5 tips for downsized home decorating

My life changed the day I visited a friend who had downsized into a charming home perched on the perimeter of a little lake on the outskirts of Kansas City, Mo.

I fell in love with the quiet community of small, unassuming homes built decades ago around a sleepy lake.

After commuting a few hours a day between our home and my store, I was ready for a close location where we could stay when in Kansas City. Within days, my husband Dan had found a little fixer-upper on the lake and, ready or not, we began our downsizing adventure.

If a smaller, easier home sounds like heaven to you, too, I have great news: Your new nest can be just as big on style as the larger home you're leaving behind. Here are five tips I'm following as we transition to our new home.

Modify to fit your needs

The flow of our lake home comfortably fit the sweet elderly woman we brought it from, but Dan and I knew it was not going to work so well for us and how we do life.

We connected with a good friend who is an architect and got to work figuring out how to modernize the home and add our own personality. The remodeling project has taken more than a year, and while I was ready to pull my hair out a few times, I'm glad we did it.

If you have a chance to remodel or build your smaller home, list the things you absolutely have to work around.

One of ours was books. We needed homes for Dan's gazillion volumes. So we lined the walls of the living room with bookshelves.

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5 tips for downsized home decorating