They say you don’t really know someone until you’ve taken a trip together. I say the true test of the patience and kindness in a relationship occurs while holding up a heavy shelving unit and trying to affix it to a seemingly stud-less wall. I know, because it's happened to me. That day, I needed both an actual and an emotional anchor.  

Pieces that can pull double duty are always welcome in small homes. These 10 ottomans and benches (plus a trunk thrown in the mix) open up to offer storage for books, blankets, shoes — you name it.

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Name:

Shari

Location:

Celeste, TX

Square Feet:

218

Division:

Teeny-Tiny

What I Love About My Small Home:

It keeps me very organized and always asking the question, "Do I REALLY need this?"

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Name:

Sebastian

Location:

Munich Germany

Square Feet:

505

Division:

International

What I Love About My Small Home:

My apartment fits perfectly to my needs. The layout with the combined living-dining-working-sleeping-room gives a huge flexibility for arranging and designing the apartment. And I love the mountain view from my 6th floor and the location inside the city with very green surroundings.

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Name:

Michael

Location:

Los Angeles, CA

Square Feet:

900

Division:

Small

What I Love About My Small Home:

I'm an artist, designer, and writer, as you can probably guess from my floor plan, and my place is the perfect cocoon for being creative. I used to live in a smaller unit in the building, and decorated it pretty darn nice. So when the tenants in this unit moved out (they had it decorated in "squalor chic"), it was easy to convince my awesome landlord to upgrade the floors, the ceiling fixtures, the window treatments... and let me pick them out! If it's not a lot of square footage, it doesn't take a big investment from her to make a huge return in the future, when she rents it out after I leave. The small space also forces me to curate (overused word of the decade) really carefully, and make smart choices about what I bring into it.

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Name:

Tara

Location:

Calgary, Alberta Canada

Square Feet:

700

Division:

International

What I Love About My Small Home:

That it's all mine and I can decorate it however I want! And that it's filled with things that are special to me - my nephew's artwork, a patchwork quilt made for me by a family friend, the rocking chair my mother bought when I was born.

Location: Charlotte, NC

Having never attended a Korean 1st birthday (Dol), I was shocked to find out how many people would be invited to this celebration. I would compare the guest list to that of a wedding instead of just a few close friends and family, as most Americans would celebrate. With the amount of people that were to attend, we had to be a little creative and stretch every dollar so we wouldn't bust our budget. 

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Name:

Hannah

Location:

Seattle, WA

Square Feet:

350

Division:

Teeny-Tiny

What I Love About My Small Home:

I love that my home is a personal reflection of who I am, where I've been and how far I have come from as a person. It is my tiny sanctuary where I can be surrounded by my favorite colors, textures and collections of silk screened prints and urban vinyl toys I have collected over the years through my travels across the US and Japan. I don't like to own a lot of 'stuff,' but each item displayed in my tiny home holds sentimental value and is a documentation of a life event. Coming home to me is like walking into by own brain, uncluttered yet colorful - a place I can recollect my thoughts and escape from the hustle and bustle of the city. I also love being on the top floor, and with west facing windows I wake up to the sun glaring in my face with the nested birds on my roof chirping all around - it helps me forget the fact that I do live in the heart of downtown, across the street from a hospital.

Designers always have tricks up their sleeves to be pulled out in challenging situations. We've gathered some of the most helpful small space design tips and tricks to get all you can out of any size space. And these tips are not solely for the square-foot challenged — they can work in every home.

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Name:

Daniel

Location:

Tulsa, OK

Square Feet:

720

Division:

Little

What I Love About My Small Home:

Small?! We prefer the term square foot challenged. When we got our hands on this space, it was nothing more than an empty garage. It was tiny and so was our budget, which encouraged us to look in unconventional places for building materials. The maple flooring was rescued from a flood at a local school gym. The vintage orange fireplace once housed a family of mice in grandpa’s abandoned farmhouse. Our big red headboard hung for years as the “M” on an old WalMart before it took its rightful place above the bed. The lovingly restored rocking chair rocked my wife’s great grandma to sleep and has rocked every generation since. The carefully selected décor was either fabricated on our kitchen floor or found on a stroll through the flea market. Even the IKEA items come with laughable memories of how we felt like the Beverly Hillbillies as we drove home with boxes sticking out in every direction! We remember the love it took to build this house and can’t help but love it back!