Living in small spaces certainly has advantages. I do find it necessary to remind myself of them regularly, however :) Here's a small attempt to do that...
We set aside several hands-on project kits from Christmas that are particularly interesting to the kids, knowing that we'd have more 'inside' time than we normally had when we were in the jungle. Though having toys with myriad small parts is not necessarily conducive to small spaces (nor extremely messy ones that involve chipping away at finely packed dust particles that fly and attach themselves to every surface within a three room radius), because of these cool projects, they have grown in their interest and knowledge of several key skill areas! A living education! They've both been thrilled with their machine building & excavation kits.
Living in small spaces necessitates that the kids play cooperatively. There simply is not enough room in the apartment for each child to play independently. I've enjoyed watching their creativity. Even if there are disagreements regularly, I'd prefer that over siblings who will not play together! :)
'A place for everything and everything in its place', because if it's not, believe you me, we will certainly trip over it. Our kitchen, like our entire apartment, is very compact, but super serviceable. I give thanks every day thrice over for the blessing of this little space to live in. We get along quite well, and less space means less to keep clean. Hooray! And it makes me silly happy just to see the colors, but I'm funny like that. :)
From the fourth floor, we have a really great view of the park in front of our house, which actually in itself provides lots of viewing entertainment. We see sunsets longer than everyone else, we see the birds' business from the tops of the trees and we get a good breeze. Are you getting jealous?! ;)
I've also concentrated on making it a beautiful place to live. Not necessarily from another person's standpoint, but things that are beautiful to us, almost entirely composed of things we've found outside or in the fruit/vegetable market. well, that and books. nature and books, two of my most favoritest things in all the world. ;) So, living in small spaces is kinda nice after all.
:)
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