I am so excited to share with you the first small space featured here from Australia! Thank you to Bec and her family for opening their beautiful home to us! Your mentions of surfing, the beach, kookaburas and fairy wrens makes me want to jump on a plane and visit there (you know… when it is safe to do so….). A lovely mix of vintage, found objects and IKEA have made a warm and inviting space that feels just the right size (which is not an easy feat in 600sqft). I’ll leave you with Bec.

Here is Bec….

My name's Bec. I live on the stolen lands of the peoples of the Yugambeh language group, specifically at Jellurgal (now known as Burleigh Heads, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia). Before then I've spent time living in Meanjin (so called Brisbane), Nottingham, in the UK and Hong Kong (where I was born).

I am a designer, rock climber, avid reader and mum.

Me and my husband Tristan are co-directors of Relative Creative, a strategic design practice.

How big is your home and what is the layout ?

It's 58 metres squared which is about 624 sq ft. The layout has you walking in from the balcony, through french doors to the living room, then dining room, then kitchen. We always joke that our home tour is just standing in the middle and rotating to see each room.

Who lives there?

Me, Tristan (my husband) and Elke (our adventurous 4, nearly 5 year old). We also have a hive of native, stingless bees and get regular visits from the neighbourhood kookaburras, magpies, fairy wrens and bush turkeys. It's quite the animal sanctuary!

Tristan and Elke have Gamilaroi heritage (Gamilaroi Country lies about 4 - 5 hours west of where we live). Respecting and celebrating First Nations culture is important to us (ed. note: Love that you shared this. My husband Trevor and kids are Tahltan Nation from Northern British Columbia. We are always looking for ways to encourage and celebrate the culture too. Love to have that in common across the globe!).

Tristan is a surfer, which is just one of the reasons we live where we do and Elke's following in his footsteps. I'm still trying. I rock climb, which Elke also loves and Tristan has been joining us on our climbing adventures recently too.

Tell me about your choice to live small. Was it a conscious decision or did it just evolve?

Originally it just evolved. Tristan was renting the unit next door with a friend who ended up moving out. The lease was up on my share house in Brisbane (a riverside city an hour north) and even though it was still fairly early in our relationship it felt right to move in together. About 6 months after that the unit next door (which we live in now) came up for sale. Tristan had always been very specific about wanting to live and stay in Burleigh, specifically this particular pocket of it, and I had been following your blog for while, that combined with our desire to live with small environmental footprints and less stuff meant we couldn't not put an offer in. We were lucky to buy when we did because the market has gone crazy in the last six years.

When I got pregnant with Elke everyone wanted to know when we'd get somewhere bigger but it has been the perfect size for us so far. We've consciously adapted the unit over time to suit the different seasons we've moved through.

How would you describe your home style? ex) modern, minimal, bohemian, vintage?

Our style is a mix of modern and vintage, kind of mid-century modern which really suits the era of the unit (built 1968). It ends up looking like about 50% Ikea and 50% op shop (charity shop) or Gumtree. We tend to go with a mid-century modern vibe that suits our little beach 'shack'.

Is there a piece of furniture or accessory that you couldn't live without that makes living in your space easier?

Our bookshelf - books are super important to us and moving our books onto our wall shelves made our space feel heaps bigger.

Our kitchen - we actually only redid this at the start of last year (pre-COVID) and it's been such a good decision, the IKEA cabinetry has let us maximize our storage space (rotating corner cupboards, I love you). When we first moved in, the kitchen was a space taking chunky 90s blue kitchen so we ripped it out but just replaced it with open-faced, garage storage type racking/shelves. Being able to shut everything away in a cupboard has been a massive change.

What is something you love about living small?

I love how it forces us to consider what we're bringing into the house and that it's meant we can be close together, I never have to yell "dinners ready" and I can always find my family!

I also love how living small has allowed us to stay so close to the beach and surrounded us with people we can talk to most days. I love that we feel so close and connected to the outdoors.

For a few years lots of close friends lived in the same block and it has made such a difference, especially in the early days of new-parenthood, being able to chat to my neighbours as I left the building, or pop over for dinner, or hang out on the balcony with a beer. One of our long-term neighbours also regularly cooked us dinner and are happy for Elke to help water the garden. I think it has really made a difference these first few years, to my mental health but also to Elke feeling like she's part of a community! Sometimes I think modern neighbourhood and house design doesn't allow for those sorts of relationships but actually community is so important, I've been really grateful for that.

What is something you hate?

I didn't hate this pre-COVID and hate is probably still a bit too strong but I've realised that having a spare room is something that is going to be important to us as we move into a new season. When my mum and her husband can get back out I'd love for them to be able to stay with us. One of my best friends recently moved 2 and a half hours away and I'd love for her and other friends to be able to come and stay. The sofa bed has been fine on occasion but it doesn't work well for longer than a night.

I asked Tristan for his perspective and his 'hate' is that Elke doesn't have her own outdoor space/yard to play in.

Also, because between 3 and 4 of the units are rentals there's a fairly high turnover of new faces. Occasionally this means you get people who park you in, leave their laundry on the shared line for days or are just a bit too loud for shared living, in a place that was effectively built as beach holiday accommodation 50 years ago.

I think Small Space-ers need to stick together and share all their best tricks. Do you have any storage or organizational tips you want to share?

I think this is a tip I learnt from either from you or maybe Jo over at Cup of Jo but - don't put up with the things that annoy you just because, if you have the means to change it, do it. A change doesn't have to be big and expensive,

Other than that, find ways to maximize your storage - whether that's retrofitting existing pieces with extra options (baskets, dividers etc.) or by making sure any renovations/new furniture increases storage space/has a dual function. Our IKEA Vallentuna sofa has storage under one seat and sofa beds under the other two. Other than that...don't buy things you don't need!

I really appreciated your pieces on what babies (don't) need Alison and we made conscious decisions to buy multi-functioned things e.g Stokke Crib which grew (and resold for nearly what we bought it for second hand) and a Stokke highchair, still going strong. I think new parenthood is an easy time to really get caught up in buying things but so much of it doesn't make your life any easier. Likewise, keeping our wardrobes fairly streamlined is important, although we still have room for improvement here.

Obviously this past year has been particularly challenging for small space families. Wondering if there's anything in particular that has been working for you during this time that you felt like sharing?

We've been incredibly lucky this year, Australia was one of the first countries to lock-down and Queensland, the state we live in, has maintained a pretty efficient border policy which protected us when some of the other states had outbreaks. This has meant that except for international travel (and some interstate travel) we have felt limited impact.

There was a time towards the end of March last year where we had more of an extreme lock-down for about three weeks. We had our daughter home from daycare, but because we run our own design practice we were able to quickly modify parts of our workplace, including adding a cubby house) to allow Elke to be comfortable there. At first working for ourselves was a little bit of a stressor and we were worried that we were going to lose work but we've worked hard, pivoted to online offerings (where viable) and been lucky to keep getting work from a great set of clients.

The saddest impact we've had has been that my mum is in England, so we don't know when we'll get to see her again. We know comparatively that the impact we have felt has been so minuscule in comparison to hundreds of thousands of other people across the world.

To this end, I don't know if I have anything super helpful to share. We tried to spend as much time outdoors as we could and cut ourselves some slack over screen time for a little while.

Sources

Kitchen, sofa and Elke's desk and shelves are all IKEA

We built our bookshelves using materials from a shop fitter and a hardware store

Everything else is second hand but I reupholstered the arm chairs in Cloth Fabric

Art and art pieces are either gifts from artistic friends or sourced on our (currently non-existent) travels.

Thanks again Bec for opening your beautiful small home to us and sharing all the stories that are so specific to your beautiful part of the world! I hope we can visit there someday. And Bec’s thoughtful answers have me questioning using “Hate” in my questionnaire as there isn’t anything to hate about living small! I meant it to be tongue-in-cheek but will update on the next home tour! Thanks again Bec! You can find her HERE and HERE.