Home Redesign: 4 Days & $0
What do you do when you have a 700 square foot home with 5 people living in it, a dog, and too much stuff?
🏠👩👨👦👧👦🐕‼️
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Not to mention the oh-so tiny closets.
That’s the question my friend had when she asked me to help her get a little more organized and find some extra space in her tiny historic home. (Before and After at the end!)
But this wasn’t just a “get organized” kind of project. We were facing three major hurdles in this challenge:
1. Her oldest son is a teenager now, and she wondered if we might be able to build a third bedroom so he could have his own space. 🛏️
2. We had one long weekend to do the project. 🗓️
3. Our budget was $0. 🤑
Ok then… Challenge accepted!
If you know me personally, you might already know that I’m a fan of taking on a good challenge. Yes, I had my doubts about exactly how much impact we could have given the limitations, but I know the gift of loving your home, and I wanted to share that gift with my friend and her family.
So we got to work. 💪
Before the weekend, we did a walkthrough where I identified three key problems in the home. These gave us a clear place to start.
The home wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. Yes, it was tiny, but also the storage it did have wasn’t pulling its weight. We needed to find a way to replace some of the nonfunctional storage with a more useful option. 🔨
The furniture wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. There was a massive dresser eating up almost half of one of the tiny bedrooms. The oversized sectional in the living room provided minimal seating at a maximum square footage cost. The large desk in the corner served as an accumulation point for decisions that didn’t want to make themselves. 🛋️
There was too much stuff. Most professional organizers start here, and for good reason. You have to actually fit in the space that you have. The challenge for my friend was that she lived in the home and had, as many people do, not noticed the severity of the accumulation creep. She had been coping by mastering the art of stacking bins and stowing stuff in tiny spaces. 📦
The truth is, these three issues are usually what’s behind any home that’s feeling overly cluttered and disorganized!
It’s not uncommon for a home’s closets and cabinets to be inefficient, and it’s not uncommon for people to cram old furniture into a new home, even when it doesn’t technically fit or do its job just right. It’s definitely not uncommon for a family of five with lots of hobbies to accumulate an abundance of stuff.
It’s not uncommon for people to completely underestimate the amount of drain clutter has on their time ⏱️, energy 🥱, attention 🧠, and money 💵.
Those drains are the real WHY behind this project. 🪫
It’s never just clutter, it’s overwhelm. It’s being surrounded by visual noise and unmade decisions, feeling the stress and conflict and guilt that thrives in that context, experiencing the physical and nervous system exhaustion from working around it, and knowing that your home doesn’t reflect the person you actually are.
It’s the fact that your cognitive, emotional, biological, and identity loads are so very heavy.
Your home should not feel heavy.
That weekend we got to work. I invited my friend to start by decluttering stuffed animals and toys 🧸, since they had a surprisingly large collection built up, and it would likely require the least bandwidth to make some serious headway. Then, she worked intentionally through her home one category at a time, which kept her from feeling too overwhelmed with the process.
This friend of mine is a powerhouse, which is why I was so very happy to help her. She does an incredible amount for her family and loved ones, her business, and the community. Once she realized how much her home was draining her, she took reclaiming her space extremely seriously. She worked nonstop and absolutely blew us all away with her success. 🎖️
We lost track of how many bags she donated or tossed. It was a LOT. With each bag gone, she picked up momentum and confidence. Once she realized she tended to hold onto things she didn’t actually love out of a sense of duty, she gave herself permission to take a picture of the item for her memories and then let it go to a new home. 📸
Permission is often the missing piece for progress.
Permission to change your mind.
Permission to let go.
Permission to prioritize your wellbeing.
Next came the furniture. I found her a replacement sofa on Facebook marketplace 🛋️, and her oversized sectional made its way to the dump. She moved the giant desk, which has sentimental value, to storage for when they eventually move to a larger house. Any pieces that didn’t serve their job perfectly were removed and replaced if needed. We located some free twin beds in perfect condition to upgrade the shared kids’ bedroom.
Then my partner and I got to work building. 👷♀️👷♂️
I had identified a key space in the kitchen where we could replace the mismatched cabinets with a custom set of shelves that would hold four times as much stuff (including the trash can, which had previously been a trip hazard). Designing solutions for the way a life is actually lived is my jam.
This seems like a good time to add that none of this would have worked without my partner carrying the heavy loads and doing the hard jobs. He was on board for this transformation, and his skills and strength certainly came in handy.
While I worked on the shelves, he got to work building out the tiny bedroom in the living room. We found a used door from a nearby remodel to complete the look.
One of the harder parts of the job was getting the oversized dresser out the door. It had originally arrived damaged, so my friend decided to take it to the store for a return. It was a whole ordeal requiring a trailer and extra help lifting, but the effort was worth it! The money she got from therefund covered the cost of supplies for the entire project!
I had some extra shelf brackets and wood I needed cleared out of my garage (win-win!) so we gave each kid a space on the wall to display their prized belongings. 🧸📚🪀 We helped my friend’s teen build a coat rack to tidy up the entryway, and he hung hooks in his new little bedroom.
Four days later, the project was done, and we were wiped.
To tell the truth, even I couldn’t have told you how much this shift would help.
I knew from the beginning that my most important jobs were to help my friend get past the overwhelm hump⛰️ so she could see to the other side, give her decision making tools 🛠️ for moving forward, and help her find a vision 👓 for her space.
Now she sees her home in a completely different light. She has gotten out of a reactive, overwhelmed place to a proactive, responsive place. Nothing is coming into the home without a clear purpose and place.
Her peace is worth protecting.
She didn’t just reclaim some space: she reclaimed all the time, energy, attention, and even money that was being wasted by living around all that stuff. She feels more patient during the wait for a bigger home, and she feels prepared for keeping up with her little home in the mean time. The guilt was replaced by pride, the dread was replaced by motivation, the frustration was replaced by gratitude. 🙏
After the project, my friend did end up spending some money on two new bed frames and a side table, but those purchases were informed and intentional. Now she’s looking at the cost of her storage unit and recognizing that downsizing there would be worthwhile. The benefits continue.
Design isn’t just about aesthetics. Organization isn’t just about stuff. These are meaningful tools for living a better life.
You deserve to be able to enjoy your home, no matter how imperfect it may be. You may find that having a home that recharges you instead of draining you spills over into other areas of your life, too.
As we come to a close today, I invite you to reflect on the ways your home might be making your loads heavier or lighter.
Does your home support the way you think and move?
Can you physically keep up with its demands?
Do you feel drained or restored by your home?
Does it genuinely feel good to be there?
Warmly,
Jeri
Before/After
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