. Some parents are choosing to prioritize being able to walk to work, cafés, cultural centres and sports facilities—perks that were especially enticing pre-pandemic. As Annely Zonena, a project manager in Strategic Initiatives in Toronto’s City Planning Division, describes it, “You get a pass to the Royal Ontario Museum and that can become a weekly excursion for your children.
Organization is key to making small-space living work. The Navaratnams use closet storage baskets to organize belongings so everyone knows where things go and tidying up is a breeze. Photo: Carmen Cheung Each morning, the boys neatly pack away their bedding and the living room goes back to being a communal space. Photo: Carmen Cheung
But for Gaya and Naren, the benefits of living small are bigger than tidiness. Gaya wanted to be able to stay at home with all their kids in their first few years, and a manageable mortgage made surviving on a single income possible. Plus, the lack of a commute means that, in non-pandemic times, Naren is home just after four. “We were commuting from the suburbs when we lived with our parents, before we had kids. It was roughly three hours a day and, I was exhausted.
One key piece of advice that Alison frequently shares with like-minded parents is to hand over bedroom space to kids, be it the only bedroom or the larger of two bedrooms. She and her husband sleep on a wall bed while her seven-year-old son and four-year-old daughter share the bedroom. “Adults really just need a nice bed with nice sheets and maybe a lamp. But kids need room to play and be creative and imaginative,” she says.
“Adults really just need a nice bed with nice sheets and maybe a lamp," says Alison. “But kids need room to play and be creative and imaginative." She also appreciates not having to spend her already stretched time on maintaining a yard or cleaning a house. Her building has two yoga studios, one of which, pre-pandemic, had scheduled hours for kids in the building to play with toys and roll around on exercise balls together. They’re also surrounded by parks. “We have St. James Park, we have ‘red park’, we have secret park,” says Andrea, referring to a play structure tucked away in a nearby building’s courtyard.
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