How to make a 2 bedroom work for a family of 5. Downsizing to gain freedom

Are you trying to decide if it would be a good idea to have three kids in a small house, like a 2-bedroom house with no yard? Having three kids is difficult in itself, and having three kids in a small house is even more difficult if you don’t learn to work well in a small space. I know how to make a 2 bedroom work for a family of 5.

My own family of 5 recently moved from Norway to Spain. Both our old apartment and the one we moved to are around 700 square feet and have two bedrooms. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment with three small kids and had no problem. But now we will have visits more often, and we will have to have a room ready for when they come and spend the night.

I have been worried about having such little space for so many people. When my family visits, it’s eight people total. Three of them are little people, but still people. So I googled “having three kids in a small house” and I found a forum where people were discussing the topic, and for them, a small house meant a 1500 square feet house.

To me, that sounds like a mansion. I am very happy raising my three kids in 700 square feet. I realize this is a European way of thinking. I was lucky to grow up in spaces that many people would consider very little. And now, being a young family of 5 in a 2 bedroom, I didn’t even consider that people would think of it as a problem. I can’t afford more, and I really don’t want more.

I think living with less can make a lot of people happier.

I want to share with you how to make a 2 bedroom work for a family of 5.

Bed-share in a family bed

Bed-sharing in a family bed or sharing a room to sleep will allow you to have an extra room that could be an office, a playroom, any other living space that you need, or even a guest room. If you utilize your two rooms for sleeping, there really won’t be much space for daytime living.

Lots of people co-sleep with their baby for the first 6 months because most medical institutions advise it. And making changes with little children can be challenging. So why not let them all sleep with you until they decide to move to a different room?

Most little children want to sleep with their parents. Honestly, I don’t see why they would want to sleep by themselves before adolescence. Here’s my list of pros and cons of cosleeping with multiple kids.

Bed-sharing or room-sharing can save you an incredible amount of money on rent, mortgage, and even on holidays!

And you will have much more space in a house where only one room has beds.

If sleeping all together in the same room is not an option, there are still a lot of ways to make a 2 bedroom work for a family of 5.

Have bunk beds and loft beds

In our family, only our older son is old enough to sleep on top of a bunk bed. We would happily sleep in a loft bed, but since the baby cosleeps with me, it scares me.

Bunk beds and loft beds are obviously perfect for saving space that can be used for living during the day.

The only disadvantage is that they could block the light and make the space below a little claustrophobic. Ideally, you would want to put them close to a window but not right in front of it.

Young kids like tight spaces that feel a little bit like forts. So elevated beds are a great solution if you have three kids in a small house.

Create moments for one-on-one time with your children

How does one-on-one time relate to living in a small space?

If you want to make a 2 bedroom work for a family of 5, you will have to be fine with sharing the majority of the time with everyone else. Your children will have to be fine sharing.

Having one-on-one time for each of your children daily will help avoid sibling rivalry and it will make it easier for them to share space for most of their day.

For us, the special one-on-one time is when we put them to bed. They go at different times, so each has their special time, sometimes with a snoring sibling in the background.

Constantly decluttering to live in a small space

You don’t have to be a minimalist to benefit from decluttering. Imagine you wake up one day and everything that you don’t use or love is gone, and your tiny house is looking tidy and organized. Wouldn’t you love it?

The tricky thing about decluttering is the guilt. The actual process of decluttering is difficult. But living with less is so much easier!

There are many things that I want to keep for questionable reasons. Like “I paid too much for this to donate it”, “This item gave us a lot of good memories”, or “It’s so beautiful, even if it doesn’t fit me”.

One way I find that makes it easier to let go of the guilt is reselling everything that has value and always trying to buy second-hand.

That way you know (or hope) that someone else is going to appreciate that item more than you do. Also, every item that you use will continue being used until it’s not in good shape.

“I don’t know where to put it” is more than enough of a good reason to get rid of something.

Store your things in different places depending on how much you use them

If you keep things that you use often together with things that you use sporadically, You can easily end up using way more storage than you should for things that you barely use.

If you have some place for storage that is a little hidden in an area that maybe is not very accessible, that would be a perfect place to put all the snow clothes, costumes, big pots for big meals, and everything like that.

That way you will have a clear idea of what things that you own you could probably live without, and it will make decluttering easier next time. Because you won’t want to get rid of the things that you use every day.

By doing this, you also ensure that the high-traffic areas of the house are less cluttered and easier to maintain.

The extra closet for the extra things will be cluttered, but that won’t affect you daily like it would if you kept it all everywhere.

Keep things accessible

If you keep things accessible, you will probably leave them in their designated place after you use them. Don’t pretend like your keys belong in a box inside a cupboard, because you will never leave them there.

If you have difficult access to the things that you use day to day, you most likely won’t make an effort to put them back to their inaccessible designated place every time you use them.

You will end up spreading things around every flat surface in your house, and you will have to declutter and organize every 5 minutes.

Spend time outdoors

If you have a yard, that’s great. If you have outdoor parks in the neighborhood, that’s sometimes even better because they get an opportunity to socialize. But the best of the best is to spend time in nature with other families.

Norwegian culture has taught me to appreciate the time spent outdoors. Nature and physical activity make people happy. Nature also gives a sense of danger, sometimes, that children need to experience and explore on their own.

They will get their energy out and be ready to play quietly when they get home.

Also, spending time outdoors in nature is one of the best sibling bonding activities, and it’s free!

I think spending time outdoors is fantastic for the mental health of everyone, but if you are trying to make a 2 bedroom work for a family of 5, it’s even more important.

Designate a place for the piles of clothes

Jackets, shoes, half-clean half-dirty clothes, laundry that you haven’t folded.

All of this needs to have a designated place, it can’t be “the chair” because you probably don’t have space for an extra chair. Choose places that are easy to access but not visible. Like a big basket in the entryway, hooks behind the door, and things like that.

By the way, the dryer is a perfectly acceptable place to keep the half-clean half-dirty clothes when you are trying to make a 2 bedroom work for a family of 5. It’s hidden, and a couple of minutes of hot air can make these clothes fresh again.

Keep the mess organized

With three kids in a small house, there will be a lot of mess and little place to put it.

But you can keep some sense of order if you confine the mess to specific places. For example, have one huge pile of laundry instead of three smaller baskets, one in each space. Have one huge junk drawer that you will worry about once every two weeks, but keep the visible surfaces more or less decluttered.

This will make it easier to live with the mess and also fix the mess, as you can handle one pile of laundry or one junk drawer at a time, instead of having to go around the house picking things up from all around.

Do you have any other tips on how to make a 2 bedroom work for a family of 5?