Living + Dining Room Combo: How to Make the Most of a Small Apartment for a Family of Four

When arranging our small apartment’s living dining room combo for our family, I considered four things:

1. the high traffic areas and traffic flow patterns through the space
2. what we truly NEED in regard to furniture and storage
3. what is convenient and makes sense with kids in the pictures
4. how to maximize creative spaces to serve our family’s needs

By keeping these things in mind, I worked out an efficient and comfortable arrangement for our family in our very small apartment.

Small Space Living as a Family of Four:

Let’s backtrack, though. This post is rewinding the clock for me to a few years ago.

Making a small living dining combo room work for a family can be challenging! It requires creativity, intentionality, and also some sacrifices.

But it is totally doable (as other mothers have testified). And it has a lot of beautiful blessings in it!

When our family was smaller, we lived for over 3 years in a 450 square foot garage apartment. We originally moved in with our newborn baby.

Then, 2 years later, we brought our second baby home from the birth centre to that apartment. We continued to live there for another 18 months until we were pregnant with our third child.

I’ve done a tour of our small apartment here on the blog, which included our TINY Kitchen, our Make-Do Toddler Room, our Small Master bedroom, and our Minimalist Family Bathroom. While there are glimpses into our living/dining room in the post I did about how to live in a small space with kids, I never did a tour of our small living and dining room.

So for those of you who enjoy seeing the FULL house, I wanted to complete the series!

What were the high traffic areas and traffic flow patterns through our small living + dining room layout?

We only had one entry door into our apartment, which was a sliding glass door into a corner of the common area. We needed to keep this area relatively clear.

Outside our front door, we had a covered brick patio. Our laundry drying lines were hung under the covering.

This entry door was used a LOT. Not only for coming and going, but also for hanging up laundry and accessing the shoe storage outside.

The brick patio also served as an extra play/hang out area for our family when the weather was nice. Since our apartment was on a section of land that was our landlords’ beautiful yard, it was very normal for us to overflow from our apartment to the outdoor patio for computer work, or phone calls, or visits with friends.

So immediately inside the entry door was a very high traffic area. From there, one corner of our small apartments’ common area was our tiny kitchen, and next to the kitchen was the doorway to go toward our only bathroom.

Therefore, the line between the entry door and the kitchen corner needed to be kept clear. This was a high traffic flow for our small apartment.

What were our actual NEEDS in regard to furniture in our small apartment’s living and dining room combo?

Since we value sitting down together as a family for meals, we needed a table where we could all eat together. As a result, we needed seating options at the table to eat together.

We also enjoy hosting friends for visits and cups of tea, so we needed somewhere comfortable to sit with people. And since we value reading to our kids every day, we needed that comfortable space to be big enough to sit with small children.

Our two kids were very small, so I needed to be able to supervise them while they played. Which meant we needed some storage options for kids toys and activities in the living dining room layout.

And lastly, since our living dining room was also our front door, we needed furniture that served for entry room purposes, like shoe storage, coat storage, bags storage and a place to sit to put shoes on.

What was (A) convenient and (B) made sense for our small living dining room apartment layout WITH two small kids in the picture?

Besides recognizing that our living dining combo room was going to be our kids’ main play room, I wanted to arrange the layout of the room to function smoothly with kids’ needs in mind.

Since the kids’ bedroom was off to one side of the living dining combo room, I wanted an area as far away from their bedroom as possible that could serve for Gabe and me to visit together, and also as an activity center for my older child while the younger child napped.

Therefore, I put our dining room table in the far corner from their bedroom. The dining room could serve as a tea date location or a toddler activity space.

It also made sense to have the dining room table as close to the kitchen corner as possible, since we have our kids help with setting the table and cleaning up the dishes.

Although we are relatively minimalist, we did have some kids toys, books, and puzzles for the girls. So we utilized a bench with built in storage under it as an entry seating option, and also to house the majority of our kids’ toys.

I try to encourage our kids to do whatever they can for themselves, so I organized an entry area (including hooks for their jackets) that was at their height so they could access it more easily.

And since we are sometimes sleep deprived parents, we wanted to have a convenient hot drinks station for ourselves to use to prepare something with caffeine in it!

All of these considerations went into the layout of our small living dining combo room space.

How could I maximize creative spaces to serve our family’s needs and help make our space cozy despite being a bit eclectic?

Obviously, function was the most important thing in such a small space, but aesthetic is important to me as well. So I wanted our living dining combo room to be creatively organized as well as cozy and orderly from a decor perspective.

I tried to utilize every spare inch, including gaps between furniture and the wall, and gaps underneath furniture. We also used the closet creatively, and every door had hooks for organizing and storage.

Although we stored stuff on shelves, I also tried to keep some space empty. And we tried to utilize baskets and containers to keep our things neat and tidy looking.

Overall, although we maximized our space, it didn’t feel overly crowded or cluttered to us.

Living Dining Combo Room Tour: Entry Corner and Seating Area

Stepping into our apartment, our “living room” was directly inside the door. We had a two-seater mid century mod couch (loveseat?) against the wall inside the door.

Between the door and the couch, I had a tall shelving unit with four shelves. And on the wall immediately inside the door was a set of hooks.

The shelving unit also had (over-the-door) hooks on it. This was where we put kids hanging things.

In the winter, we hung their rain jackets on those hooks. In the summer, their sun hats lived on those hooks when not in use.

The bottom shelf of that unit had a basket where we kept the girls’ shoes. The top shelf had a lamp and served as our phone charging station.

The middle shelves had baskets that kept various rotating things: safety vests, car keys, and a paper “landing zone.”

Under the couch we built two custom wood boxes to store Gabe’s and my shoes. Since this was essentially our entry, the shoe boxes were located here to remove shoes when we came in and tuck them out of sight.

Above the couch, as an effort at making my decor personalized, I painted over a canvas I’d bought for cheap and added words that meant something to Gabe and me and our history together.

Living Dining Room Combo Layout: the Hot Drinks and Storage Closet Corner

Along the wall past the couch was the door to the girls’ tiny bedroom (which was also our utility, freezer, and storage room). We had over the door hooks on the door so guests could hang their jackets or purses easily next to the couch.

Past the door to the girls’ room was a closet with pull out shelves on the bottom and roomier shelving on the top. This was our hot drinks station.

We kept a kettle, our tea supply, our aeropress and coffee, and our mugs on the middle, prominent shelf. The closet was located next to our refrigerator for easy milk access.

Our decision to put the drinks station inside the closet was to make a prep station OUTSIDE of the kitchen. Since the kitchen was TINY, it made sense to have hot drinks separate from where we would make breakfast in the layout.

The closet also kept important papers, board games, our vacuum, art supplies, some toys for the girls, and thank you note supplies. We had more over the door hooks on the outside of the closet door, and an over the door shelf rack for the inside of the closet door.

The shelving unit between the closet and the fridge held kids books, bulkier toys, and baby clothes when our kids were tiny.

The Kitchen Corner of our Small Apartment Space

The third corner of the living dining room combo space was our tiny kitchen. Between the fridge and the kitchen corner was the doorway into Gabe’s and my bedroom and our small apartment’s bathroom.

I’ve covered our organized TINY kitchen in detail, so we’ll keep moving around the room to the last corner.

The Dining Room Space in the Living Dining Room Combo Layout

The tiny kitchen was diagonally opposite from the entry door. So standing in the middle of the room facing the wall that the kitchen sink was on, our dining room space was on the other end of that wall.

We had a beautiful window in this corner of the room, and a storage bench provided with the apartment. The storage bench became part of our seating area for the dining room table, and also served as a lovely window seat.

Between the wall and the storage bench, we kept a gap next to a wall outlet. We could charge and store our computers out of sight and right by the dining room table.

Gabe built our table top, including a pop-up extension, so we could seat 6 people (tightly) around the dining room table. We used a clamp on high chair for Jem when she was little.

Our two dining room chairs were opposite the storage bench. Just behind the dining room chairs, moving along the large sliding door unit toward the front door, we had a bench shoe rack.

This bench shoe rack was additional seating for the dining table when needed. And it also kept the remainder of the girls’ toys and books.

Small Apartment Layout: Maximize the Open Space in the Middle of the Common Room

Our main functions of this room (the living/seating area, the kitchen, the dining area, and the storage/drinks/fridge section) were along the sides and in the corners of the room.

As a result, the middle of our living + dining room + kitchen combo was wide open. I think having this open floor space was one of the things that worked best in our small apartment layout.

The girls could play in this area. Sometimes I folded laundry in this area. When we had small babies, we put a blanket down and they could roll around or have tummy time in this area.

I hosted a mom’s group at our house for awhile. We inevitably ended up all sitting on the floor in the middle of the room with our kids playing blocks or magnatiles.

Closing Thoughts About Having a Living Dining Kitchen Entry Combo Room:

As with most things, when living in a small space with kids, less is often more! In our little apartment, that was definitely an important part of making our layout comfortable. While the room was a bit eclectic, it felt cozy without feeling crowded.

I attribute that feeling to the fact that we used everything we kept. And we didn’t keep anything that wasn’t getting regular use.

Although I try to live minimally, I don’t always find getting rid of stuff easy. I definitely cried the day I sold the high chair both Mara and Jemma had used!

But I very, very rarely regret getting rid of something. Although the getting-rid-of-it process is hard, once it is gone, I find I usually move on quickly and appreciate having the extra space in the layout.

So one of my big encouragements if you are facing living in a small apartment with a living dining room combo and dealing with tiny spaces would be to downsize:

Have enough seats for your family and no extra.

Get rid of bulky furniture that you can live without.

Everything you have should be used really, really regularly (daily, maybe a few times a week), unless it is specifically a seasonal thing.

Less stuff means more space, more creativity, and more functionality with what you do have.

Let me know in the comments below if you’ve lived in a small space with a living dining room combo that you got creative with the layout. Did you love it? Hate it? I’d love to hear about it!