Check out an apartment tour from when I lived in a 1200 sq ft apartment with two kids.
Our moving story
Guys, it has been 7 months since we moved here and if you were with me for it, you’ll remember that I mostly moved by myself with two kids.
That’s a little misleading. I did hire a moving truck for the big furniture. In hindsight, I would have had them move EVERYTHING.
I thought I could take a few trips and get all the clothes and home decor and kitchen things on my own. That was a far bigger undertaking than I imagined. Especially with a 3 year old and 10 month old.
It also worked out that we closed on our house over the 4th of July weekend. I thought this would be great.
Will would come home and I’d have more help. Nope.
They didn’t let the trainees leave for that weekend and everyone else had plans. So getting a group of people together to help me move and watch the kids didn’t happen.
Guys it was a rough week.
I did have help here and there. Usually one person at a time so there were two adults juggling two kids and moving. Soooo thankful for that help! I wouldn’t have made it without them.
So all that to say, it’s taken me this long to get around to showing you our apartment because I. WAS. TIRED. Then solo parenting for the next 6 months just wore me down.
Why we moved
I guess I should explain real quick why we moved.
We lived in a tri level house and it was a great starter home, but there were a lot of things we didn’t love about it.
I’d really like to find a traditional ranch with a finished or finishable walk out basement. Split levels are everywhere here and ranches are harder to get ahold of.
The market was also really high last spring and we wanted to sell when we could get the most money for our home.
If we’d known it would keep climbing like it is now, I probably would have chosen to stay another year. But hindsight is 20/20 and here we are.
Apartment Home Tour
I actually took these photos in the fall. You might find even a pumpkin if you look hard enough. A couple things have changed but for the most part, this is what it looks like. With a lot more plants, haha!
Ok, so about this apartment. It is a nice apartment.
I am so happy to be living in a place with nice finishes and details. In that sense it does feel homey. I would have felt on top of the world if I had an apartment like this fresh out of college.
With two kids, it’s pretty inconvenient.
Guys, I lived 25 years of my life without ever knowing what it was like to park in a garage. But for the last four years I had the luxury and loved it. It’s really hard to go back to that all-weather life once you’ve experienced life without scraping ice off your windshield. I’m struggling.
But back to the actual apartment. I requested a ground floor apartment so Graham wasn’t jumping off the couch at all hours of the day and annoying anyone below us.
He still jumps off the couch, there’s just no one below us. The other perk is that we can parallel park in front of the apartment if there’s a space available and walk right in through our patio door. You can see it to the right of the above photo. Life saver.
Our apartment has an elevator which I thought would be amazing. I did not consider how I would carry two sleeping children in through two heavy doors and down a hallway to an elevator. That’s been an actual challenge I’ve had to figure out a time or two.
If I park in the back, we still have to go up a floor to get to our apartment. Luckily since I work from home, I can usually secure a front parking spot right outside our door.
So that door opens up into our living room. I originally had this room set up with the sectional against the window but quickly realized that I needed that window space for plants.
Currently I have about 30 plants hanging out in that window. Good think it’s big!
It’s still not great light for my plants, since we only have the one window and it’s facing east.
Wondering where all the plants are in these pictures? Some of them were still outside and also I can’t stop buying them.
Not gonna let a small thing like no more window space keep me from growing my collection.
After a while I decided to take the faux plant out of that basket by the TV and replace it with shoes.
While this door is convenient for close parking, it’s not really meant to be an official entry, so it’s usually pretty messy over there. But we’re making it work.
One thing that was incredibly easy about moving in here was making it feel like home right away.
The only new home decor I purchased was bar stools and that little rug under them (peep that in the kitchen section). Everything else we already owned.
I have learned so much about decorating since the last time I moved and having lots of different baskets and textures to work with as I decided on the layout of our furniture was super helpful.
I made this cabinet with my grandpa when I was pregnant with Graham a few years ago. In our house it lived in a random corner of my bedroom I never shared pictures of, so I’m glad that it gets to be out in the open here. It provides quite a bit of needed storage so it’s a win win.
That doorway to the left leads to the master bedroom and bathroom.
Kitchen
This is by far the nicest kitchen I’ve had in an apartment, and I’ve lived in quite a few before we bought our house.
Granite countertops, stainless steel appliances. There’s not much I need to do in here but try to keep the counters clear so we can enjoy it!
I do wish we had more space for a dining room table.
The sink being in the peninsula is nice for looking over to the living room where everyone is hanging out while you’re doing dishes, but this also tends to be the landing zone for papers. So every now and then they get a splash of water.
Family dinners are not currently a thing. Graham eats at the bar and I typically eat on the couch. It’s not perfect but we make it work.
Master Bedroom
Now we move into the master bedroom.
It’s a nice sized room with an attached bathroom and huge walk in closet.
I had plans to put a giant gallery up on this wall around the headboard to give it some oomph, but then changed my mind.
I do miss having a bold colored bedroom wall, but there is something about the simplicity of this room that I need right now.
This temporary living situation is a good time to take a break from all the decor ideas.
It really goes to show you that the basics are all you need to have a put together house.
A rug would be a fine addition to the room, but right now I don’t feel like it’s necessary.
It would just be another thing to move in a few months. The curtains have helped pull everything together so it doesn’t look so bare.
Also, yes I know there’s another window in each bedroom.
But it’s not ideal for plants because they need that early morning sunlight since the windows are east facing. It’s the best light they get of the day! And I prefer blackout curtains to sun shining in my eyes in the wee hours.
Kids Room
Before we moved, I thought the kids would share a room. People do it all the time, right?
I cannot figure this out to save my life. Graham is permanently sleeping with me and I’m not even fighting it. We’ll figure it out when he has his own room again.
There is definitely plenty of room in here for them to share a room. The also have a small walk in closet that easily holds most of their clothes and quite a few toys.
For Christmas the kids got several large toys, like shopping carts and baby cribs. So currently this mattress is up against the wall and the toys get lined up in front of it.
It’s not aesthetically pleasing so we’ll stick to this photo. But real life, friends. No one is using the bed so it was just taking up space.
I did try to move the mattress into our room for a bit. I had to move our bed over to make room for it because it’s a full size mattress, and everything was pretty cramped. He also resisted sleeping on it there, so I moved it back. Not worth the fight at this point!
We also have a small storage unit in the basement of this building.
That’s where we keep all the stuff that usually goes in our garage, and outgrown baby equipment and extra toys.
So technically we aren’t really living completely in 1200 square ft, but that’s not the goal for us anyway.
This is a temporary living situation until we find a house we love.
When are we moving again?
We have been house searching since early fall (it’s January now) and there are very few houses being posted to the market that we’re interested in.
We found one that would have been PERFECT and would have had so many before and after projects, but we didn’t get it. I’m still sad about that but confident the spring market will bring us something good.
In the meantime, I don’t have a ton of home decorating projects to work on. This setup isn’t perfect but since it’s temporary, I’m good with it. I’m happy taking a little break from it all and just being in here.
If you’re renting and struggling with making it feel homey, I do have a few tips:
- Add texture. Baskets are great for organizing and adding a visual element.
- Get a rug or two.
- Hang stuff on the wall if you want. My little plant shelf in the living room is one of my favorite things here.
- Get some curtains and lighting like lamps. You’ll be amazed at how well things come together when you add those finishing touches.
Stay up to date with our home search by following me on instagram. I share most of the juicy details in my stories!
Update: We’ve since moved to an older ranch home in a quiet neighborhood. We’re still renovating and updating things. See it when we moved in.
