Picturesque Home Magazine

Any time we mention having only one bathroom it spawns a flurry of interest in our Instagram DMs about how we manage that with our four-person family. Although we’re definitely not intrepid for having this setup in any way (so many families in the US & abroad live a wonderful life in a smaller home with one bathroom), and we also have an outdoor shower that we can use almost year-round (which definitely takes the pressure off of our single indoor bathroom), there’s a surprising amount of curiosity around the topic. So we’re here to break down why it has worked so well for our family and what we’ve done to make it extra efficient & easy to live with. Note: Details, sources, and before & after photos can be found in this bathroom tour post. I know some people will read this and think “I could NEVER live that way! Continue reading 4 People + 1 Bathroom: How & Why It Works For Us at Young House Love.

Raise your hand if you remember how much closet space our bedroom had when we moved in. The answer is zero. We used dressers for a while (and borrowed the tiny closet in our son’s room for our hanging stuff) and eventually added some floor-to-ceiling Ikea Pax wardrobes to our bedroom after about 10 months, which felt like we had arrived. A bedroom closet is so nice to have. And – big news! – as of writing this post, we’ve added another Ikea wardrobe to that wall… which means we have just as much storage in our current bedroom as we had in our last house’s FANCY WALK-IN CLOSET! I know. It’s downright mind-blowing. bed frame | nightstand | lamp | pink sheets | pillow | rug | ottoman | closet hardware For comparison, this is our last house’s walk-in closet (it was an 8′ x 6′ room). Continue reading How To Make An Ikea Pax Wardrobe Look Built-In (Plus A Bedroom Closet Update!) at Young House Love.

This is a meandering journey of a post, so make yourself comfortable. We mentioned in this side table post that we traded our queen-size bed for a bigger king-size one. The reason might seem obvious – because it’s bigger, duh! But we happily sailed through over 17 years together without ever wanting one. So why the sudden about-face last fall? Well, it essentially boiled down to: “the things we do for our dog” (more on that in a second). We also had to carefully plan how we’d squeeze the biggest bed we’ve ever owned into our smaller bedroom. And we had a big realization about larger furniture in a smaller house in the process (it’s probably not what you think!). Plus we had some fun with photoshop. bed frame | nightstands | lamps | pink sheets | pillow | rug | ottomans | curtains When we told one of our friends about the bed change, they were stunned – nay, SHOCKED – to hear we didn’t already have a king bed. Continue reading How (And Why!) We Fit A King-Size Bed Into Our Smaller Bedroom at Young House Love.

Last month’s arctic blast brought surprisingly frigid temperatures to Florida. We had three consecutive nights with temperatures in the low 20s – and an ultimate low of around 18 degrees! A lot of our outdoor plants aren’t built for that kind of freezing weather (in the 3 winters we’ve spent here we can remember one other low of about 32-degrees, but things went right back up to our more normal lows of around 45 degrees within a few hours). They’re calling our recent deep freeze a “once-in-a-century event” here in Florida. In other words: the ultimate test. So here are the steps we took to protect our plants, including a few things that worked better than others. It should be said that there are definitely bigger things to worry about during extreme cold weather events – like protecting people, pets, and pipes. But you’ll often see plants as the 4th “P” on that list of things to check on in freezing weather. Continue reading How We Protected Our Plants From Freezing Temperatures at Young House Love.