When you choose less space: it's not all that exciting, and that's okay

Note to potential downsizers: if you've been in one space for awhile, you may be used to certain things a certain way, and you're not sure you're up for a change. Additionally, photos of tiny houses and articles on apartment websites can make you feel like there must be a rare Zen art to finding cute ways to stash things. Figuring out how to cleverly store the laundry soap in a no-storage laundry closet can be as stressful as moving itself.

But it doesn't have to be that hard.

This is our so-easy-I-forgot-to-think-of-that laundry soap storage: on top of the washer.  Nobody's going to photograph it for Buzzfeed or Pinterest. It was just the obvious place to put the detergent bottle.

This is the only real storage we have in the bathroom that Mr. Fixit and I use, which is also the main bathroom: there's a very shallow medicine cabinet, and the space under the sink, which holds two plastic dishpans, which hold anything we'd rather not leave out. You can buy all kinds of shelf things for bathrooms, but we don't have room for them. And this is the point: we don't have that much to store in the bathroom anyway, so it works out.

This is our totally unexciting entrance closet. It has an old Stack-a-Shelf unit for shoes. It has coats. It has a few things on a shelf, and a basket for paper recycling. 

Are you seeing a pattern here? 

We are not in love with having to organize and store stuff. I do not say that out of lack of sympathy for those who are honestly crushed for space. And we do have a very nice storage room slash pantry, which a lot of other apartments we looked at did not have. Without that, we'd have a whole lot more hooks on the wall, vacuum cleaner in the coat closet, etc. etc. So you might think I just don't know what small and cramped is, or I've forgotten what life is like with little children,  and you could be right. (I did live in a studio apartment before I got married. It was usually a mess.)

This is the best advice I can give from a couple of middle-aged Squirrels (and Squirreling), who have gone from smallest to small to pretty good-sized, and back to small again: if at all possible, have a little less stuff than you think you have room to store. Then you will probably find you have a spot for it, or at least that you don't have to go out of your way to devise storage for it. Ten of something requires a special shelf or box; one or two, you can slip in or under something else, or store in the empty space on the washing machine. If you can live with the one or two, you have solved the problem.

Zen not required.