Melissa and Jonny among many things created and run a natural hot sauce company (with impeccable branding) Jonny Hetherington Essentials. We have been polite neighbours for years, just a quick hello in the halls or the street but in the last couple of years our kids have fallen in love with each other so we find ourselves at each other's small homes quite often. I have always heard of apartment buildings with a sense of community and letting the kids run in the halls on rainy days or trading off looking after the other's kids for an hour or two. And now we have it! Our apartments are similar in design though, there's is slightly smaller without a bedroom and an additional storage nook or den they've creatively turned into their daughter's room. I love to see how they use their space and we often share ideas to make our spaces more functional.

It is a very vulnerable thing to share your small home publicly. I am incredibly grateful that Melissa and Jonny have trusted me to do so! They constantly inspire me to edit our space further and find creative ways to work from home. Thank you, thank you Melissa for sharing and proving once again that less is truly more.

A little about you:

My name is Melissa Mercier. I'm a photographer, a mother, a wife, and I run a food company with my husband and partner all from a 556 square foot condo in Vancouver.

How big is your home and what is the layout?

556 square foot. It's a studio with 1 small room that used to be my walk-in closet and now is Jake's room.

The view from the living room and Jake's DIY 2nd Birthday Present... an indoor swing! Photo: Melissa Mercier

Who lives there?

My daughter, my husband and myself. We also both work from home with an assistant that comes in every second day.

Tell me about your choice to live small as a family. Was it a conscious decision or did it just evolve?

We bought this place over a decade ago as a live/work studio in the heart of a neighbourhood filled with young artists and entrepreneurs. The area has gentrified and matured into perhaps one of the best spots in Canada to live, work and create, not to mention get a good craft beer. I love this neighbourhood and I can't imagine living anywhere else. I never really had the dream of a big house in the suburbs - more rooms to clean, to fill with stuff we don’t really need and too much time spent commuting back to the city. I suppose I would like one extra room when life gets a bit too chaotic, but most of the time, it works perfectly well for us. What we buy, we not only need, but we also have to have space for it! It forces us to put extra thought into our purchases and honestly, we don't buy many things at all.

Is there a piece of furniture or accessory that you couldn't live without that makes living in your space easier? Certainly our wall beds. I love getting them "out of the way" in the morning to have all this breathing room back in the studio. It simply wouldn’t work without them. It turns Jake’s room into a play room and for us, it creates a large living room and kitchen.

Also, we replaced our stackable washer and dryer for a two in one European format. It freed up a ton of space above and I installed shelves and hooks to create our office and stroller storage. (ed note... we desperately want to do this too when our stackable units die. So smart!!)

Dining Room/Kitchen Table/Grand Piano Photo: Melissa Mercier

What is something you love about living small?

We love that we can communicate with each other from anywhere in our home.

What is something you hate?

We hate that we can communicate with each other from anywhere in our home! (ed note. hahahaha! true.)

Jake's Room Photo: Melissa Mercier

What are your best ways to beat the rainy Vancouver winter blues and keep from going crazy with a toddler indoors?

Rain or shine, we get out of the house. Even if it’s just a short walk, it always refreshes our mood. Rain equipment is a must!

I am amazed by all you accomplish with your business while raising your baby girl and all while in a small space. Any tips or tricks you care to share?

Coffee, coffee, coffee.

iCal I write down EVERYTHING, no matter how certain I am I won't forget. Now that I'm a mom, there's just too much going on in my head.

Delegating as much as I can. It’s so important to find people to work with that are entirely competent at what they do.

2.5 yr old Jake's room with the bed down Photo: Melissa Mercier

Is that a piano in your kitchen?

Yes that's a baby grand piano. It is also our dining table. Jonny wanted to start songwriting with a piano as opposed to just a guitar a while back and I couldn't stand the idea of an electric keyboard in my place with the wire sticking out... so we went shopping for used pianos and found this 100 year old baby grand from New York. It strangely had very modern straight lines, which is not common for that era. Of course it was brown so I stripped the entire thing and repainted it white. (Photos) It is also our dining table and where all our Jonny Hetherington Essentials images are created. I matched it with four original Singer stools (stripped and painted the seat white also)

Murphy Bed in the dining/living room Photo: Melissa Mercier

As your neighbour I happen to know that your space is generally spotless (mine, not so much). What are your go to cleaning products or habits for keeping a small space clean?

Well, I'm a bit of a clean freak... I'm also very organized (or at least used to be before Jake was born...) I can't seem to concentrate or find inspiration when my place isn't spotless. And since I take photographs in my home every single day, I need to have a "clean canvas" that's always ready to go. The truth is that there's this ebb and flow constantly happening in our place. From everything in it's place to the madness of after a photoshoot and usually while we are in the middle of a food shoot, Jake will have brought out almost all of her toys. So you may never have dropped by during these moments to think our place is always spotless!

One of the reasons I started this blog was to have a positive space about living small with a family and hopefully have people let go of the shame associated with it. Thank you soooo much for being so open with your beautiful home and life here. Is there anything you would want to say to someone who wants to stay in their small space with a child/baby but are nervous or feeling external pressure not to?

Small is the new big! It's not how much space you have, it's what you do in that space that counts.

I always try to make sure that what I buy is practical to store and has a double duty. Jake’s steps fold and hide away. Our outdoor pillows also become part of our bed at night. Every desk and table must double duty for photography, etc. And lastly but perhaps most importantly, we like to surround ourselves with original art.

Closet converted to a Dressing Room Photo: Melissa Mercier

Photo Credit: Melissa Mercier Patio

Desk Nook Photo: Melissa Mercier

Thanks for reading and to Melissa and Jonny for sharing. Hopefully I will have some more small home tours to share in the future!

Since the moment I found out I was pregnant with Mae, I have been obsessing about how young kids share rooms, in particular in small spaces. While I combed the internet and pinterest trying to understand all the different ways people lay out the rooms, I realized that I already had some wonderful resources on the matter. There is this amazing community of fellow small space dwellers I have met through this blog, who have been doing this long before me. Long before I started worrying about it while I try to fall asleep at night.

I hope this will be a series with varying perspectives on how to share rooms with 2 or more kids, particularly in small homes. I am so grateful that Emily Morrice of Our Nest in the City offered to share her thoughts and experience with 3 kids sharing one room in a 900 square foot apartment. Her insights and helpful tips have already eased my mind. Hopefully they will ease yours too.

A Bit About Em:

Hey friends! I’m Emily and I live in Montreal with my husband and three little ones in a cozy 900 square foot two bedroom condo. I work part time as a free-lance writer, lifestyle blogger, and Beauty Counter consultant. Other than those 15-ish hours a week, I’m primarily at home with my little ones enjoying our bilingual city life. I write about minimalism, food, city life, and travel, among other things at Our Nest In The City, and I take a great deal of inspiration from others like Alison who are thriving with less and creating cozy nests for their families in great cities.

Can you tell me a bit about your kids?

As I said, we have three littles. Lily, who is 6, Oli, who is 5, and Chloe (who also goes by Clover) who is 3. Lily goes to the local French school, Oli does to pre-Kindergarten at the local bi-lingual school, and Clover attends a forest-school + Montessori-inspired play school nearby two mornings a week. Yes, for one year only they’re all at different schools (#notideal). They are all so unique but they make a great team! I really believe having them all share a bedroom contributes to their awesome friendship.

Why did you decide to have them share a room? Was it by choice or necessity?

We had no choice to have them share a room, as we only have two bedrooms (did I mention both me and my husband work from home?), but we always say we’re so glad circumstances forced it upon us.

What ages were your kids when you put them in the same room? And what is the current set up ie) bunkbeds, side by side beds, cribs etc?

We started off with our oldest having a room to herself and gradually added the babies to the room when they started sleeping through the night – around 6 months. Until each baby was sleeping through the night, he or she slept in a bassinet in our room, or in our second bathroom –totally a luxury in cities, I know!

Now that we are crib-free, our set up is most ideal. The kids all sleep in a bunk bed with a trundle bed underneath. So we sleep three kids in the footprint of one twin sized bed! More room to play, which is helpful when you don’t have a back yard!

Were there any initial challenges to them sharing a room you can share ie) nap schedules, noise, sneaking out of bed?

Are there still challenges to them sharing a room?

Room sharing is always intimidating at the outset, but we’ve figured out some hacks to make it simpler. Firstly, naps are always in separate rooms. Our kids don’t nap anymore, but for years we had a pack-and- play set up in our bedroom for someone to nap in. We never had more than two nappers at once, so this set up was fine. Second, we stagger bedtimes to make for easier transitions. Clover is our youngest and wildest, and stopped napping before age two. The silver lining to no naps is that she’s ready for bed at 6pm, over an hour before her older siblings. If we put all the kids to bed at the same time, its chaos, with our baby as the ring leader. The olders follow around 7:30pm and are allowed to talk quietly for as long as they like as long as they’re in their beds. They rarely wake Clover, so it works well. Mornings are staggered a bit too, since Oli, our son, who is always the last to fall asleep, likes to sleep in. When I hear the girls up around 6:30am, I run in to get them out so Oli can sleep for another hour. It’s all about timing with this shared room thing!

Other tricks to make room sharing easier include black out curtains (darkness!), a white noise machine (if one wakes from a nightmare, being sick, or having an accident the others aren’t disturbed), lavender essential oil (probably just a placebo effect, but I think it’s soothing for everyone), and a baby gate at the door. Our rule is, the kids can always call for us in the night and we’ll always hear because hello, small space living, but they’re not allowed to leave their room after bedtime. We even put a potty in there so they have no excuses!

What are the good parts/benefits you see in your kids sharing a room?
Any advice or tips you can share for other parents considering sharing rooms?

Small space living, including having our three littles in the same bedroom, has shaped our family culture in so many positive ways. We simply don’t have space for tons of toys or books so we are forever purging and the kids are constantly being asked the question, “Do I really need this?Could someone else benefit from it instead?” I can’t imagine fostering minimalism and simplicity when tons of extra space tempting me to consume and acquire more, and I like that our whole family is forced to think about our things differently because of living in a smaller space.

They also have to share everything in their room, which teaches generosity and sharing from birth, and so the kids aren’t possessive of their belongings. They’re always together and are forced to get along. Recently one of our kids learned that a friend of theirs had a room separate from their sibling and they were so confused and sad by the concept. We sometimes imagine a future (far in the distance!) with an extra bedroom, but our kids insist that they’ll never want to be split up. I’m sure that will change when they’re much older, but for now we love the closeness and simplicity that comes from one shared space.

Em, I can't thank you enough for sharing this peek into your wonderful urban life with 3 kiddos. Your insights and tips are immensely helpful.

Small Home Tour: Melissa, Jonny, Jake and a Studio in under 600sqft!

Interview: Shared Kids Rooms with Em Morrice of Our Nest in the City