Our little apartment

One thing we do, which saves us hundreds a month, and is probably the single biggest money saver we employ, is living small. Two bedroom apartments in our neighborhood, or anywhere near it, average over 2000 a month in rent. Instead, our family of 3 lives in a 600 sq ft one bedroom apartment. The rent is $1220 a month, which includes all utilities except cable/internet. We can walk almost everywhere and live a 10 minute walk from the Light Rail and the bus tunnel, so we don't own a car. The bedroom and living room are each 11 feet by 14 feet, and Winter's room is in the 19 ft by 4 ft walk in closet.

The living room and dining room as viewed from the bedroom

Better view of the dining room area

This is the right half of our bedroom. It's divided with a wardrobe and a dresser (the cats like sleeping on the dresser, and hanging out on the "cat terraces") on one side...

...and a shelf on the other side. The left side has a work table for painting and crafts, and on the opposite wall (not shown) is the computer desk.

This is a view of the living room from standing in front of the window. The bathroom and front door are in the alcove to the left. The large door in the center is one of the entrances to Winter's "closet". The other is in the bedroom between the work table and desk.

The kitchen. It actually has a lot of cabinet space, which we use to store many non-kitchen things as well.

Opening the door to Winter's room. The bench is actually an IKEA coffee table which I added a foam cushion to, and covered in fake fur. It has a storage ottoman underneath.

The area under the bed is used for her closet space mostly. She also has her dollhouse there.

She made her dollhouse out of boxes and other items from the recycle, popsicle sticks, old clothing and fabric scraps, and duct tape. She also sewed and crocheted all those little clothes.

Her desk by the window. This window leads to the fire escape. We also made use of the big doors by adding hanging storage and a hanging laundry hamper. In a room this small and narrow, you want to keep as much off the floor as you can.

This is the view from the other end by the desk. My dad built the loft for her. It cost me about $75 in materials.

Up in the loft. I found those wall pockets on clearance at Target for $6. The light can be turned on and off with a pull chain.

This is right by the door that leads to the living room. The shelf on the right side is a repurposed aquarium stand. We weren't using it, and wanted to hang onto it since it goes with our aquarium, but we had no place to store it. So we used $15 worth of pine ply to make a shelf out of it.

And last, but not least, here is a video tour of Winter's bedroom!