Switching the Dining Room and Couch Created More Space in This Rental
Brie and her husband bought this two-bedroom, 1040-square-foot apartment three years ago, after living in small San Francisco apartments for five years. “It was the perfect home for a young couple with no kids: uncluttered, full of sunlight from south-facing windows, and walkable to plenty of shops, restaurants, and cafes,” Brie explains. “I spent hours curating everything that came through our front door, searching for the perfect vintage everything on Facebook Marketplace. Our living room was full of benches displaying beautiful vignettes of all my favorite objects: brass candlesticks, books on art and design, and more plants than I could count.”
But then came a baby, and Brie explains that “stuff started piling up. One bedroom became an Amazon warehouse full of boxes to return. One by one, I started giving away plants. Friends would come over to meet our baby, and I’d send them home with a pothos or a pilea. I was so overwhelmed trying to keep that many plants alive while also keeping alive a brand-new human, and it seemed like everything was competing for space.”
“I felt really stuck. It felt like motherhood was asking me — forcing me — to give up everything I loved about my home, everything I had worked so hard to curate and collect. For me, transforming our home into a space for a family was the hardest piece about adjusting to parenthood,” Brie writes.
“One of my best friends visited when my son was five months old, and we had the idea to rearrange the living room by flipping the place of the couch and dining table to create more space. The transformation was magical, and really helped me get unstuck. Suddenly, I started to see creating space for a child as creating space for play. My previous living room started to feel so serious and staid, and my new home felt vibrant and full of life,” she admits.
“When I was a kid, art was always my favorite activity, and now my home is my canvas. Earth tones are my love language, and I love having a relationship with all of my belongings. You could point to any item in our home, and I could tell you when and where we bought it, how much it cost, and exactly how I felt in the moment when I found it,” Brie continues.
“I prefer to buy things once, and hope to keep them forever, although motherhood is definitely challenging that strategy. I’m learning to loosen up, to view my home as more of a revolving door, with objects coming in and out in different seasons.”
Thanks, Brie!
This tour’s responses and photos were edited for length/size and clarity.
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