Small Home Tours: Kate (@thekatebauer) and Family of 4 in 650 square feet in San Diego

LIving room looking into the dining room | Photo @thekatebauer | 600sqft.com Home Tour

There’s not much I like more than being able to share a new Small Home Tour with you. This one has been awhile in the making and it was definitely worth the wait. Kate Bauer and I connected over Instagram (as many of us small space living families do) and this tour just confirms that good feeling I got when we first emailed. Can’t thank Kate enough for sharing these beautiful joy-filled photos of their small space and her honest and thoughtful answers to the questions. In fact my eyes got a little misty reading her response to the 3rd question in this tour.

This tour also confirms that I need to get to San Diego, for the perpetual sun and likeminded families . This is the second home tour from the area, previously I interviewed Katie of @adutchlife and @thetuberosestudio, find her Home Tour Here .

How big is your home and what is the layout?

We rent a detached 650 sqft, one bedroom granny flat, which sits atop the main house’s two-car garage and our storage/workshop space, about the size of a one-car garage. It was built in 1957. Our interior layout runs in a simple loop - each room leading to the next through standard doorways (making for endless games of chase). Outside, down the stairs, and around the back, we have a small, open backyard shared with the main house, where luckily, friends (with kids!) happen to live.

Who lives there?

My husband Luke, myself, and our two daughters - Emmie (3.5 yr.) and Juniper (1 yr.)

Beautiful Family of Kate @thekatebauer Photo Jackie Wonders | 600sqft.com Home Tour

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

A bit of both. We moved here in 2011 during our second year of marriage, thinking it was the perfect-sized place for a newlywed couple. When we got pregnant with Emmie in 2015, my almost immediate thought (following joyful surprise) was “bummer, we’ll have to move.” It just never occurred to me that you could bring a baby home to a one bedroom space. Having a baby always seemed synonymous with moving into a larger home with a dedicated nursery for the baby and all their stuff. But, after some time, and re-evaluating my initial assumptions, we decided to stay put and give this one-bedroom-with-a-baby thing a try.

I thought we would be here for six months - tops! And here we are, eight and a half years and two kids later. I could have never imagined us living here this long, especially with multiple children, but this small, dated, imperfect rental has taught us so much and become our home.

Shortly after Emmie was born in 2016, I decided to leave my day job to stay home full-time with her. We went from two full-time incomes down to one, and definitely felt the strain. Supporting a family off of one income in San Diego (or anywhere really) isn’t easy, but it became a catalyst for growth. We were both ready for work transitions, and it seemed like no better time. My husband transitioned from teaching to web development, during which we survived six months with no income while he went to school and started his new career. Even after getting “on our feet” again, we didn’t feel the need for more space. We had adapted to living small with our baby (and didn’t know any different!) and decided that the benefits our small space offered us outweighed the prospect of moving.

In 2018, we gave birth to our second daughter, Juniper. At first, it was hard for me to imagine adding yet another person to our space, and I again thought we would maybe be here for her first six months. We just celebrated her first birthday, she shares the (one and only) bedroom with big sister Emmie, and we haven't yet felt the need for more space.

Besides choosing to stay home with our kids, we’ve been able to pay off debt, stay debt-free, travel as a family, focus on creative side-projects, and invest in our future - ways of living I’m convinced would be more difficult to achieve if our monthly housing costs were higher.

We certainly live within less square footage than the average American family, but generally feel just the same as any other folks, and often like we’re actually living in abundance. I’ve had my fair share of frustrations and complaining, and done plenty of futile house-hunting searches over the years, unconsciously believing if we just lived in a larger space, all my problems would be solved. But I seem to return again and again to the fact that, as surprising as it may be, we have all we need and are actually happy here for now.

We would love to own and make a space truly ours someday. Waiting for that someday can sometimes feel defeating when it seems like everyone around you is moving away to buy larger homes elsewhere. But as we save towards our future, we are learning to be patient and grateful, and to honor what we’ve been given in this space right now.

What began as one conscious financial decision has evolved and influenced so many other decisions over the years, refining our values, and ultimately our way of living. Something I hope to carry with us, regardless of what our space looks like in the future.

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

White noise! We live beneath an international flight path, on a somewhat busy street with frequent loud motorcycles, have old creaky wood floors, hollow doors, and uninsulated walls - so any help in reducing disruptive noise is more than welcomed.

Also, our wall bed - completely inspired by yours! We found it on Craigslist, gave it a fresh coat of paint, and haven’t looked back. After sharing the bedroom with Emmie for nearly two years, we were more than ready for our own space again. We considered a myriad of options before finally committing to the wall bed, which has truly been the main factor in allowing us to comfortably stay in our place. It’s funny how normal sleeping in our living room has become that we don’t think about it until someone new visits and asks what that big white box is.

Kids shared bedroom | Photo @thekatebauer | 600sqft.com Home Tour

LIving room with wall bed down | Photo @thekatebauer | 600sqft.com Home Tour

Assuming you keep toys edited are there any you recommend that have survived many purges and provided entertainment?

Open ended and imaginative materials, such as wooden blocks, legos, magnatiles, play silks, dress up items, play food and tools, a rotation of art materials, and books (all the books!). Plus my childhood hot wheels collection, which has seen daily play from Emmie for years now.

What is something you love about living small?

It has been a personal journey that has challenged my own upbringing, default ways of thinking, and materialistic wants. Living small has taught us to be flexible as a family, to be grateful for where we are now, and patient for where we would like to be. It helps keep us mindful of what we bring through our doors and to be more conscious of our consumption. We still have so much growing in all of this, but I’m proud of how we are being stretched, continually adapt, and learn to solve problems and make decisions thoughtfully, slowly, and creatively.

I also always know where my kids are, and usually what they’re up to.

Kitchen | Photo @thekatebauer | 600sqft.com Home Tour

LIving Room | Photo @thekatebauer | 600sqft.com Home Tour

What is something you hate?

Solitude with two small children is universally elusive, but more notably so when attempting to find such space (literal and figurative) for myself within our limited footprint. In lieu of a master bedroom to retreat to (which I imagine to be glorious), I simply try to make-do with what’s available to me at the moment. Recently, that’s meant setting up a makeshift desk in our walkthrough laundry room, hopping into Emmie’s bed to “sleep in” after the kids woke on the weekend, and pretty much always lingering in the shower for a few extra minutes.

Getting outside our four walls alone is vital in refreshing my energy at home with the kids - whether gardening in our backyard, writing at a local coffee shop, or being somewhere nearby in nature. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, and a small space family a bit calmer.

More specific to our small space is the fact that every room shares a door with each adjacent room, making privacy all the more scarce. Our girls bedroom shares one door with the bathroom and one door with the living room, so any post-bedtime bathroom usage is typically done by nightlight. And while we don’t spend our evenings whispering and tiptoeing, we are certainly aware of our noise level and tread lightly. Also, the lack of transition spaces - such as a hallway or entryway, means that any items in limbo (unfolded laundry, gifts to package, items to return, etc.) pile up quickly in plain sight until the task is taken care of. We are currently re-organizing and shifting some habits in optimistic attempts to combat these build ups.

What are your best ways to beat the rainy winter blues and keep from going crazy with a baby and toddler indoors?

Fortunately, we live in San Diego which is pretty moderate year-round. We do have occasional heat waves and rainy days each year, but those times are manageable considering they don’t typically last very long. During heat waves, we find some shade and splash in water, or find air conditioned places in the city (library, kid-friendly coffee shops, even IKEA). Since rainy days are more rare for us, they actually feel like a nice excuse to stay in and cozy up with books, make forts, bake cookies - anything to soak up some wintry feeling in our perpetual spring climate.

I know for us, having walkable kid friendly places in the neighbourhood really helps with small living. Would love to hear some of your favourite places to get outside with the kids in San Diego?

We go on a lot of neighborhood walks, and my daughter Emmie picks a lot of flowers - one of our favorite, almost daily, activities. We are lucky to live in a very walkable neighborhood, which also makes sharing one car doable. We are one block from our park, playground, and canyon, and an easy half-mile walk from our local hub of amazing shops and restaurants (including an outdoor coffee shop with toys for the kids to play with, a bookstore with a beautiful children's section, and a children's music/dance school).

We also live just a few driving miles from almost everything - the New Children’s Museum, Balboa Park, San Diego Zoo, library, splash park, hiking, and of course, the beach.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to have a positive space about living small with a family and hopefully have people let go of the shame associated with it. Thank you soooo much for being so open with your beautiful home and life. Is there anything you would want to say to someone who wants to stay in their small space with a child/baby but are nervous or feeling external pressure not to?

Try it out and see what happens! You may be just as surprised as I was by how little you actually need, how adaptable you can become, and how abundant choosing to live with less can feel.

Our motto has somewhat become making it work until it stops working. And for us, it’s still working! We keep figuring out ways to make things that feel momentarily impossible work in ways that benefit our family now, and hopefully in the future too.

Children don’t know any different, and are way more adaptable than we think. Our 3.5 year old now tells us that she wants a wall bed when she grows up. This of course makes us laugh, but also realize that she’s not embarrassed by her parents sleeping in the living room on a bed that folds into the wall. This may not always be her perspective as she gets older, but I’m certainly taking notes from her current enthusiasm for our small space.

Consider all your options and your priorities. By saying no to a larger space and higher monthly cost, you are saying yes to an alternative way of living that could align more with your values and desired lifestyle. I believe there is a season for everything - just because you choose to live small now, doesn’t mean you will forever (and vice versa). If you approach it as an adventure and creative living experiment, it can help make any temporary hiccups bearable and the journey of it all a bit more fun.

Kids Shared Room with Kate and her girls | Photo Jackie Wonders | 600sqft.com Home Tour

Thank you for opening your beautiful home to us Kate! All photos by Kate Bauer or as noted.