Wee Love Shopping in Smallville!
Tucked in a storefront in Manhattan's teeming East Village, Tiny Living is packed with downsized versions of regular products as well as space-saving furniture, like a bench that doubles as a wine rack. Got a postage-stamp-size kitchen? Check out the elfin-scale indoor grill, juicer, and French press coffee maker. Trying to shoehorn an office into a closet? The tiny desk lamp and the ministapler, tape dispenser, and highlighters will increase elbow room. Even if you don't really need to get small, everybody knows the most mundane items are more appealing when shrunken. That 6-inch-tall iron (with lil' ironing board), the 2-by-4-inch cheese grater . . . I guess it is a small mall after all!
Proprietors Gretchen Broussard and Roee Dori spent the first year of their married life jammed in a 200-square-foot one-room apartment. One night over dinner, a (very small) light clicked on: Why not open a store catering to the needs of people who live in small spaces? The store, which opened in July, carries products by more than 100 manufacturers for every room of your doll-size house or apartment.
Tiny Living is open daily, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., at 125 E. Seventh Street, New York. A wee sample of its wares is at tiny-living.com, but at this time the business is too small to handle online orders.
This story appears in the December 19, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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