Anyone who has kids knows that they tend to take up quite a bit of space. Sure, they may only be very small humans, but kids tend to come with a lot of stuff! Toys in every room, tons of clothes, fifty sets of bedding, and thousands of dirty dishes are just some of the signs that children might live in your house.
For most folks, it would be enough of a challenge to fit four kids and all their belongings into a normal house. But we don’t live in a normal house… we live in a 450 sqft yurt!
One kid is easy
When we first moved into our off-grid yurt in the spring of 2022, we had one two-year-old daughter. Pj had her little bed in the corner of our room, a few toys on the bottom shelves of our bookcase in the living room, and we managed to fit all of our family’s clothes into a small dresser and a portable hanging rack.
She was a naturally tidy child, and aside from occasional reminders to put her books away when she was done with them, we didn’t have to do a whole lot of picking up after her. Life was simple.
But as is the way with kids, she got older and developed more interests, and those interests came with crayons and coloring books, play dough, puzzles, and toys with little pieces that kept ending up under the couch.
Two’s company…
In 2023, we added a newborn to our tiny space.
Now anyone with a new baby will tell you that they come with a TON of stuff! Stacks of burp cloths, piles of onesies, and mountains of diapers. (seriously, they go through SO many diapers!) It was winter when we brought her home, so we had to keep a huge stash of blankets out for her too.
But overall, we still managed to fit both kids into the yurt pretty well. We built a loft for our bed, which freed up a whole bedroom for the kids. Pj upgraded to a twin-size bed on one side of the room, and Little A had a pack ‘n play on the other side. Pj’s toys went into bins under her bed, and Little A’s toys moved onto the bookshelf in the living room.
A friend gave us a bigger dresser that fit all of their clothes and diapers, and the top doubled as a changing table. Our folded clothes moved upstairs, and Cody build a nice little closet for all of the family’s hanging clothes, which had a shelf on top for all the extra blankets.
The four of us fit perfectly at our tiny table, and a tiny baby doesn’t make many extra dishes. Pj started potty training soon after Little A was born, and while the laundry load initially went up, the required diaper storage went drastically down.
But unfortunately babies don’t stay tiny forever. Little A learned how to crawl extra early (just before she turned six months!) and she quickly discovered that her new favorite activity was unloading the bookshelves. She was determined to eat anything that Pj was playing with, so we rearranged the living room and set up a play yard for “big kid toys” behind the couch.
Four’s a crowd!
Then in January of 2024, the twins started staying the night over here more often (read their story here), and sleeping bags just weren’t cutting it on our cold floor. Which meant they needed to figure out how to fit two more beds in that tiny bedroom!
Fortunately, Pj’s twin bed was already one half of a bunkbed set given to us by Cody’s folks, so we got the other half from Grammy and Papa and got those stacked up.
We didn’t have room for another set of twin-size bunks in there, but of course Cody is ever the handyman, so he built a crib-size loft bed! Little A currently still sleeps in the pack ‘n play underneath, but it’s designed to be able to add a lower bunk as soon as she’s old enough for a toddler bed.
That took care of the sleeping arrangements (for now at least), but as the older kids began spending more and more time over here, they wanted more of their own belongings to live here – particularly clothing, so they didn’t have to pack a bag every time they stay the night.
So now we have four kids worth of clothes in one dresser! We’ve had to work with them to make choices about what outfits they actually wear and are worth storing inside (we have extra/out of season clothes packed away), and the older two don’t have much in the way of dressy stuff over here, but we’ve made room for everyone to have a good assortment of play clothes available!
Storage & Space
Each kid also has a stackable bin for their drawing/crafting stuff, and I’ve had to find space to keep more boy-type toys here (hello legos and matchbox cars!) But as a rule we don’t allow random toys to accumulate in our house.
We have a few sets of quality toys that the kids love to play with, and they each have a “treasure bag”, And Grandma still has all the rest of the twins’ belongings next door, so it’s easy enough for them to get fetch a different toy if they want to play with it over here – so long as they remember to take it back!
And while we’ve made playtime work alright inside our small space, there still isn’t a ton of available floorspace, especially if they each want to play with something different. The best solution to this has been to encourage them to play outside whenever possible, especially if the weather is nice. Sometimes it takes some persuading, but they usually have a lot of fun in the surrounding woods once they get over the initial boredom and figure out a game to play (usually involving sword fights lol).
But if they do all end up playing inside with different toys (like during rest time), we put one kid in the playpen, one kid on our bed upstairs, one kid in the bedroom, and Little A is usually in the living room where I can keep an eye of her. It’s tight, but we manage to give everyone their own little corner of space.
Beds are also considered personal space, and no one is allowed on someone else’s bed unless given direct permission by the owner of that bed. Pj in particular spends a lot of time playing with stuffed animals on her bed, or I often find her reading books all tucked in under her blankets.
In summary… it’s a tight squeeze!
But even with implementing creative storage solutions and carving out areas for personal space, we are all quickly feeling the walls of our little yurt squeezing tighter and tighter around us with each passing day.
The six of us barely fit at our table (trying to fit two chairs on each long side means they rub against each other), the entryway is overrun with shoes, and I find that I have a hard time keeping enough fresh food on hand in my tiny kitchen to feed this many mouths. I don’t have room to store food in bulk, so it ends up being a lot of trips to the grocery store!
Lately we’ve been hanging out at my folks’ house a lot more (especially in the crummy weather when we’re all stuck inside), but that makes it difficult for me to get my chores/projects done over here at the yurt. Not to mention, I just miss being home in my own space after a few days of being next door all the time!
Now more than ever I can’t wait to get started on our cabin build, but realistically we’re probably still at least two years out from moving in. If it’s sooner, I will be pleasantly surprised! But I’m not counting on it.
So for now, we’ll have to figure out more ways to work around the difficulties of tiny living with a big family, and practice being content with growing where we’ve been planted.
And as always, I’d love to hear any suggestions you might have for big-family-tiny-living hacks!
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