How do you manage living in a small house with a big family? Rather than move, Simi Friedman got creative. The ingenious systems she came up with can be implemented in any size house with any size family.
Eight years ago the Friedmans — with two small children and another on the way — bought a home in St. Louis Missouri. “I thought we’d only be here for a few years” says Simi looking around her house.
Simi is strikingly tall and has a natural grace a regality in her movements and speech. She’s always composed even when she’s animated and she often stops mid-sentence to say “Wait — is that the right way to put it? Is that the emes?”
Aside from an unfinished basement downstairs (affectionately called the “dungeon”) there are eight rooms total in Simi’s house — three bedrooms two bathrooms a kitchen a den and an L-shaped main room that serves as a combination dining room and living room. The house originally built in 1945 is the perfect size for a family of five less so for a family of eight. But moving to a larger house to accommodate her growing brood wasn’t an option. Neither was remodeling. So Simi got creative.
“I decided to move out of my home while I was still living in it” she says “and then move back in again.” How exactly did she do that?
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