small bedroom tricks you've never tried!

We have a small bedroom.  And I know that most of my friends and family also have small bedrooms.  Very few of them are residing in their gigantic dream houses.  And knowing that there are many in similar houses with smallish bedrooms, my hope is that this helps you figure out how to live in a more organized, clutter-free space!

Our bedroom is always the last place that I work on!  It's a (very!) small bedroom and we don't spend much extra time in there.  Over the years, we figured out what wasn't working in this small room.  Here is one principle we have learned that changed the functionality of our room the most....

It's simple: If you have a small room, DON'T have too much furniture!  This is our bedroom in its entirety!  It's as streamlined as we could possibly get and it functions well!

Where is all of our stuff?  And how did we manage this?!  These 'small bedroom tips' of mine have been gleaned from my own errors and common mistakes of my clients.  Hope you can learn from them, too!

One thing that should probably go if you have a small bedroom are any extra chairs.  Do you have a little corner designated as a seating area in your small little room?!  More than likely, you aren't going to sit in a comfortable chair if it's crammed in the space.  Plus, if there's only one chair, you're less likely to sit in your room alone and if you are, you can lounge on the bed!  Get rid of that awkward 'just for looks' chair/seating area!

Do you have a bench for those pretty pillows to rest on while you sleep?  Is it taking too much room?  Out with it!  The pillows will be just fine on the floor for the night!

Do you have a dresser?  Is it always neat and organized?  Or does it collect piles of laundry, random jewelry, and even bills?  Ours did and I'm a neat freak!  But again, the only time I was in my room was to go back to sleep!  It wasn't the time that I was most likely to put laundry away or file bills!  So it continued to collect random items!  But how, you must wonder, do you do away with a dresser?

Figure out how to consolidate!  We have very small closets so getting rid of a dresser without figuring out another option was out of the question.  So we sold our dresser and bed for more than the amount that this new Ikea bed cost (woohoo!). This bed has two large storage drawers on each side.  The side closest to the headboard has most of our off-season clothes in it.  The other drawer to the foot of the bed has our everyday clothes.  We also sold our pretty-much-useless-side-tables and purchased cheap, small  Ikea dressers that we use for them instead.  (And even with how cheap they are, they work great!!) They hold our 'undergarments' and such!

Another practical tip: if you don't have room for it, don't have too much of it!  We have plenty of clothes but not tons and you know what?  It's much easier to manage!  Keep the clothes on hand that you actually wear and enjoy, but donate the ones that you haven't worn in awhile.  I had heard a tip on this before: In your closet, hang the hangers up backwards and every time you wear something from a hanger, turn it the right-side around.  (So after you wash an item, put the hanger on the rod the natural way.)  Whatever hangers are still backwards three months from now should be tossed out... special occasion clothes excluded because those aren't everyday clothes:)

So here is our room before we figured some of these things out!  (Not pictured, a chair in the corner, an unusually tidy dresser top and another dresser to the far left.)  It wasn't working for us!
Here are some current photos of our small bedroom functioning better than ever before:

Someday soon, I plan to put a rug down and jazz up the wall a bit. 

So remember the cheap side table/nightstands I mentioned? Check out this in-between of the bedroom: 

 Notice the cheap nightstands?  They are the RAST Pine Drawer Chests that will set you back $34 a piece from Ikea! Even their name (RAST!) is yuck! But we weren't going to leave them looking so sad.  I sanded and then stained them with an espresso color stain and ploy-ed them to be smoother.  I replaced the ugly-as-sin wood knobs and voila!  All better!

Before:

After:


Next to come: a new ceiling fan!  With our occasional, uncomfortable Michigan summers, we really would like to have a ceiling fan.  But if they're in our general price range, they are ugly.  So eventually, a new fan and can lights in the room is what we desire.  For now, we just don't look at it if we don't have to!  But here it is in all it's glory:

We've had this arrangement for a couple years now and it has been great!  I don't miss having a large dresser one bit and the bed storage functions so well! As do the side tables/dressers. At the time, we didn't have money in the budget for a headboard.  So our headboard for now is a barndoor from my dear uncle and aunt!




 The bedspread we have is Target Threshold (can't go wrong with that namebrand!) and the white down comforter was, of all places, Aldis!  It's soft and fluffy enough so it works for now!  Plus, we have four kids and I'm not about to have a $200 down-comforter on my bed!  Maybe someday though!



Love me some pillows!  Target, Home Goods, and Ikea!


The curtains are my favorite!!  Target does it again!

Some of my necklaces have made their way onto this mirror (whereas they usually laid on a dresser at the end of the day).  But it's fine with me! 
I found this mirror at a sale for $10 and painted it gray.  Score!


Ok, and do you want to see something that is very embarassing?  A way-before picture?  This is what our room was like when we first got married.

Ok, deep breath.... can hardly bring myself to share it!

Here it is!

Not my cup o' tea!  Not anymore, anyways!  It was a gloomy shade of gray and we didn't like anything about it. And yet, it took me so long to get around to it!  Since then, we've repainted the walls, the floors, and the window trim.  We don't have any original anything in this space!  Which is a very good thing!

What do you think?  Have you made these same errors?  I hope this post was helpful!  Get rid of what doesn't fit (regarding furniture and clothes!) or what doesn't get used! Paint if you're unhappy with the color of the room and buy what you like with the money you've made from what you've sold!  We almost always sell one item before replacing it with something else! It used to be for the sole fact that we couldn't afford not to but even now, it's just the minimalist way!

Comments