Sunday, July 18, 2010

By Leslie Linsley Special to The Citizen

The other day I received a call from my friend Marlene, who lives at La Brisa. Last winter she renovated one of the two bathrooms in her apartment and now she was on to the next project.

Having rather enjoyed the experience of picking out tiles, designing a shower that was just right for her, choosing fixtures and splurging on a high-tech toilet, she was ready to move on. Since she had the construction bug, it spread to the kitchen as well. And just for good measure, she's taken over a third bedroom, once an office, to convert into a cat habitat for her two "babies."

She told me about a room that her contractor saw in a magazine. It was completely devoted to hanging cages and climbing apparatus designed for cats, and she decided this would be the perfect way to use this room. I was beginning to think my old friend had really gone over the deep end of the pool, but the more she described it the more interested I became.

But back to the kitchen and bath renovation: It seems that more people are looking at their spaces with an eye to improvement rather than moving on, building, or buying new. Regardless of news telling us that the housing market is slowly returning, it is evident that it simply isn't moving fast enough for most folks in South Florida.

So making what you have work better may be the answer to a perfect nest -- and if that nest includes a cat habitat, well, to each his own.

Others are downsizing and trying to live with less in order to streamline their lives and to create a feeling of more space within their homes. Perhaps this urge to purge comes about at the onset of hot weather.

I am still in the midst of the series of magazine articles I'm writing on living small. Once a week, photographer Terry Pommett and I find a perfect little gem of a house under 1,000 square feet and write the homeowners' story about the virtues of living in minimal space.

This week our venture took us to the cottage of Susan Sandler, screenwriting teacher at New York University. She lives with her husband in a four-room cottage that was built in the 1800s.

"Each spring as the school year winds down in New York, we pack our things for the three months in Nantucket," Sandler said. "After packing, we start eliminating because the house is so small and we have very little closet space. Besides, whatever we bring, we quickly discover it's too much once we arrive."

I find I do the very same thing when getting ready to spend our winter months in Key West, and when I return home, I feel as though I own way too many things.

Many of the houses in Key West are quite small and there is an art to living in small spaces where one does not have the luxury of accumulation without the onset of claustrophobia. So here are some tips from Susan Sandler on living small:

1. Paint every room, including walls, ceilings and floors, a light color and all the same.

2. Keep the furniture to a minimum and make every piece count. Avoid loud and busy patterns. In fact, white slipcovers work best with colorful throw pillows and art for interest.

3. A pared-down house keeps you honest. You can't afford to be pretentious, and this absence of things allows the bones of the house to stand out.

4. Keep simplifying by getting rid of nonessentials. It's an ongoing process. Read the paper and then throw it away. Likewise with mail. Don't let one day's pileup spill into the next.

5. Keep surfaces clean. This might start out as a pain in the neck but eventually will become routine and makes your home manageable on many levels. It will simply function better.

6. When you live in a small home, you can't afford to be overly sentimental about things. If you can't get rid of something your mother left to you -- even, in my case, a broken Tiffany clock -- rotate it with something else that you only bring out from time to time.

7. Creative storage helps to keep everyday mess at bay. Even containers of food, boxes of cereal and such promote a feeling of chaos when not hidden.

8. Use baskets on shelves for extra storage, especially for towels in the bathroom. Susan uses all natural colors for texture and interest, such as white towels folded into natural woven baskets.

9. A high, narrow shelf around a room allows for displaying objects, but try to keep them all of a piece rather than lots of colors, shapes and sizes. For example, she has a collection of clear, old bottles that look sensational arranged together.

10. In the kitchen, all one needs is a lovely bowl of fresh fruit. One of the houses in my Key West book is on Florida Street in the Meadows. The owner always has a tall, glass vase filled with oranges in the middle of her kitchen table, and the simplicity is dramatic.

Leslie Linsley has written more than 50 books on crafts, decorating and home style. She resides on Nantucket with her husband, photographer Jon Aron, and has a store on the island that specializes in her one-of-a-kind creations. Her latest book is "Key West: A Tropical Lifestyle" (Monacelli Press), with photos by Terry Pommett.