House Tour: Simple Primary Bedroom with Creative Storage in a Small Space
We live in a lovely, bright, sunny cottage in rural New Zealand as a family of five. Today I’ll be sharing a glimpse into my husband’s and my room, showing how we organize our simple, primary bedroom.
I’ve been doing a bit of a house tour here on the blog. I hope it helps inspire you to make the most of your home and the space you live in, even if it is small or rented. Although we know this isn’t our forever home, we have loved living here for the past 2.5 years. And we hope to continue to enjoy this space for awhile to come!
Our living/dining/entry area is all one room, and it is adjoined to the kitchen/household command station space. We have one bathroom, which doubles as a utility room, and our three children share a small bedroom. We also have a very large (and super helpful!) deck, with a detached cabin/sleepout off the side of the deck.
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House/Primary Bedroom Statistics:
- 650 square feet (60 square meters) + bonus building of about 100 square feet (10 square meters) = 750 square feet liveable space (70 square meters)
- 2 bedrooms/1 bathroom + detached bonus room
- Open Concept Living/Dining/Kitchen areas
- Time lived here: 2.5 years
- Ages of our kids: 6, 4, and 1
- Primary Bedroom Dimensions: 12 ft 4 in x 9 ft (380cm x 276cm)
How Our Bedroom Gets Used:
Obviously, our bedroom is where Gabe and I sleep. But since we live in a small house, it gets used for multiple purposes in addition to the sleeping space.
Our bedroom definitely serves as a “wind down” location. Sometimes we’ll watch a show, and I often do some reading before bed. I also like to journal or “brain dump” from the comfort of my bed!
Another common use for our bedroom is as an office for Gabe and me. I do almost all of my blogging tasks sitting on our bed. Then I’m available for the family if they need me, but slightly separated from them also. Gabe also uses our bedroom as a semi-quiet space to concentrate when editing his YouTube videos in the evening.
The primary bedroom is also a napping zone. I usually lay down for at least a short rest (particularly during pregnancy!), and I often have one kid joining me during that time. So I keep the bed made and usually cleared off so it can easily become a napping spot.
When Lazlo was a baby, and once our new baby is born, we’ll reorganize a little so the primary bedroom is also a nursery for the baby. We’ll set up a co-sleeper pack-and-play, and some of the shelves will be for the baby’s clothes and nappies.
And lastly, our bedroom has some random jobs: our bed is our primary laundry folding location. We also keep our printer in our bedroom, so it functions a little bit as an office supply location in that way. And I frequently send one of the girls into our bedroom to play on our window seat or on my bed if Lazlo is being destructive to their game or activity of choice.
Closet Wall: Organization Behind Closable Doors
When you enter our room, the closet wall is on the left. We have a relatively good sized closet, so the closet takes up the majority of this wall space, but I do have a little wall space where I keep some of my favorite artwork. A friend of our, Juliette, did the sketch of Mara as a Christmas gift for me several years ago. I loved the sketch so much, I asked her to do one of Jemma as well. I’ll be asking her to do another sketch of Lazlo for me soon.
In the closet itself, my clothes are on the left (shirts on the top, pants, undies, bras, leggings, pajamas, etc on the bottom), with my dresses hanging next to them. Gabe’s clothes are on the right, and we have our shared sock baskets in the middle. I keep a few extra pair of shoes on a shoe rack in the middle as well. Our vacuum lives under Gabe’s clothes, and Gabe has gear for his YouTube channel on the top shelf. I keep extra blankets, bed linens, and a few bins of random stuff (sewing supplies, etc) on the top shelf on my half of the closet.
One thing that has helped us keep the closet of our primary bedroom organized is utilizing shoe racks and baskets for different categories of clothes. We don’t have a dresser in our bedroom, so we don’t have drawers to store anything any. Personally, I like the function of having baskets instead of drawers, and I like having everything in the closet! But visually, I don’t think it is quite as nice to look at as having a dresser where you can close the drawers.
Exterior Wall Window Bench: Organized Storage in the Primary Bedroom
Moving around the primary bedroom, the exterior wall of the bedroom is directly across from the door entering the room. Below the window is a window seat that has built in storage. We also have a shelf that lives next to the window seat, which is where I keep my essential oil supply, as well as a basket with our library books.
The window seat has four different compartments. In the first compartment, I keep extra baskets, shelf extenders, vacuum seal bags, and other random, currently unused organizing equipment.
The next compartment has spare winter bedding. This is where our electric underlay and winter duvet stays during the summer. And we have a few extra pillows for if we have guests.
In the next compartment of the window seat, I have a bin that contains baby stuff for newborns to size 12 months. I go through the bin once or twice a year and try to downsize it a little. But I’ve had babies frequently enough in the past 6 years that it’s nice to keep the basics on hand. Also, I’m a big fan of loaning out baby stuff or borrowing what I can. So I try to keep the contents of this bin in circulation in the world!
The final compartment of the window seat is where I keep a tote of maternity or early postpartum-friendly clothes, a bin of random birth or baby gear (car seat covers, the stuff I take with me when I’m a doula, etc). And our very small Christmas decoration box.
On top of the window seat, I have some plants, and a small bookshelf for storing a few books. We currently also don’t have a bedside table, so the window seat becomes a bedside table spot for me.
Headboard Wall: Functional and Simple
As we continue around our organized primary bedroom, the next wall is where the head of our bed is. Gabe stores his ukulele and guitar on the wall above the corner of the window seat. We have a large piece of artwork above our bed. (Sometimes it is centered and sometimes it isn’t, depending on how I’ve pushed the bed around). Next to the other side of the bed from the window seat is another shelf with more plants, some extra blankets, and some of Gabe’s in-use storage stuff.
We don’t have a proper headboard. So I use European Pillows to give our bed a little more height and dimension.
Shelf Wall: the Organized Heavy Lifter of the Primary Bedroom
And the last wall in our primary bedroom is where I do a lot of heavy duty organizing. This wall is almost all open shelves. And although open shelves are not my most favorite way of storing stuff, I do appreciate how much work this wall does for us!
On the top shelf, I have some not-frequently-used items in baskets. These include a basket for gifts, a basket for my surplus essential oil supply, and a basket for surplus vitamins and supplements. We also have a basket for extension cords and plug timers. And another for our hard drives and extra charger equipment for computers and phones. We also keep spare batteries, command strips and super glue, random hardware, like nuts and bolts, our ink supply, and I keep my collection of garden seeds in a basket up there too.
On the next shelf, we have books, some camera gear, artwork and candles, and plants. On the fourth shelf down, we keep our printer and more plants and artwork. For the fifth shelf, I have a box of random stuff for me – like nail polish, extra hand or body lotions, and sentimental cards. We also have bins for baby clothes and swaddle blankets. And on the bottom shelf, I keep cloth diapers, more baby stuff, and have a little space of rotating items (such as stuff that needs to be returned to people).
Creative Storage to keep our Primary Bedroom Organized:
Although our primary bedroom is small, I like to try to keep it visually and functionally organized. There are a couple things in this room that help contribute toward this goal:
- The Window Storage Bench Seat: having space for some of those out-of-season things is super helpful. And it’s nice to have it visually “disappear” from everyday sight.
- Open Shelves: I’ve tried to find the right balance between making the shelves aesthetically appealing and also very useful and functional as storage spots. One of the best ways I’ve found to do this is through the use of different types of baskets. I like to have three similar or identical baskets grouped together to help with this, but I obviously don’t follow that rule all the time.
- Closet Organization: I’ve tried to use our closet space really efficiently, including using the vertical space as best as possible. Since I don’t need to hang all of my clothes, I like using the shoe shelves and baskets for storage that would probably typically go into drawers. It isn’t the most visually aesthetic, but I can live with it since I can close my closet doors!
- Under the Bed Storage: we recently changed our bed around and moved our queen size bed to the sleepout and put a king size bed we got as a hand-me-down from friends in our primary bedroom. With our old bed, I used the under-the-bed space to keep a lot of things organized. We have custom-built wood boxes that fit under the bed, which served as extra large trays to store a lot of stuff. Our new bed doesn’t have as much space, so we don’t currently store anything under our bed in our primary bedroom, but we store a lot under the bed in the sleepout!
Organization as an Ongoing Endeavor:
I used to think people “attained” organization and then it just stayed that way! I have found – at least in my own life – that doesn’t seem to be the case. In different seasons of life I find myself rearranging and reorganizing to accommodate the needs of that particular season. As a result, I am ALWAYS tweaking things, changing stuff around, and trying to make our space work the best it can for our particular needs at that time. Our primary bedroom is certainly no exception to that. I organize and rearrange it regularly.
I hope that, as you catch a glimpse into our home in this particular season, you find comfort in knowing keeping an organized house is an ongoing art and a skill that we get to refine and improve on over time. My biggest encouragements are to know yourself and what works best for you and your family and lifestyle, and to not be afraid to get rid of stuff. Less truly is more! And I constantly find myself wanting to simplify life and looking around for what I can get rid of.
Obviously, I hold on to a lot, including many things that are sentimental and special to me, or that just “spark joy” for me. And that’s OK – I want my home to be a place that truly makes me happy! But I also know that very, very rarely do I regret downsizing and getting rid of things. And this constant practice really helps me keep my home and our primary room as organized as possible.
What do you think?
I’d love to know what you think of how we’ve organized our primary bedroom. Do you have any great tips or ideas for improvement? I’m pretty happy with how the room is right now, but I’m always open to creative input and finding ways to make simple adjustments to improve a space. Let me know in the comments below if you’ve worked with organizing a relatively small primary bedroom. And if there was anything you found helpful or useful, I’d love to hear that too!