I had lunch with my friend Cameron a few weeks ago. Over plates of Kung Pao Chicken and Mongolian Beef, the conversation drifted toward personal finance. We began to talk about the repairs and upgrades we’ve been making to our homes.
Kris and I bought our current house three years ago; Cameron and his wife bought their home two years ago. Both were big upgrades from what we had previously owned. And though neither couple spent more than they could afford, we’re now realizing that bigger isn’t always better.
Our first house was a 1365 square foot ranch-style home on a 7500 square foot lot. It was an unremarkable house, except that it was located in my home town. We could walk to the grocery store, to the barber, to our favorite restaurants. I could bike to work. If we still lived there, we would be paying off the mortgage next spring.
But I had always dreamed of a bigger place. I wanted a home with acreage. When we found a hundred-year-old farmhouse nestled close into Portland, we bought it. Our new house has 1820 square feet on two-thirds of an acre (less land than I wanted, but enough). We love the place. After three years, though, it’s clear that 1820 square feet is too much for the two of us. We have two rooms that remain essentially unused, but which we furnish, heat, and cool nonetheless.
Cameron also had a modest ranch house on an average lot. When his wife got a good job in a different part of the state, they bought a bigger place. It’s a wonderful home: huge floorplan, five acres, an amazing view. But Cameron, too, is beginning to understand that upsizing has unexpected costs.
Don’t misunderstand me: both of us love our houses, but we’ve come to realize there are trade-offs. Too much house is as much a problem as not enough. “I feel like I’m always cleaning,” Cameron told me. “I feel like I’m always doing yardwork,” I said. There are other considerations, too, some of which are obvious, others less so:
- A larger house generally brings a larger mortgage.
- A larger mortgage means more total interest paid over the life of the loan.
- A larger home has higher utility bills.
- It costs more to furnish.
- And from our experience, larger homes have more things that can go wrong with them.
Cameron and I talked about remodeling projects, about long-term plans, and about what we’ve learned since moving. “We’ll never use all the space we have,” he told me. “And with two young kids, it’s all we can do to keep up with maintenance.”
“My values have changed,” I said. “I always thought I wanted a big house. I thought that was a sign of success. I don’t believe that anymore.”
That’s the crux of the problem: What was important to me three years ago is less important to me now. In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert writes that it’s difficult for the present You to predict what will make the future You happy. You do your best, but sometimes the future You looks back and scratches his head wondering what his younger self was thinking.
Neither Cameron nor I intend to move, but we now appreciate the advantages of a smaller home, advantages we didn’t recognize when we had them!
Related reading
Last year, NPR had a story on the ever-expanding American dream house, which looked at the pros and cons of large homes. Though this piece actually discusses very large homes, it still explores issues like the reasons large houses have become so prevalent.
Architect Sarah Susanka has a series of books (and a web site) that explore the concept of what she calls The Not So Big House. She writes:
The inspiration for The Not So Big House came from a growing awareness that new houses were getting bigger and bigger but with little redeeming design merit. The problem is that comfort has almost nothing to do with how big a space is. It is attained, rather, by tailoring our houses to fit the way we really live, and to the scale and proportions of our human form. Two must-read articles about this topic include Cultural Creatives: The Rise of Integral Culture, by Dr. Paul Ray and a recent interview with William McDonough in Newsweek magazine entitled Designing The Future.
Finally, for years I’ve been fascinated by people who choose to live in ultra-small houses. How small? The Tumbleweed Tiny House Company has plans for homes as small as 40 square feet! Really, though, I’m more interested in their 392 square foot glass house, or the 100 square foot EPU (which you can build for just $19,000 plus labor). You can find more homes like this at The Small House Society.
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My husband & I lived in a 2 bedroom place when we first got married & had our son, then it became overrun with his stuff. We moved to a 4 bdrm place then later had another child. Then grandma moved in. Our house is overrun with stuff, esp. my kids. I want to have a yard sale or donate stuff to charity, but my children can’t seem to part with anything. My kids are 3 & 7, I think they were traumatized when they saw Toy Story when Andy’s family had their yard sale.
Any tips.
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Frugal Bachelor has never spent much on housing. When he was in college (late ’90′s), he lived in a tiny efficiency apartment for $188/month including utilities. It was less than 100 square feet, but worked out well. A futon, for example, helped to save space by combining the functionality of a bed and a sofa. Frugal Bachelor has never since seen a smaller apartment in the United States.
For several years, Frugal Bachelor has lived in a two-bedroom apartment (800-1000 square feet) but is soon planning to ‘downgrade’ to a one-bedroom (650-800 square feet). He is looking forward to purging some stuff in the transition, and the limitations it will impose on acquiring more stuff.
Frugal Bachelor has been fascinated by ‘alternative living arrangements’. For example, it is quite easy to find rooms in people’s houses on Craig’s list very cheap (even in nice neighborhoods). Certainly it is a good way to be efficient and reduce one’s footprint on the earth.
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My boyfriend and I are renting a huge house in Las Vegas. He is military and is only here temporarily, and the housing market here is so bad there were just hundreds of houses for rent, so we pretty much had our pick. We found a brand new 2400 sq ft house, and it is a total steal. The rent must be half the mortgage payment. It is WAY too big and I feel ridiculous in it. It has three bedrooms upstairs, two of which we only use when we have guests. We have TWO living rooms, one upstairs and one downstairs. We hardly use the downstairs one. There is also a huge room next to the kitchen that is empty, and the office downstairs is almost never used. We use our laptop computers in the upstairs living room. Also has a huge two car garage that has boxes and tools in it. We don’t even park in it. Also, the neighborhood has countless houses with for rent and for sale signs in front of them. There are just too many new homes being built here and no people to buy them.
I moved here from my 1400 sq foot townhouse in North Carolina, where I also had two bedrooms that I didn’t use.
I can’t wait to move again, hopefully to a small, cozy place.
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One interesting question we should ask ourselves: are we buying bigger houses because we need the space for all of our stuff, or are we buying so much stuff in order to fill our bigger houses?
I lived for two years in a small studio apartment in Manhattan with a roommate (close friend of mine) and we did just fine. Needless to say neither of us has very much stuff. I like smaller spaces because there isn’t so much to clean and I don’t have to buy a lot of stuff to fill it.
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This is a great post. Thanks for linking to Tumbleweed Houses. They are fantastic. I would love the Enesti or B-52 Bungalow the layouts are a fantastic exaple of how to use a small space.
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Our first house was just right for us when we bought it – 1500 sq ft, split level, two adults, one baby, one on the way. We are still a family of four but are now in a 2600 sq ft house – two years later we realize we can do with 1800-2000 sq ft, even 1600 if the house has a great layout. This large house has an okay layout but zero storage space, our garage is our storage which stinks because we’d like to use the garage for the car (just one, even though it’s a two car garage it isn’t built to actually hold two cars). At the 1500 sq ft house we has excellent storage which made the home feel bigger.
Here, our master bedroom is massive – and all we have is a bed, dresser and side tables, not a bedroom suite like so many others do. When we first moved in we were like wow a huge house with tons of space! Now we think ugh a house house with tons of space we have to clean.
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Our house is 30 foot by 30 foot. It’s technically one bedroom with one walk-in closet, but my father uses the walk-in closet as his bedroom and gave me the other bedroom which is about 12×10.
Our house is actually condemned, but we pay cheap rent here out in the country, and can’t afford much better at this point. But I can’t say I’d have it any other way.
We’re constantly living below our means
And I’m content with that.
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We’re currently downsizing. Originally we thought that a larger house would be great because more room! This is not always a good thing. I spend most 5 hours per week mowing 5 acres of lawn, the gardens are always needing weeding and other jobs. Inside the house is always dusty and takes forever to clean and vacuum.
So now we’re downsizing, we’ll have more money to use to invest and now there will be a fraction of the work.
Good article.
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It’s generally true that having a small house or condo or apartment leads to lower rates of energy consumption, furniture and knick-knack shopping, etc. Frequently, when people move from a smaller dwelling to a larger dwelling, their sense of what is normal and acceptable also changes, and they experience “personal space inflation.” North Americans really stand out in the world as people who culturally “need” lots of space around them, not just to live in, but also to interact with other people in. Hence the phenomenon, parallel to increased house sizes, of shopping malls (at the expense of close-in city streets), wider aisles and walking spaces in stores (as opposed to more traditional market configurations), spacious automobiles (instead of public transport), and other spatial cushions.
I’ve noticed that many people (outer-ring suburbanites, for example) who have undergone personal space inflation have a hard time dealing with crowded, urban conditions where people are closer together. So in this sense, living in a smaller dwelling is a virtue, as we may be more inclined or prepared to deal with subway crowds, etc.
One frequent consequence of living in a small dwelling is the resident’s greater use of public space outside of the dwelling. This type of resident may be more inclined to use public parks, whereas the resident with a large house and yard may have less incentive to mingle with people at public parks and other such spaces. Some of the tax/money tensions between urbanites and suburbanites revolve around public funding for public parks versus lower taxes so residents with larger yards can have more funds for personal ends.
There are potentially negative consequences of living in a small dwelling, however. Living in a small place may compel the resident to “decompress” not only at parks, but also at cafes, restaurants, and other places where expenditure of money is expected. This sort of lifestyle is quite common in parts of Europe, as well as in NYC and other densely populated North American cities.
One has to be careful–we may be more energy efficient and frugal with furnishings in our small dwellings, but we have to make sure that we’re not merely channeling bad habits through a consumerist lifestyle whereby we raise energy expenditures at restaurants, etc. Perhaps such consumerist “spillover” doesn’t totally undermine all of the objectives and benefits of living in a smaller place, but it’s something to monitor just the same.
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Several posters have talked about the correlation between large homes and the lack of “family time”. I am a strong believer in the idea of having one main living area, so that the family must learn to share space, utilities and the TV! My daughter is one and we are committed to her not watching television until she is three, at the very least(believe me I know of a lot of one year old TV watchers). By having one living space, it means that we have to spend family time together (without the TV on) and I hope that will create a habit that will last a lifetime for our children. It has already reduced my partner and my TV time, for the better I think. We spend more time talking than watching.
The idea of TV’s and computers in rooms where children are unsupervised is a nightmare to me.
The financials of a smaller house are also attractive, why spend more money on space that you won’t utilise? Small home, good sized yard to grow fruits and vegetables is my ideal.
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Interesting story. My wife and I currently live in a 1,385 sq ft house. I tend to complain that it’s a bit small, she doesn’t. What does that tell you?
Hearing from J.D. on making the move to a bigger house is enlightening. I can definitely see myself making the same mistake. I think I’d be better off to stay put and focus on paying off that mortgage. Though I do think adding children to the picture could justify a larger place…
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All I desire is a 400-sf house on a postage-stamp lot. Or go in with several others and buy a lot and put several tiny houses on it./
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In San Jose, many rental houses have another house (or two) in back – instead of a back yard. It is the future of urban affordable housing.
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[...] Learning to love the not-so-big house. I think a big house is beautiful and luxurious, but its definitely not great for your wallet. JD at Get Rich Slowly brings up some good points to consider when contemplating a large home. [...]
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We added on to our tiny original home and nearly tripled the original size. Note to women: never make major decisions like this when you pregnant. You’re just not thinking the same as when you’re not pregnant.
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[...] Learning to Love the Not-So-Big House We intended to have three or four children when we bought our house, so we went shopping with that plan in mind. If it were just me and my wife, we would have purchased something much smaller. (@ get rich slowly) [...]
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We are parenting later than most- my partner & I are 44 and 41 years old– and we have 4 kids (ages 8, 5, 2, and 5 months).
We bought our house 3 years ago,knowing we would ultimately want to parent 4 children. Our home was only 1750 square feet, but we added another 500 suare feet of usable space by finishing a large portion of our basement. NY State law, however, would not allow us to market this space as part of the home if we ever were to sell– but I doubt we’d ever move.
Its a loverly ranch home, one block from a playground and a walking park (pond with trees, about 1/2 mile around) and has a huge fenced in yard. Our girls are in one bedroom, the boys another– and our master suite is on the other side of the house. My folks are 4 blocks away- her folks are maybe 6 blocks away. And school is 5 blocks away- a nice morning jaunt with the stroller to take the older ones to school.
Living in a smaller home has us constantly making decisions as to what items are of value to us. There is a large enough playroom for the younger ones toys in the basement, but only for toys that are actually played with. The children are very good at helping us weed out the duds and passing them on kids who would use them.
Our one bugaboo is clothing storage- we have a slew of friends we share hand me downs with and all of us have storage areas for bins of sized clothes. AND since we have such a weird range of ages, we seem to end up with more than others in our group.
Currently, I have a small room of my own from crafting– but the goal is for me to bug out of the room by the time my eldest girl turns 15– to make her a suite of her own in the room. We intend to put in a small bathroom in the basement for her to have alone. By the time she moves on to college, my eldest son will move to the suite.
we find that living in our smallish home is infinately doable– and we would never want for a McMansion!
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Thank you! We need to have MORE PEOPLE speak up for the joys and benefits of living in people-sized homes.
At 1860 s.f. carved into four bedrooms, my house seems too large for an aging singletarian–one of the bedrooms serves as the TV room, but…uhm…I don’t watch TV. The dog has taken up residence there. The other bedroom has evolved into a gigantic storage unit: stuff that won’t fit in the kitchen cabinets goes into some mostly empty bookshelves, and the closet, filled with brick-&-board shelving, serves as a linen closet & craft supply storage. The AC people told me it’s not a good idea to shut off the vents into any of the bedrooms, so they get air-conditioned through our 110-degree summers.
I sure could do with just two bedrooms, though I’d like them to be lots bigger than the maxi-closets I’m living with (seriously: some of the McMansions I’ve seen around here literally have air-conditioned closets the size of my master bedroom!).
Trouble is, I love the house–except for the two unused bedrooms, it has everything else I crave: gas stove, fireplace, swimming pool, xeriscapic (almost 0 maintenance) landscaping, shady and pleasant outdoor sitting areas, tile floors throughout, north-south orientation, bright and cheerful, one block from a large city park. Because the neighborhood is a buffer zone between an upscale district and a dangerously blighted area, and because a few of the homes are not maintained as well as they could be, the housing prices are slightly depressed. So, I could not buy anything comparable in an area that I’d like to live in for the amount I could earn by selling this house (assuming I could, which ain’t likely just now). The house is paid off, and I am not about to take on more debt as I’m snowboarding toward retirement.
If I stay in the metropolitan area, it leaves only one place with safe neighborhoods and well designed houses that I can afford: Sun City. And I don’t wanna live in Sun City! Guess I’ll stay put here, let the dust accumulate in the unused rooms, and wait till they carry me off to the nursing home.
Speaking of dream homes, if you’re up for the hassle of building and 2,000 square feet doesn’t seem too big, check this out: http://www.life.com/Life/dreamhouse/taliesin/taliesinplans.html
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We’re closing on our first house next week- a 1200 sq foot house on an acre. I strongly believe that a house brings a lifestyle right along with it, and the lifestyle of starting (and raising?) a family in a smallish space, with ample land outside to run, play, and garden, is the lifestyle we want to pursue. I look forward to learning to live in the space for the long-term, rather than accumulating stuff and “growing out of it”.
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Great post. My wife and I raised our 3 kids in a 2700 sq ft house on 18 acres. The kids are getting older and we’re now looking to build a cabin in the 1000-1200 sq ft range, and hopefully pay cash for it. One of the Log Cabin magazines had an article by Susan Susanka and I immediately went the library and got the Not So Big House as well as her other books. Great stuff and very timely. Thanks.
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My wife and I just moved into a new place. It’s around 1000sq feet with two bedrooms. My friends asked me “why not get something bigger? You two can afford it.” But the reality is, we don’t want it. This apt is centrally located, there are restuarants nearby that we like. It’s doesn’t cost too much to heat or cool and still has everything we need. It even has a spare bedroom which we currently use for an office but could be used as kids room if we decide to have them. The only reason we would want to move to a bigger property is so my wife could have her horses nearby, but even then the house itself would be small.
Gal
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I’ve been reading GRS for a while now, but this is the first post that moved me to reply, because it made me think back to a not-so-big house that I loved: my grandparents’ house.
When I was a child, their house was the center of the universe on Sundays. We were there each week after church, and there was no telling who would show up for lunch, coffee, dessert, or just “visitin’”. There was always room for everyone.
They did not even have a dining room, and yet, some of my fondest childhood memories are of squeezing in around grandma’s kitchen table for Sunday dinner.
The aluminum roof over the carport and the screen doors at front and back made Sunday afternoon thunderstorms sublime.
There was no central air (in Florida mind you) but I still long for the wall unit that used to lull me to sleep on her sofa.
Sadly, they passed away when I was 11. Out of curiosity, I looked up their house on the property appraiser’s website.
Their 2 bedroom, 1 bath house was 785 square feet.
How many of us would literally laugh at the thought of buying a 785-sqft house with no central air in central Florida? I probably would (my apartment is a little over 1,000). But in hindsight, it was the safest, coziest place I can remember.
I hope my future children will remember the house I eventually buy the same way. All we really need is a good kitchen table and our loved ones around it.
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I completely agree and have never wanted a huge house. I have 4 kids and they spend their day circulating around me like satellites, so what would be the point? LOL!
When they get on my nerves I just send them outside. But I have a question:
I’m about to move into an apartment, and I can’t find anyone willing to rent a two bedroom to a single (NON welfare) work at home Mom with 4 kids. They all say it’s too many bodies for that small of a space.
I think it’s MY job to define what kind of space we need, but anyhoo.
Any advice?
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I have just found a new savings goal. I must have one of those small glass houses in my back yard as my writing house! I can put chicken legs on the front and pretend I’m Baba Yaga!
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I bought a house that’s in the range of 1,500-1,600 square feet. It was a stretch when I bought it, but moving is expensive so I did it. It was more than I needed when I was single, but big enough to raise a family in. More importantly, it had nice woodwork, which gave it charm. The first thing I thought when I saw it was that it would be a good house for the rest of my life, and I really wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life there. (I was 28 at the time.)
And the location is awesome. I’m literally no more than 10 minutes away from anything I need on a daily basis, and most things are more like two minutes away.
The size of the house means the utilities are very affordable, taxes are low, and my wife and I don’t spend our lives maintaining the place. Whenever we’ve run short on space, we’ve been able to come up with creative solutions to the problem. The bedrooms are on the small side, but once kids are in the picture and they want/need more space, I’ll build lofts for them to sleep in. Then they’ll have the benefit of a big room at the price of a small one.
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[...] to add: There’s a good post on Get Rich Slowly about the growing of single-family homes in the U.S., and that bigger usually isn’t better. [...]
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I echo most of the sentiments here, with a twist. DH and I moved from a 1028 ft^2 house in northern California (no basement/one car garage) to a 1500 ft^2 bungalow in Wisconsin (basement + 2 car garage) 2 years ago. The yards are about the same size. We have a boy and a girl under 7.
At first, the space was amazing. Then came the increasing clutter from having all the space to put stuff. Of the 3 bedrooms, the kids share one, and the other is the “stuff room”. We have both a den (TV/toy room), a dining room, and and a living room on the main floor, and guess which room gets all the use? And then the taxes, utility, and maintenance costs? Yikes! And we’ve found that we need a regular housecleaning service to keep the peace. The house feels too big to me.
So, this weekend, we’re going to start shopping for the first of what we hope will be a few duplex properties. We’ll move into the first one and sell our house. As we accumulate additional properties, we’ll likely move among them, fixing them “in place”. Eventually, we’re shooting to take the kids on an extended tour of the US (and abroad if the dollar is healthier by then), and living in a rental will give us that flexibility, too.
I’m so looking forward to downsizing all the stuff we’ve accumulated in the two years we’ve been here. Also, knowing that we’ll be moving regularly will keep the volume of kept stuff in check.
We’re expecting to hear a lot about how little space we’re living in — I’ve actually had someone call our current house “a starter house”! We’ve been on the “Your Money or Your Life” train for a number of years, though, so we’re kind of used to that. DH and I find that we’re fine with the external judgment, so long as we have our “story straight” — we know why we’re doing what we’re doing, and we’re excited about our goals. If someone is going to make a comment about our lifestyle, we are happy to share our story — which, if it doesn’t convince them, at least prevents them from making another comment!
I really enjoy this blog — nice job.
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Our third child is due in two weeks, which means there will be five of us living in our house. And I work from home. We are at home nearly all day every day.
We just moved into a larger home (we’re renting it)–and I totally agree that more space isn’t necessarily good. It’s how the space is designed.
Too bad so many houses in south Denver are poorly designed tract homes.
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We bought a house to renovate while living in the Caribbean. Admittedly it was for an investment because we bought it at 50% of the price we will sell it for.
Its far too big for the two of us at 4500 square foot and we definitely rattle around in it. We never would have bought anything this big if we hadn’t planned on selling it after finishing the renovation.
After this, we will never live in a house that is more than 1700-2000 sq foot. It is definitely more expensive in terms of utilities and maintenance and we feel like we are just overwhelmed with all the things that need to be done. It also just seems so wasteful to have all this space we don’t use!
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I grew up in a tiny house (1200 sq ft or so) and it was a nightmare with brothers and sisters.
thank god it was on 3 acres, beacuse I would have killed them all if i had had no space of my own. Actually kidding, but I’m not sure all that togetherness was good for my psychologically either. People need space.
You may not appreciate your extra space, but if or when you ever have kids, they will.
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[...] over at Get Rich Slowly talks about how he no longer loves his big house and longs for the simpler days of his smaller [...]
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[...] Get Rich Slowly: Learning to Love the Not So Big House [...]
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“My values have changed,” I said. “I always thought I wanted a big house. I thought that was a sign of success. I don’t believe that anymore.”
You sound exactly like me – I regret buying my current house although I too don’t plan to move.
The problem with houses is that you don’t really know what you want until you’ve lived in a house for a while and then you realize that it was the right house – or maybe it wasn’t. Sometimes things change too – ie kids.
Mike
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[...] Rich Slowly discusses learning to love that not-so-big house. (He points out in a “tool tip” that he knows the house graph on that page is [...]
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Nice post.
The NPR guys screwed up the scaling on that graph. They enlarged the house icon according to the ratio of the areas instead of the square root of that ratio. It’s misleading because of that. The 2004 house looks huge compared to the 1950 house. You’re right in assessing that the square footage of the 2004 house as drawn in that image is about 5 times that of the 1950 house.
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[...] Rich Slowly posted on how to learn to love a house that isn’t so big. They found out that they fit better in their first house, which had over 400 sq ft less than their [...]
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I actually purchased The Not So Big House when it first came out so I paid way too much for it and my opinion is that The Not So Big House seemed kind of big and that I overpaid for a book that I should have borrowed or browsed instead of purchased. Nowadays I look intensely at photographs of real estate interiors and I think I wouldn’t mind renting for the rest of my life. It seems like it would always be cheaper than owning.
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p.s. Apart from cheapness of renting over owning, real estate porn pictures make the idea of ownership so transitory like the appeal of a beautiful woman. I like looking at the pictures (sometimes) but I don’t think I want to make the commitment to one place. I just don’t care.
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[...] Mighty Bargain Hunter had a response to our recent discussion here about the not-so-big house. “Our houses are bigger, but not that much bigger,” he writes. He’s really taking [...]
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I love the Tumbleweed houses, but they are just a bit too tiny for me, so I went looking for more examples of small, high-quality house designs. A firm I really liked is Ross Chapin Architects from Washington state. My favorite design is the Edgemoor House at 1292 sq. ft. The finish work is exquisite. Take a look at…
http://www.rosschapin.com/Plans/plans.html
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[...] JD talked about learning to love a less-than-large house. [...]
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I sold a 3,000 sq ft house where I lived alone and was burdened with cleaning, taxes, insurance, repairs, although I had a marvelous view and the place had great ambience. I bought a 750-sq foot 40′s retirement bungalow, lived in it for a year before deciding to stay, then constructed a carriage house at right angles, with a courtyard in the L, surrounded by privacy fence and plantings. I now have 1150 sq feet and an outdoor room. Easy cleaning, lower insurance and taxes, etc. A house this small can be fixed up at far lower cost for wallpaper, paint, draperies, blinds, tile, etc. It helps me be as relaxed and content as I dreamed of being. I feel healthier.
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[...] at Get Rich Slowly had a post on learning to love the not so big house. I couldn’t agree with him more. I’m both sympathetic to builders and buyers of [...]
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[...] politics, technology and other matters impacting the local real estate market. Thanks for visiting!Learning to love the not-so-big house. It’s not hard (and it’s cheaper, [...]
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I grew up in my family of 3 (age 10 to 20) in a 6,000 ft^2 house that saw most rooms not used (except to dust them), that was very difficult and expensive to keep up (utilities/taxes/maintenance)
I’m raising my family of 4 in under 1500 ft^2, and the living is cheap and easy (paid off house before age 40)
when you skip the McMansion it becomes much easier to meet your college fund/retirement/vacation home goals
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[...] I don’t feel weird. In Learning to Love the Not-So-Big House, the writer points to some other people who have down-sized their lives. The article also lists [...]
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I cannot ever imagine wanting bigger than we have. We have a cute well layed out 1200 sq ft 3 bedroom, 1 bath bungalow in a walkable neighborhood with a park less than 2 blocks away. the bank, library, trader joes, safeway, excellent sushi, thai, bars, churches, and many busses to downtown and beyond are literally all within a stone throw or 10 minute walk. biking is also quite decent from our home to 2 very cool districts and a 35 minute ride to downtown. the location and ability to afford the home with a lot to do nearby that doesnt require polluting in my car is what counts to my fiancee and I. Plus, we really do not want roomates in order to be able to afford more space than we need.
she talked of how she really wants to build a 2nd bathroom. ok, then I need to clean it! I am sure we can negotiate the use of the bathroom with our future child just fine. adding a bathroom is about as extravagant as I can imagine getting…
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So in a 40 sq ft house, do you sleep standing up? A twin bed is 18 sq ft (6 ft times 3 feet). Storage would have to be extremely efficient, and even then you’re using a laundromat and cooking outside. I’ll keep my 1100 sq ft house, thank you very much.
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My family of five will be moving from our 1,400 square foot home into one that is 800 square feet… and we couldn’t be more content aboout the change. We’ve learned the same thing–bigger is not always better.
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Not So Big, can be Not So Smart.
See my critique here: http://www.dreamhomedesignusa.com/not%20so%20big%20house%20susanka%20critique.htm
Ms. Susanka’s showhouse in the Baldwin Park Orlando subdivision has been sitting for sale for at least two years now, along with other larger and smaller homes. It is generally thought to be overpriced for the space it offers.
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