“I'd Rather have Weird than Boring”: How Simone Giertz Lives Small
“If I could choose, I would probably want to live in Bilbo Baggins’s home. That's kind of like the pinnacle of cosiness to me”, Simone Giertz told Never Too Small with a laugh. A fantasy that is not terribly far from her reality. The 58 square metres (or 630 square feet) bungalow the Los Angeles–based inventor and product designer shares with her cat Foots and dogs Scraps and Tobin is a cosy trove of whimsical objects, furniture, and decor; it is also the perfect embodiment of her self-declared design mantra: “I'd rather have weird than boring”.
Giertz, who is originally from Stockholm, Sweden, started her career building what she described as “shitty” robots – silly, often impractical machines. These days, her attention is more focused on reducing real, day-to-day obstacles: “I try to think a lot about everyday objects and create unique solutions to everyday problems”. She explained that the small home she’s been living in for the past four years has been a big source of inspiration for this switch. (Though, it is not her first small home, as she actually bought, renovated, and lived on an old tugboat in Stockholm when she was twenty.) She elaborated how she thrives in areas with clear parameters, where every inch must be thoughtfully utilised because it poses interesting problems and inspires creative solutions.
The One-bedroom, One-bathroom “Lean Machine”
The one-bedroom, one-bathroom is, as Giertz affectionately calls it, a “lean machine”. It is a place that she’s customised to not only be very functional but also to be restful; a place to recover that feels like “a little spa” for her brain”. She explained, “Since I get a lot of my adventure through work, when I get home, I just want to feel like I’m being held.” In the most literal sense, we see this in the canopy-inspired platform bed she constructed, which maximises the bedroom footprint by creating space beneath it for a dresser, storage, and Tobin’s dog crate while also offering a cosy, comfy retreat.
The bed is just the tip of the iceberg, though; Giertz’s unique approach to living small shines through best in the quirkier and less run-of-the-mill prototypes and products she’s crafted for herself. Take, for example, the oversized thread spool coffee table in the living room (complete with matching button coasters), which has storage within for her knitting yarn. “I just think there's something funny about having ‘bigatures’ – like, big versions of small objects – in a very small house”, she noted as she pointed to Exhibit B, a pair of oversized scissors leaning against the wall in the corner.
Playful solutions and innovations abound: from her “Coat Hingers”, coat hangers that fold in half to cut down on closet depth; to her “Plamp”, a planter–lamp combo; to her two-top dining table that allows her to switch between jigsaw puzzle mode and standard dining mode; to her mechanical fruit bowl that expands or contracts depending on the amount of fruit she has at the time. It all illustrates how, for Giertz, her home is a living experiment, a canvas for her creativity. “One of the good things about being a builder is that nothing has to be permanent,” she explains. “I feel the house is a constant experiment.”
An Experiment in Living
While she acknowledges more space could be nice, Giertz is content with her current setup. “It would be nice to have another bedroom and bathroom – all of that – but for now, it's the perfect space for me”. It also offers the freedom to continue the experimenting she loves so much: “There's not a straight wall in this entire house, and it's just generations upon generations of people kind of winging it. And I really like that because I feel like I can kind of do my own thing and not feel guilty about it”.
