Two years ago, my husband and I rented a tiny apartment on the top floor of a gorgeous Haussman building in the Canal St. Martin neighborhood of Paris. There was a diminutive kitchen, a miniscule bathroom, and one other small room. Over the next two days, we'd eat here, sleep here, and work here. See pictures from our trip after the jump.
During the day, the little room was an office. I set up a makeshift desk that looked out upon Paris' beautiful apartment buildings. In the evening, the little room became an intimate spot to share our memories of the day over a cup of tea. And once bedtime rolled around, the double mattress, outfitted in soft, luxurious sheets came down from the wall where it had been leaning. And this little room became a bedroom.
Everything we needed was there: a pair of folding chairs, a little antique stool, a handful of vintage silverware, a few dishes, a mattress, and some lovely C.O. Bigelow hand soap. That's the nice thing about living with less, you can invest in some really good quality things, like linens and toiletries.
Do you have a room that you use many ways?
Small Cool Lessons: Discovering Small Space Design Ideas That Really Work
Marisa and Peter's Playfully Eclectic Home
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Z2 iPod Dock and Wi...
How To Cook Fluffy, Tasty Quinoa
How to Make Fresh Pasta Dough in the Food Processor
really two days?
love the idea of simple living in a foreign city but two days seems a bit short :)
is two days a typo? two months maybe, two weeks at best, but two days?
that being said, i do love posts about living simply.
If it's just two days, it's not "living simply", it's "a weekend in a different city". Really, those two days made it possible for you to "invest in some really good quality things, like linens"?
This post has a bit of a whiff of desperation, I'm afraid, and I don't like the feeling of being fooled into reading it.
Hello, sorry if I misled anyone with this post. Yes, it really was just two days. But someone, the person we rented from, really did live here full time, and it was his ability to live so simply that I was commending, not mine... The few apartments I've seen in Paris are all so tiny, and it's amazing how people can live in such little spaces. Just wanted to share that. Thanks for reading. Celeste
People really do live differently here in France. The concept of economy is taken seriously, and multi-use objects are the norm unless you're trying to live American(the new bourgeoisie's dream life.)
A maid's room with a chair, a desk and a roll up "futon/recliner" or cot, with your food outside the window in winter to keep it fresh, a hot plate or alcohol lamp, and the loo down the hall. Normal, until all the maid's rooms were retrofitted into "luxury studios" now sold for mega€€€€. This room is indeed a vestige of how it was, and how I lived, and my mother (during the war)lived in Paris as students.