You guys, this 86 square foot apartment in Paris is pretty darn cool. I’m not saying I’d want to live there (where would I put my piano???), but it’s still delightful to look at.
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Know how I’m sure we own the right amount of dishes?
At the end of the day, the cabinet almost always looks like this:
(I think the right amount stuff= what you can you regularly use.)
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It’s hard to do math when you have a library book at the ready.
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I made Swedish meatballs this week for the express purpose of photographing the recipe for a blog post. But it was cloudy and dark.
So I moved outside.
On a cloudy day, shooting indoors is nigh onto impossible, but outside, the lighting is workable.
When it’s not so dark outside, I take a lot of pictures on the floor in front of my sliding glass door. The cutting board makes a great background because I can move it wherever the light is good.
(This is from when I was making a not-from-a-box chocolate cake.)
My poor cutting board has a 95/5 ratio of serving as a backdrop vs. being used for chopping.
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Lastly, Food Waste Friday is up at Simply Being Mum today.
Have a lovely weekend, dear readers!
Diane C
Friday 7th of November 2014
I'm a sucker for small spaces, so I had to look. Amazingly, it's only 86sf, not 200sf. I'm positive because I watched it three times. (Hee!) Right now, I am living in the biggest house I've ever owned. We bought it specifically so my MIL and her pal, Al Z. Heimer could live with us safely. It's bigger than we need, but it is only three and a half blocks from DH's office. Sometimes, just knowing that he *could* and *would* come help if I asked him to is what gets me through the day. So, how to reconcile the yearning for a small place with my present digs? Hospitality. I found a solid eleven-foot table at a consignment store. I can easily seat a dozen or more people around it. I have scoured estate sales for plates, glasses, flatware and serving ware far beyond our immediate family's needs. We have hosted meetings, dinners, parties and even a memorial service in the past year. We will continue to do so as long as we're here. I'm discovering that I love having my home be a gathering place. Every time we open our home to others, we feel like we are both giving and receiving a gift. So, I will put my tiny house dreams on hold, enjoy living "large", and sharing it for as long as we're here. Thanks for triggering a few moments of introspection.
Kristen
Friday 7th of November 2014
I don't know where my brain was this morning. I did know it was 86 feet, and why I typed 200 is beyond me! I fixed it. ;)
Denise Ellen Pedroza
Friday 7th of November 2014
My first thought about the little apartment was 7 flights of stairs!! I imagine the bed is where you spend most of your time if you aren't working at the table or the sink or the bathroom. And, as a person who lives in a (fairly large 1k sq ft.) apartment, we still do lots of our getting together with guests at parks and restaurants. It's not ideal, my sister, she of the large family (6) and large home to match (2.5k sq ft) can host us in AZ, but we can't host her family here in CA. So, we mostly go to her house, she bares all of the hosting cost, and we bare are of the traveling costs. In an ideal world I'd have an expandable house (and an expandable car for that matter!) but I guess that's what hotel rooms for.
Kristen
Friday 7th of November 2014
Ah, the CA climate is probably quite conducive to outdoor gatherings!
Carrie Willard
Friday 7th of November 2014
The 7 flights of stairs are why French women eat baguette and chocolate and stay thin :-) I love the apartment, 86 sq ft
Emily @ Simple Cheap Mom
Friday 7th of November 2014
I loved the shot from inside your cabinet. We have everything we use on a daily basis and the rest of the cupboards are full of... stuff we probably don't need! We've donated and gifted a lot of stuff already this year, but I still feel like we're busting at the seams a bit.
WilliamB
Friday 7th of November 2014
I definitely have more fancy glasses than I need, but it's hard to motivate to get rid of them when I have enough space for them.
Laura Vanderkam
Friday 7th of November 2014
What, you don't actually work with your raw ground beef out on the deck? That's just for lighting? :)
Kristen
Friday 7th of November 2014
It WOULD be super handy to have a stove/oven outside, because the lighting by my stove is horrendous. ;)
Lori
Friday 7th of November 2014
Both the video and the cabinet picture make me think about the issue of hospitality and minimalism. I watched a documentary about tiny houses, and to some extent it really appeals to me, and I think maybe that would be fun when we get old and retire. But then I think, you know, I'd really like to be able to have my kids and grandkids over sometimes, and there's really no way that could happen in a really tiny house. The apartment made me think the same thing. You could probably never have anybody over. I mean, we definitely overestimate how much we need to entertain people who come over--we don't need to treat every visitor to a five-course meal and a perfectly-decorated home--but they'd probably like a place to sit. ;)
My question with plates is, what do you do if you have more people over than you have plates? Use paper? Borrow?
Kristen
Friday 7th of November 2014
Yeah, that's a large strike against small houses in my opinion. I do want to be able to have people visit me at my house. If you lived in a super temperate locale, you could count on getting together outdoors, but in a lot of the world, you really need to have an indoor space to hang with friends.