right now and I miss the cozy feeling that I could create for my family. I am encouraged and motivated to keep it all in perspective. Really, thank you!

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