They have multiple kids. They don't have multiple bedrooms.

Gabby Bourne and her husband live in a 900-square-foot, two-bedroom house with their 5-year-old and a new baby. For the past few months, Bourne’s Instagram followers have watched her turn a messy closet into a beautiful baby nook, a cozy and unexpected space now occupied by her newborn.

“We had a large hallway closet next to our bedroom that we used as a coat closet and it became a catchall for random other things and was always a mess,” Bourne tells Yahoo Life. “I had a vision of turning the closet into a little baby nook off our bedroom with enough space for a changing table and mini crib.” That vision came to life.

Bourne says she plans for her children to eventually share a room, but her baby will have his own space for at least the first year. “There’s that period of time up until around a year old where a baby is learning to sleep, and it felt important for me to have a separate space for him and his things,” she says.

Khrystyne Jaspers and her husband share their one-bedroom apartment with their two children. The kids take the bedroom while she and her husband sleep on a Murphy bed in the living room. “When I stopped thinking that the inconveniences were happening to me and started taking ownership of the decisions I made, our space and attitudes towards it transformed,” she says of the tight quarters. Jaspers has become so adept at small space organizing that she turned it into a business. “It doesn’t matter if you have a one-bedroom, two-bedroom or palace; we each have the ability to cultivate gratitude and make space for what we value most right where we are," she says.

Over the past half-century in the U.S., the trend has been for children to not share bedrooms if it can be helped. A recent article in the Atlantic dubbed a room for every kid in the family to be the “normative ideal.” After generations and generations of the norm being for children to share rooms — and even beds — this transition really took place as a result of American homes growing in size as American families started to shrink. The long and short of it, for many American families anyway: There were fewer people and more space. But as the gulf between incomes and home prices ever widens, many families are once again getting crafty with how to make do with less room. Here's what it's like.

More kids than rooms

For the past three years, Foster Wilson, a postpartum doula in Los Angeles, has been living in a studio alcove with her two kids, ages 7 and 11. “Living in L.A. is expensive and when I first left my husband, I needed a safe and affordable space to do so," she tells Yahoo Life. "This was the best choice for me and my family." Wilson co-sleeps with her kids. "We are able to have a really nice and secure building in a very cool area ... in exchange for a smaller apartment and fewer bedrooms.”

Wilson knows the situation won’t work forever, and says the lack of privacy as one of the biggest challenges. “This won't always be the ideal solution for our family, but it has been a really sweet transition for us and I think our memories in this space will be really beautiful,” she says.

Across the pond in the U.K., Logan Blackburn-Issitt is making his three-bedroom house work for six kids. “We're a family of eight,” Blackburn-Issitt shares. “Two parents in one room, and one child has their own room, which is a requirement due to their disabilities. We have three girls age 12, 8 and 7 in another room and a pair of 3-year-olds in the converted dining room."

According to Blackburn-Issitt, "this situation works for our family in essence because we make it work." He adds: "We don't have the means to afford a seven-bedroom property or even a five-bedroom property."

Making it work

What families who share small living spaces, no matter the reason, say without reservation is that organization and creative use of space are paramount. “We morphed our formal dining room that used to open up into our kitchen into two rooms using some large blocks (think large Legos),” says Jasmine Bloemhof, a mom of five in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. A tension rod with a curtain transformed the space to "create a fun playroom for our 3-year-old and a bedroom for our 17-year-old.”

Wilson notes the importance of constantly getting rid of stuff they don’t need in order to keep their home orderly. “The only way I've really been able to make it work is truly living a minimalistic lifestyle,” she says. “All three of us share a dresser and we keep their clothes only to what we really love. We prioritize the things that are important to us as a family: a big table for sharing meals and doing homework, reading nooks and our big bed. We keep toys to a minimum.”

“You have to be smart with the space,” says Blackburn-Issitt. “[Have] lots of clever storage and use the height of the room. We invested in beds with extra storage built in. I turned the bedroom cupboards into [closets] to reduce the furniture footprint on the floor. Each bed has a clip-on extra shelf for bits and pieces.”

The other thing families emphasized was finding a way for kids to have some privacy, even when their room is shared. “When we need alone time, usually one of us will go outside, into the courtyard or on our porch,” says Wilson. “That has really helped us find calm in nature.”

Tight quarters, tight-knit family

For many families, this sort of setup can breed a closeness that they love. Blackburn-Issitt cites one upside: "Going in to check on them at night to see that one child is sharing a bed with a sibling, showing they've chosen that closeness and connection. Our 3-year-old twins still share a bed by choice, which is incredibly sweet.”

“We spend a lot of time together and are really bonded,” adds Wilson.

As for Bourne and her baby nook, she says she has no plans to find a home with a larger footprint. “We moved from a three-story, three-bedroom, two-bathroom house a few years ago and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to that kind of spread-out living,” she says. “I honestly love living in this-size space.”