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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.

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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!

We've all got friends like this (or maybe you're the friend). You go over to their house, and it's covered in pet hair and smells like a barn. There's no reason to blame the pets in this instance — there are certainly things that you can do, even living in a small space, that will keep you from being the "smelly house friend."

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Name:

Brendan & Jarrod

Location:

Melbourne Australia

Square Feet:

645

Division:

International

What I Love About My Small Home:

My apartment was built in the 1970s in Melbourne and has that retro 70s vibe going on (ya either love it or you don't!). One of the benefits of these older style apartments is that they are solid brick with very high ceilings, unlike many apartments built today. I love the light from the giant floor to ceiling windows and the crisp white walls, which can be used as a canvas for pretty much everything.

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Name:

Lasse

Location:

Copenhagen Denmark

Square Feet:

484

Division:

International

What I Love About My Small Home:

To me less can be more. I live in central Copenhagen close to bars, restaurants, the Meat Packing District, public transport, shopping, the harbour baths and all the other things Copenhagen has to offer. My home is my retreat from the city life - small but mine. I see the small home as a great opportunity to declutter your life and your mind, without missing anything.

You don't have to go all Julia Child and hang everything you own in your kitchen. But a simple pegboard — even just a small one that takes up the unused side wall of a cabinet — can go a long way towards organizing all those pots and pans, especially if your ceiling isn't suitable for an overhead pot rack.

The only time I've ever slept in a bunk bed was at summer camp, and I loved it. While most of us aren't sleeping away in cabins, everyone can use space-saving furniture. For kids, lofted and bunk beds are a great option.