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 website) 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.
In 2006, J.D. founded Get Rich Slowly to document his quest to get out of debt. Over time, he learned how to save and how to invest. Today, he's managed to reach early retirement! He wants to help you master your money — and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you reach your goals.
are you psychic, man? I just commented to the previous post, saying that I like your site for the personal aspect, and wondering if you’d have aspiration creep as you get more financially comfortable (I didn’t mention houses, but I was certainly thinking that your current place always sounds lovely), and boom, you post to that point! Top show!
As a single guy living in an 1,800 sq. ft house with two closed up rooms, I couldn’t agree more with this post. So much space, so little of me to occupy it. Of course, I didn’t buy the house expecting to occupy it alone, but now that there is a dearth of roommates, I’m starting to feel that it’s a waste… and the yard work! I definitely do not enjoy that aspect of home ownership. It’s odd that I wanted a big yard, but have hated yard work since I was a teenager. Can anyone say “keeping up with the Joneses” ?
I come from the other end of the spectrum, because right now it’s my husband and I and my daughter. We have a two bedroom, two bath place that is about 800 sq ft. Sometimes that seems quite small – especially when I would like some private time to myself and I can’t find it! lol We have even co-opted the screened in porch for private space at times, when it isn’t too hot (I live in FL).
We have discussed a slightly bigger house – I would like a guest room and my husband would like a study to write in, so one more bedroom would be nice. However, we’ve also discussed staying put. We don’t want children at our age, and my daughter is a teen who will leave home in a few years to go to college. We might just stay put and transform her bedroom into a guestroom/study…
Who knows? But I have never regretted not having a giant, empty space of a house that costs 3x to heat and cool what ours does. If I want a tile floor, I’ll put tile in.
Overall, our house is comfortable, snug even and in very good condition. The yard isn’t too large for us (I like to garden) to take care of. We certainly have no need to keep up with the Joneses.
In fact, the only major purchase I can foresee in the near term is a newer car, but that is because I am still driving my 1995 Nissan Altima and it might just be time…lol
One thing Julie mentions is that she thinks we’ll have to move in 10 years out of our house when we have had kids and theyre more grown. I dont think we will. The house is plenty big, even if its just a little bit bigger than the average size of a single family home in 1970.
Id think that having more space would lead me to have more clutter. In a smaller space, i want to clean it.
My wife and I live in a small house, less than 1000sqft, and it is great. It was cheap to buy, is cheap to heat, and cheap to maintain. Best of all, we can clean it top to bottom in 30 minutes!
Andrea >> Become a Consultant says18 October 2007 at 11:05
My family of four lives fairly comfortably in just over 1000 square feet. We plan to move to a bigger house in a few years, but we’ll probably rent out the basement and subsequently have about as much space as we do now. However, we will have a yard, less worry about windows, and the ability to reclaim the basement. In fact, if we rent out the basement, we’ll probably be paying less than we are now, even though the mortgage will double.
Funny you mention this. I live in a typical NYC apartment- small, cramped, strangely laid out (part of the ceiling in the bathroom is under a heating duct, and it’s only 6 feet high, including in the shower- my head brushes the celing while I shower). And I often dream of a “real” house- something big with lots and lots of room. But then I visit big houses and think, gee, what would I do with all this space! I wouldn’t know what to do.
My parents built their own house back in the mid 80’s, I’m not sure of the square footage, but it isn’t gigantic. With 3 kids there were plenty of people around all the time and they designed it so that there was one large family room/dining room/combined space out front with bedrooms in the back. This meant that the back half of the house could be much cooler/warmer in the winter/summer as everyone was mostly in the big common area. Being an earth burmed/ passive solar house it was very energy efficient. So an added benefit of a smaller house or one with a large common area is it forces you to interact with your family. I am amazed when I hear about kids with tv’s/computers in their rooms and their parents don’t know what they are up to all evening long. Growing up, the computer and tv were all in the big main room, so it was pretty tough to do something that wasn’t parental approved!
I love The Not So Big House. I’ll never buy a place that is larger than 1800 square feet. Too much to clean, too much to heat, too much. I always say I’d rather own a second vacation home than a larger house. I also read somewhere (nyt) that most couples that sell their large homes to “downsize” actually end up buying more square footage, just configured differently … i.e. a media room instead of a third bedroom or no stairs.
I live in a 2000 square foot house I bought just out of college. Rented the front rooms to fraternity brothers until I got married and then kicked them out, but that paid the mortgage for several years. Today I use most of the house, especially now that I have a daughter and another on the way, but during the married kidless years I just closed up the vents and kept the door closed – it was my big storage locker and as such heating and cooling costs were kept to a minimum of whatever seeped under the door crack (even then I stuck a towel along the door crack). At this point I don’t mind paying my little mortgage for the larger house because housing these days costs a bundle – I think buying larger than you need when first starting out comes in handy because when the kids come along you don’t have to move and your expenses are fixed.
The house itself is on about 10,000 square feet and I hardly do any yardwork! My secret was to be environmentally friendly as possible and buy california native plants that require little no no watering and getting rid of my lawn. Plus lots and lots of mulch. The yard at this point is virtually maintenance free except for going out and doing the occasional dead-heading of the flowers. Everything grows “natural” and I put in a series of flagstone paths on my own.
Now I have time for a couple of cool educational projects in the yard without having to worry about the “maintenance” projects or being a bad neighbor because my lawn isn’t mowed.
I’m all about the sustainable living – sure it costs more to set up (in order to produce my first egg it’s basically about $300) but in 2 years I’ll be saving money.
I my opinion, a big house and land can be beneficial in lowering costs, but you have to be able to put it to work for you. Just like any other asset you’ve got.
Earlier this year, I bought a 500-square-foot 1-bedroom condo. I LOVE it. It feels like the perfect size for one, and one of the best parts about it is how it really causes me to prioritize my purchases and even activities. I am constantly purgeing and streamlining the way I spend my time at home. And cleaning is a breeze.
I’ve read some of Sarah Susanka’s books and totally agree with her premise. My condo may be small, but it’s really smartly laid-out so it never FEELS too small, and it has some great architectural details. I’ve been inside some tract homes that have no mouldings and very few windows. They just feel like big boxes and usually don’t seem like they’d be very comfortable to live in. And I rarely get the impression that the homeowners are really using the square footage to its best advantage.
It shows how Japanese home and apartment dwellers have come up with ways to live comfortably in really small spaces. I especially like the staircase that has drawers in every riser — what a brilliant idea.
I grew up in a huge house with a lot of land so never had any desire to live in a big house: I was the one stuck doing all the cleaning and yard work. It took a few days of work just to mow and trim the lawn, and by the time I was done it was time to start over again! No thanks, small is beautiful. I live in a small house now but don’t have the slightest idea of how many square feet we have; when people ask me I just say “enough.”
There is also the hidden cost to relationships in a large home. In a smaller house, togetherness is somewhat enforced and as a result bonding occurs. With large houses the ability for all to go to separate areas to do their own thing is increased. As a result there is an unintentional tendency towards separation. With a smaller house, those same activities may occur but the individuals are closer to each other and thus bonds form.
I think my house is about 700 square feet (its a 2-bed terrace). Its interesting that American houses have increased in size as its generally perceived to be the case in the UK that new houses have got smaller over time.
I agree that bigger isn’t always better, but I would find it very hard to live in 40 square feet of space, although I suppose could learn to appreciate it with some adjustments.
I would love to custom-build a house on acreage. Our current home is much bigger than two people need but it was impossible to get all the features we wanted in a smaller house.
I have a 1200 sq foot house that was built in 1970. It’s in a nice working-class neighborhood that borders a lake-side community of much larger houses, and it’s appreciated at a reasonable rate. It didn’t “bubble” like so many other areas. I have three bedrooms, two tiny bathrooms, and a kitchen/living area. It is perfect for two people, and I could see a family easily raising two or three kids here too.
My SO sometimes talks about getting a bigger place, so he can have a larger workshop, a place to restore cars & boats, etc., but he always comes back to simply improving this house and finding ways to enjoy his hobbies without getting a $200K mortgage. It’s so economical compared to the lake-side McMansions just a few blocks over.
I don’t know the square footage on our apartment, but we’re “at capacity” — the dining table we bought was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back. It is now in our bedroom. But I guess that’s what happens in a 1-bedroom apartment — at least it’s not a studio. But, for two people, it’s a bit of a squeeze. It looks just a little bit ridiculous next to our bed.
The upside: We cannot buy a single other thing. Not one more thing. NOTHING more can fit in our dwelling. Every time I think of buying something, I can’t! It’s an awesome excuse! It’s an easy way to say NO when my boyfriend wants to, too! How much clearer could it be than that? It works especially well for me because both of my parents had psychological/organizational issues that made my growing up years full of unnecessary material goods. (For example, my father still keeps his divorce papers in a box in the middle of the living room even though they split 20 years ago and his girlfriend lives with him.)
The downside: We really want to be able to have a dog, but need to be careful to treat a third resident humanely in our tiny space. It would have to be a little resident, and we will have to make a very strong commitment to being outdoors a lot. It’s also not cheap: in Cambridge, our humble abode costs us as much in rent as a luxury loft in other cities.
This is just weird.. I spent 2 hours last night looking at floor plans. We used to live in a 1500 sqft house, recently moved to a 2400 sqft house, and we are wanting to build. I kept seeing plans that were ~2000 sqft that looked perfect, but I (and my wife) were thinking, why would we even think of building our dream home smaller than our current house. This post and people’s comments has really opened my eyes. I use 4 rooms in my house (kitchen, family room, master bedroom and bath.) That leaves a breakfast nook, formal dining room and 3 bedrooms I never use. Sure we use the dining-room once every 2 years, but that’s what, 1/712 of the time?!?
I’m really going to weigh the costs of having too big of a house. Think of the much better advantages (vacation home, traveling, early retirement, toys, etc) than just having a ridiculous house.
At the beginning of the week, I was thinking, I should post a story or a good comment, odds seem good to win a prize. I don’t really have a success story, I’ve never had to overcome credit card debt, haven’t made alot of money on an investment, etc. I decided to post to say thanks, thanks for my prize (see advantages listed above)
I live in a small house and the reason I chose to, apart from the obvious costs….I can see my children and they get to see me(now..i sometimes wonder!!). I believe that small space teaches everyone to be kind, sharing and keep us connected.
yes, small home is the best; efficient – not to mention easier to clean (calc your effective time and money spent on cleaning your house and start weeping). being a long-time aspiring engineer, even at a very young age, I was always on the efficiency/resources-are-limited clue-train like the info being spread by geologists hubert and such in the early ’80s, thanks to other teachers who were devout engineers (thanks a ton Patterson), so it was a natural choice to find a small house for us and the littles.
My best advice for people looking for smaller homes is to find one with adequate closet space for storage, it makes the house feel bigger, bold colors make rooms feel smaller, and to shop/buy furniture that is small – not that over sized furniture that is on display seemingly 90% of the time.
This is one of my biggest concerns in making major choices–what I want has changed a bit over the years and I fear when I make a big decision that I may change again and find that in just a few years the decision is not longer a good one for me. A risk we all must take I guess? Wish I had an answer for this one as we try to figure out where we want to live and hopefully settle down in for a long, long time.
“…it’s difficult for the present You to predict what will make the future You happy.”
SO true, and I’m trying to predict what the future ME will want. My fiance and I bought 4 acres of unimproved land, on which we plan to build a very unique home, likely strawbale, that is extremely energy efficient. I don’t plan to move from this home once it is built, so designing it is a huge undertaking. I know I don’t want anything big, that’s a given, which means really maximizing our space. We plan to have kids, we plan to have family over a lot (his family is huge), so we’ll need to be really creative.
I agree with the other points about small houses–they are energy efficient, promote togetherness (although I do plan to have “a room of her own” as Woolf recommends), less to clean, AND I don’t want to sink all of our money in a mortgage payment. I want to know that when we have kids, I don’t HAVE to work 40 hours a week if I choose not to. I’d also rather spend money traveling. It’s very important to me to structure my life so that the things I own don’t own me, though I’m constantly reminding myself of that when I’m tempted.
not apart but togetherment says18 October 2007 at 12:17
We (my wife and I) live in a 500 sq ft studio apartment that we LOVE. We have lived there for three years. It has every thing we need and nothing we do not. We are forced to NOT acquire useless stuff that just sits there wasting our money. We do not “store” anything (except papers in a little plastic hanging folder). If you haven’t used it in 6 months get RID of it. It is not doing anything for you. Because invariably studio apartments like ours are in large cities (we live in DC that’s in the District itself not the nebulous “district” that suburbanites use to refer to their villages beyond the reach of public transport), we find that our living space is not merely our “home” but in the numerous cafes, bars, restaurants, libraries, etc. that dot our neighborhood. So in fact, our “house” feels often like it has 200,000 sq ft, because it includes a large swath of public spaces too. When we have a child, we will no doubt move to a two-bedroom apartment, but we will never live in one of those faceless, ugly, quasi-neo-georgian-federal monstrosities that dot the suburban wasteland. You do not need 900 sq ft to be fully content. In fact, we are far happier and have far more free time than anyone we know who “owns” a house.
I bought a house built in the 1970s a few years ago (6) and it’s about the size you have in the picture. It’s a rancher with a finished basement with three bedrooms and 1 full and 2-1/2 baths. It’s way too much space for me. I don’t have a lot of junk, and people always think that I just moved in. I don’t know what I’d do with a bigger house, so until I have a family and dogs, I’m going to stay right where I am. I hate cleaning as it is!
I love that you bring this up because I haven’t bought my first house yet, and it’s somewhat of a relief to hear this perspective.
I currently live in a 800 square foot apartment that is very well-designed and wastes no space. It feels more spacious than many bigger homes I’ve been in.
(Aside to honeybee: I move to Cambridge in January… I’ll try keep your “upside” in mind!)
The graphic cracked me up, because our house was built in 1973 and is 1515 square feet. It’s 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. Up until this year, we’d used the extra bedroom as my office, a guest space, and storage — but now we’re expecting another child.
The purging we’ve done since we found out #2 was on his way has been really freeing. We have re-evaluated all the stuff we had stuffed in that room (and it was a lot), as well as the stuff in other areas of the house. We donated a lot of things, including taking so many books to the library that they are starting to flinch when they see us coming.
But truly, I don’t want more house. I like that we’re using the space we have more intelligently, and that actually makes cleaning and maintaining it easier on us.
Finding a small house that my wife and I both loved was a great thing for us. It was about half of what we supposedly “could” afford if “could” means 200% of your income. I’ve got it on a 15 year note and the mortgage is less than 13% of our combined take home pay. I’m shooting to pay it off in ten, and still put plenty towards retirement. (lets not start the great “should I pay off the house early” debate. Unless you want to 🙂 )
As other posters have noted, it is a great check against getting “stuff” that you don’t have room for. We thought we would just use it for a starter home, either to build up equity for the next one or to keep as a rental when we needed to step up after we had kids. Mother Nature took that variable out of the equation, so now we can just be happy with it. And we are.
Knowing that I could lose my job and my wife could still cover the mortgage (as a school teacher) is also great piece of mind.
Over the course of 4 years I spent at least a year or more in:
1) an average townhouse
2) a large 4 bedroom single family home
3) a 1 bedroom apartment.
I now believe that the only way to practically maintain a large house is if you either have a bunch kids old enough to help maintain it or hired help. The benefits of the smaller places are the low yard maintenance and utility bills. The only benefit I truly enjoyed of having a larger place was hosting parties (there is ample parking and room for all). If hosting parties is part of a hobby or business that generates you income, then it may be worth it. Otherwise I think a house should be like any other product we buy. Like J.D. said a few days ago, “Use it or Loose it”. Why pay all that money to maintain a house that no one is using?
I’m looking at getting a new place for just me right now. I have to admit, while the big numbers do hold a certain allure, I can’t imagine keeping up anything more than 1200-ish. Part of that size is from my want for a spare bedroom for guests.
But, for me, when I’m visiting others homes, the ones that I like the best are always the ones that feel like a home, regardless of the size. That’s what my real goal is, and that’s why having a spare bedroom always available is so important for me.
So many comments from people who don’t like big houses, and I don’t fit that bill. We are a family of 3 (plus 2 dogs, a cat and a guinnea pig) with 2300 square feet of 4 bedroom 2 baths.
Here’s the difference with us.
1. Our house is 85 years old in the city of St. Louis and is thus not contributing to the rise in the average home size. We are “recycling” by re-using perfectly good housing stock and maintaining it well.
2. Because it’s older, it was made to have public spaces. It’s not meant to have tv’s and computers in bedrooms and such. There is room, but electrical just won’t allow it, so we still spend more time with each other. Oh, and there’s no seperate Master Bath retreat like so many homes today either.
3. We actually LIKE being around each other! We don’t feel the need to go hide somewhere to get away.
4. One of the most important, working on house projects and the small yard is actually like meditation for me.
5. Being older and needing repairs, it wasn’t any more expensive to buy than a smaller new home. Yes, heating is more, but only because the boiler is also 85 years old and very inefficient.
Basically, it’s not the size of the house, it’s your needs for the house. Buy a house for the spaces it provides your family to interact, not to retreat.
The NPR McMansion report is a little misleading by drawing the conclusion that we are building bigger houses because our sensibility has changed.
There are some subtle supply/demand forces at work here too. We see a lot of people posting here that they are perfectly happy in a 900 – 1200 sqft house. The fact is that there are actually many houses that size available already and in the past there weren’t many larger houses to choose from. You either had a small family home or a mansion, no happy medium existed. But now we’re filling that gap. If a new home builder wants to sell a house one of their considerations is the relative availability of the particular house they’re trying to build. Why build a really nice 900 – 1200 sqft house when I could build a mediocre 2000+ sqft house for the same money and sell it for more? Why compete for buyers when I can select from them?
Some new house construction is aiming to just fill a niche in the market that is not yet saturated. Sure we are buying bigger cars, houses, buildings, etc… but not all of it is driven by simple consumer desire. A good amount of that desire is provided for us by clever marketing in the conference rooms of eager suppliers. Heck look at the ipod…there wasn’t really a desperate clamoring for portable music devices when the original came along. But when it did, we all of a sudden realized we needed it. A more potent example might be HDTV, we were just getting used to DVD quality when the HD craze hit and now we seem to have a desire to view HD content at any cost.
If you don’t want/need a big house don’t buy one. If we buy large houses because we can’t find small ones then we have a problem. At that point we are most definitely being under supplied by builders.
Where we have land, there’s a minimum sq. footage requirement of 2000 sq. ft. and we’ll be sticking around that.
I sew and my husband paints minis and we both game, so having rooms to do that stuff in is important to us. We live in about 1000 sq. ft. right now, and there’s not much extra room in here. I hate not having the room to spread out my sewing or him to paint.
For some folx, smaller works, for others, it doesn’t. It’s pretty relative.
I have a one bedroom apartment that’s tiny, tiny, tiny, but I love it. Three little rooms but three big closets! I have enough space to have everything I need, and just a little bit extra to make it charming. I’ve got crown molding, hardwood floors and great wall color, so I don’t need much decoration.
A family friend in New York had a tiny apartment for decades, and it always seemed so organized. I asked him his secret and he said, “Trash can by the door. Throw it out before you even take your shoes off and you’ll be just fine.”
We moved from a drafty open ranch on 1/2 acre in rural Indiana to a condo near Chicago. We went from almost $200 heating bills to about $60 and cooling bills were also cut in half. I do miss having a yard and we would like to move up to a larger townhouse with a nice patio to compensate until we can afford a house again. I also am a sewer/crafter who would like to have my own business which means I really miss my extra studio room in my house. Right now it is in what is supposed to be a dining room. We would never be able to entertain like we did in out house and we can’t be in the rotation for family holiday events anymore. I don’t miss the heating bills but I do miss the space although I cannot see having more than 2000 square feet other than a basement to put a game room for my husband who swears none of the house is actually his.
My wife and I recently decided not to “upgrade” to a larger house for these exact reasons. We decided we would be fine where we are right now. It is just the two of us for the time being. Eventually we will have kids and reevaluate our situation. Nice post.
Yes, yes!! I wish I had been reading information about this and thinking this while I was in college, but it wouldn’t have changed where I am today.
My dad was a realtor and said to buy the biggest house you can afford. I’m glad I didn’t follow his advice! I ended up buying a house mainly because a relative was selling it, and I’m so glad I did. Had I gone out to buy the biggest, nicest house I could “afford”, my mortgage would be atrocious.
I didn’t love the house, but it was acceptable, close to work, and the mortgage payments were really nice. Now I love the house more and more every day. It’s a 1970’s 1500 sq foot house with a very open floor plan. I have been remodeling it (paint, new floors, etc) to have an inside that makes it feel more like home. Yet, even with two people here, there are still two bedrooms and one bathroom we really don’t use.
The more I read articles like this, the longer term I see staying in this house. There are great stores and restaurants filling in former empty spaces, and all within biking distance. Downtown isn’t that far by bike or car. We may even be getting a commuter rail stop within a mile or two in the future.
Of course, a realtor isn’t about to point out these things to a new couple looking for their first home. They’re going to try to steer them to the bigger houses because it’ll bring in more money. That’s why we need articles like this to reach out and give a different perspective to people!
Really thought-provoking! My boyfriend and I are currently building our first house, and it’s about 1800 sq ft. We were strongly influenced by Sarah Susanka, and also by the Japanese design book that Brad mentioned (you can see a garden plan from that book that we implemented here: http://www.albo-rae.com/blogs/house/index.php?s=step+garden).
My BF grew up in very small houses that his parents built or renovated, and they had a large common room, and small bedrooms, so everyone spent time together. I still see that family closeness reflected when I’m with them now. In contrast, my family had a large Victorian with lots of separate rooms, and our general mode of relaxation was to all go off and do separate things in our own rooms.
As we’re trying to be as green & energy efficient as possible, we’re keeping our new house small, but it’s nice to know that it’s a more social arrangement, too. I’m happy to see that even the readers who like bigger houses have well-considered reasons for it – no McMansions around here!
I am on edge about what I want. Part of me loves living in the city and having a nice apartment in a nice high rise. the other part of me wants a cozy house (around 1300-1500 sf) on a chunk of land because I like dogs, big dogs. Im only 22 so I have a lot of time before i make my choices, and where I live (Hawaii) if I want that house on a chunk of land, it will probably cost me a million bucks (not exaggerating…land prices here are ridiculous). What will probably happen is I will get an apartment, then save up for the land and build on it, then rent out my apartment. I want kids and a family so Ill need a 2-3 bedroom apartment, and when I build my house I will want an office to run my business out of.
I agree; we need to think smaller for many reasons. From macro to micro, you just get more when you think small. Ironic I know. More time (less cleaning), more places to visit (density encourages parks and retail), more money (to save or spend), etc. I am an architect and deal with this issue all of the time – it’s hard to convince builders to think this way when they haven’t experienced it themselves. Per square foot cost is definitely more important to them. More square footage means less cost per square foot. It’s tough to find new smaller homes.
2 Resources for building smaller homes:
cottagecompany.com in Seattle have perfected this concept in many ways. Infill small courtyard developments. http://www.homepatterns.com is my own site. We try to create smaller bungalow home plans that fit into infill situations as well.
I bought one of the early models and completely love these things. They vacuum “OK”, but it keeps the floors clean and I schedule it to run when I’m not home, so my house stays clean as if by “magic”.
There have been mixed reviews all over the place and it’s really not a replacement for a true vacuum cleaner, but it does cut down on the cleaning and leaves more time for leisure…
“There is also the hidden cost to relationships in a large home. In a smaller house, togetherness is somewhat enforced and as a result bonding occurs. With large houses the ability for all to go to separate areas to do their own thing is increased. As a result there is an unintentional tendency towards separation. With a smaller house, those same activities may occur but the individuals are closer to each other and thus bonds form.”
I read an article recently about exactly that. There was a new home show where the reporter saw the “ultimate” family home, and it was designed to provide maximum separation. They had separate bathrooms, multiple televisions, separate game rooms and living rooms and computer rooms–basically so that an entire family could live “together” without having to actually see each other. Very very odd.
One question I have for JD is why do you have to heat and furnish and clean the rooms you don’t use? Seal them up. Use them for storage. Turn the heat off and forget about them.
I don’t own a house yet, but i’ve always dreamed of a two story house. as time has gone by and i’ve shopped for homes, (I live in california so despite being 4/5 of the way to 6 figures i can’t afford to buy) I’ve realized that if i do get a large place in my current situation (single no kids) All that room is an invitation to create clutter/ store stuff. I’m coming to embrace the necessity of buying a smaller place and making it work for me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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!
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
Carrie at NaturalMomsTalkRadio says19 October 2007 at 09:52
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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
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…
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.
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.
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.
Great perspective here. I have noticed some of these things both from the perspective of being a homeowner and also being a contractor who improves people’s homes.
My values and needs certainly have changed over time. I love living in a condo where I don’t need to worry about the outdoor maintenance, especially shoveling the driveway or mowing the lawn. Over time, less maintenance is just easier.
But, there certainly are trade-offs because I do have to pay common charges for the building maintenance. Nothing is free. But, I’m willing to pay for that to live in a building with a pool, parking lot and security guard.
There are 90 comments to "Learning to love the not-so-big house".
Great article. We always seem to want to live beyond our means.
are you psychic, man? I just commented to the previous post, saying that I like your site for the personal aspect, and wondering if you’d have aspiration creep as you get more financially comfortable (I didn’t mention houses, but I was certainly thinking that your current place always sounds lovely), and boom, you post to that point! Top show!
As a single guy living in an 1,800 sq. ft house with two closed up rooms, I couldn’t agree more with this post. So much space, so little of me to occupy it. Of course, I didn’t buy the house expecting to occupy it alone, but now that there is a dearth of roommates, I’m starting to feel that it’s a waste… and the yard work! I definitely do not enjoy that aspect of home ownership. It’s odd that I wanted a big yard, but have hated yard work since I was a teenager. Can anyone say “keeping up with the Joneses” ?
I come from the other end of the spectrum, because right now it’s my husband and I and my daughter. We have a two bedroom, two bath place that is about 800 sq ft. Sometimes that seems quite small – especially when I would like some private time to myself and I can’t find it! lol We have even co-opted the screened in porch for private space at times, when it isn’t too hot (I live in FL).
We have discussed a slightly bigger house – I would like a guest room and my husband would like a study to write in, so one more bedroom would be nice. However, we’ve also discussed staying put. We don’t want children at our age, and my daughter is a teen who will leave home in a few years to go to college. We might just stay put and transform her bedroom into a guestroom/study…
Who knows? But I have never regretted not having a giant, empty space of a house that costs 3x to heat and cool what ours does. If I want a tile floor, I’ll put tile in.
Overall, our house is comfortable, snug even and in very good condition. The yard isn’t too large for us (I like to garden) to take care of. We certainly have no need to keep up with the Joneses.
In fact, the only major purchase I can foresee in the near term is a newer car, but that is because I am still driving my 1995 Nissan Altima and it might just be time…lol
One thing Julie mentions is that she thinks we’ll have to move in 10 years out of our house when we have had kids and theyre more grown. I dont think we will. The house is plenty big, even if its just a little bit bigger than the average size of a single family home in 1970.
Id think that having more space would lead me to have more clutter. In a smaller space, i want to clean it.
My wife and I live in a small house, less than 1000sqft, and it is great. It was cheap to buy, is cheap to heat, and cheap to maintain. Best of all, we can clean it top to bottom in 30 minutes!
My family of four lives fairly comfortably in just over 1000 square feet. We plan to move to a bigger house in a few years, but we’ll probably rent out the basement and subsequently have about as much space as we do now. However, we will have a yard, less worry about windows, and the ability to reclaim the basement. In fact, if we rent out the basement, we’ll probably be paying less than we are now, even though the mortgage will double.
Funny you mention this. I live in a typical NYC apartment- small, cramped, strangely laid out (part of the ceiling in the bathroom is under a heating duct, and it’s only 6 feet high, including in the shower- my head brushes the celing while I shower). And I often dream of a “real” house- something big with lots and lots of room. But then I visit big houses and think, gee, what would I do with all this space! I wouldn’t know what to do.
My parents built their own house back in the mid 80’s, I’m not sure of the square footage, but it isn’t gigantic. With 3 kids there were plenty of people around all the time and they designed it so that there was one large family room/dining room/combined space out front with bedrooms in the back. This meant that the back half of the house could be much cooler/warmer in the winter/summer as everyone was mostly in the big common area. Being an earth burmed/ passive solar house it was very energy efficient. So an added benefit of a smaller house or one with a large common area is it forces you to interact with your family. I am amazed when I hear about kids with tv’s/computers in their rooms and their parents don’t know what they are up to all evening long. Growing up, the computer and tv were all in the big main room, so it was pretty tough to do something that wasn’t parental approved!
I love The Not So Big House. I’ll never buy a place that is larger than 1800 square feet. Too much to clean, too much to heat, too much. I always say I’d rather own a second vacation home than a larger house. I also read somewhere (nyt) that most couples that sell their large homes to “downsize” actually end up buying more square footage, just configured differently … i.e. a media room instead of a third bedroom or no stairs.
Great post.
I have the same thoughts, then I realize the undercover expenses
higher property taxes
higher utilities
more to furnish
more maintenance
…as you said.
Sometimes it’s better to appreciate what you have.
I live in a 2000 square foot house I bought just out of college. Rented the front rooms to fraternity brothers until I got married and then kicked them out, but that paid the mortgage for several years. Today I use most of the house, especially now that I have a daughter and another on the way, but during the married kidless years I just closed up the vents and kept the door closed – it was my big storage locker and as such heating and cooling costs were kept to a minimum of whatever seeped under the door crack (even then I stuck a towel along the door crack). At this point I don’t mind paying my little mortgage for the larger house because housing these days costs a bundle – I think buying larger than you need when first starting out comes in handy because when the kids come along you don’t have to move and your expenses are fixed.
The house itself is on about 10,000 square feet and I hardly do any yardwork! My secret was to be environmentally friendly as possible and buy california native plants that require little no no watering and getting rid of my lawn. Plus lots and lots of mulch. The yard at this point is virtually maintenance free except for going out and doing the occasional dead-heading of the flowers. Everything grows “natural” and I put in a series of flagstone paths on my own.
Now I have time for a couple of cool educational projects in the yard without having to worry about the “maintenance” projects or being a bad neighbor because my lawn isn’t mowed.
One of my projects I’m working on right now is my very own chicken coop ( I post the progress here occasionally: http://iedaddy.wordpress.com/projects-around-the-house/the-chicken-coop/ )
I’m all about the sustainable living – sure it costs more to set up (in order to produce my first egg it’s basically about $300) but in 2 years I’ll be saving money.
I my opinion, a big house and land can be beneficial in lowering costs, but you have to be able to put it to work for you. Just like any other asset you’ve got.
Earlier this year, I bought a 500-square-foot 1-bedroom condo. I LOVE it. It feels like the perfect size for one, and one of the best parts about it is how it really causes me to prioritize my purchases and even activities. I am constantly purgeing and streamlining the way I spend my time at home. And cleaning is a breeze.
I’ve read some of Sarah Susanka’s books and totally agree with her premise. My condo may be small, but it’s really smartly laid-out so it never FEELS too small, and it has some great architectural details. I’ve been inside some tract homes that have no mouldings and very few windows. They just feel like big boxes and usually don’t seem like they’d be very comfortable to live in. And I rarely get the impression that the homeowners are really using the square footage to its best advantage.
I found the “Not So Big House” books a bit too high-end and designery for my tastes, but this book about Japanese houses is truly inspiring:
Space: Japanese Design Solutions, by Michael Freeman.
It shows how Japanese home and apartment dwellers have come up with ways to live comfortably in really small spaces. I especially like the staircase that has drawers in every riser — what a brilliant idea.
I grew up in a huge house with a lot of land so never had any desire to live in a big house: I was the one stuck doing all the cleaning and yard work. It took a few days of work just to mow and trim the lawn, and by the time I was done it was time to start over again! No thanks, small is beautiful. I live in a small house now but don’t have the slightest idea of how many square feet we have; when people ask me I just say “enough.”
There is also the hidden cost to relationships in a large home. In a smaller house, togetherness is somewhat enforced and as a result bonding occurs. With large houses the ability for all to go to separate areas to do their own thing is increased. As a result there is an unintentional tendency towards separation. With a smaller house, those same activities may occur but the individuals are closer to each other and thus bonds form.
I think my house is about 700 square feet (its a 2-bed terrace). Its interesting that American houses have increased in size as its generally perceived to be the case in the UK that new houses have got smaller over time.
I agree that bigger isn’t always better, but I would find it very hard to live in 40 square feet of space, although I suppose could learn to appreciate it with some adjustments.
I would love to custom-build a house on acreage. Our current home is much bigger than two people need but it was impossible to get all the features we wanted in a smaller house.
I have a 1200 sq foot house that was built in 1970. It’s in a nice working-class neighborhood that borders a lake-side community of much larger houses, and it’s appreciated at a reasonable rate. It didn’t “bubble” like so many other areas. I have three bedrooms, two tiny bathrooms, and a kitchen/living area. It is perfect for two people, and I could see a family easily raising two or three kids here too.
My SO sometimes talks about getting a bigger place, so he can have a larger workshop, a place to restore cars & boats, etc., but he always comes back to simply improving this house and finding ways to enjoy his hobbies without getting a $200K mortgage. It’s so economical compared to the lake-side McMansions just a few blocks over.
I don’t know the square footage on our apartment, but we’re “at capacity” — the dining table we bought was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back. It is now in our bedroom. But I guess that’s what happens in a 1-bedroom apartment — at least it’s not a studio. But, for two people, it’s a bit of a squeeze. It looks just a little bit ridiculous next to our bed.
The upside: We cannot buy a single other thing. Not one more thing. NOTHING more can fit in our dwelling. Every time I think of buying something, I can’t! It’s an awesome excuse! It’s an easy way to say NO when my boyfriend wants to, too! How much clearer could it be than that? It works especially well for me because both of my parents had psychological/organizational issues that made my growing up years full of unnecessary material goods. (For example, my father still keeps his divorce papers in a box in the middle of the living room even though they split 20 years ago and his girlfriend lives with him.)
The downside: We really want to be able to have a dog, but need to be careful to treat a third resident humanely in our tiny space. It would have to be a little resident, and we will have to make a very strong commitment to being outdoors a lot. It’s also not cheap: in Cambridge, our humble abode costs us as much in rent as a luxury loft in other cities.
This is just weird.. I spent 2 hours last night looking at floor plans. We used to live in a 1500 sqft house, recently moved to a 2400 sqft house, and we are wanting to build. I kept seeing plans that were ~2000 sqft that looked perfect, but I (and my wife) were thinking, why would we even think of building our dream home smaller than our current house. This post and people’s comments has really opened my eyes. I use 4 rooms in my house (kitchen, family room, master bedroom and bath.) That leaves a breakfast nook, formal dining room and 3 bedrooms I never use. Sure we use the dining-room once every 2 years, but that’s what, 1/712 of the time?!?
I’m really going to weigh the costs of having too big of a house. Think of the much better advantages (vacation home, traveling, early retirement, toys, etc) than just having a ridiculous house.
At the beginning of the week, I was thinking, I should post a story or a good comment, odds seem good to win a prize. I don’t really have a success story, I’ve never had to overcome credit card debt, haven’t made alot of money on an investment, etc. I decided to post to say thanks, thanks for my prize (see advantages listed above)
I live in a small house and the reason I chose to, apart from the obvious costs….I can see my children and they get to see me(now..i sometimes wonder!!). I believe that small space teaches everyone to be kind, sharing and keep us connected.
Minimalism is definitely an interest of mine. Thanks for sharing both the article and the links…very interesting stuff!
yes, small home is the best; efficient – not to mention easier to clean (calc your effective time and money spent on cleaning your house and start weeping). being a long-time aspiring engineer, even at a very young age, I was always on the efficiency/resources-are-limited clue-train like the info being spread by geologists hubert and such in the early ’80s, thanks to other teachers who were devout engineers (thanks a ton Patterson), so it was a natural choice to find a small house for us and the littles.
My best advice for people looking for smaller homes is to find one with adequate closet space for storage, it makes the house feel bigger, bold colors make rooms feel smaller, and to shop/buy furniture that is small – not that over sized furniture that is on display seemingly 90% of the time.
This is one of my biggest concerns in making major choices–what I want has changed a bit over the years and I fear when I make a big decision that I may change again and find that in just a few years the decision is not longer a good one for me. A risk we all must take I guess? Wish I had an answer for this one as we try to figure out where we want to live and hopefully settle down in for a long, long time.
“…it’s difficult for the present You to predict what will make the future You happy.”
SO true, and I’m trying to predict what the future ME will want. My fiance and I bought 4 acres of unimproved land, on which we plan to build a very unique home, likely strawbale, that is extremely energy efficient. I don’t plan to move from this home once it is built, so designing it is a huge undertaking. I know I don’t want anything big, that’s a given, which means really maximizing our space. We plan to have kids, we plan to have family over a lot (his family is huge), so we’ll need to be really creative.
I agree with the other points about small houses–they are energy efficient, promote togetherness (although I do plan to have “a room of her own” as Woolf recommends), less to clean, AND I don’t want to sink all of our money in a mortgage payment. I want to know that when we have kids, I don’t HAVE to work 40 hours a week if I choose not to. I’d also rather spend money traveling. It’s very important to me to structure my life so that the things I own don’t own me, though I’m constantly reminding myself of that when I’m tempted.
We (my wife and I) live in a 500 sq ft studio apartment that we LOVE. We have lived there for three years. It has every thing we need and nothing we do not. We are forced to NOT acquire useless stuff that just sits there wasting our money. We do not “store” anything (except papers in a little plastic hanging folder). If you haven’t used it in 6 months get RID of it. It is not doing anything for you. Because invariably studio apartments like ours are in large cities (we live in DC that’s in the District itself not the nebulous “district” that suburbanites use to refer to their villages beyond the reach of public transport), we find that our living space is not merely our “home” but in the numerous cafes, bars, restaurants, libraries, etc. that dot our neighborhood. So in fact, our “house” feels often like it has 200,000 sq ft, because it includes a large swath of public spaces too. When we have a child, we will no doubt move to a two-bedroom apartment, but we will never live in one of those faceless, ugly, quasi-neo-georgian-federal monstrosities that dot the suburban wasteland. You do not need 900 sq ft to be fully content. In fact, we are far happier and have far more free time than anyone we know who “owns” a house.
I bought a house built in the 1970s a few years ago (6) and it’s about the size you have in the picture. It’s a rancher with a finished basement with three bedrooms and 1 full and 2-1/2 baths. It’s way too much space for me. I don’t have a lot of junk, and people always think that I just moved in. I don’t know what I’d do with a bigger house, so until I have a family and dogs, I’m going to stay right where I am. I hate cleaning as it is!
I love that you bring this up because I haven’t bought my first house yet, and it’s somewhat of a relief to hear this perspective.
I currently live in a 800 square foot apartment that is very well-designed and wastes no space. It feels more spacious than many bigger homes I’ve been in.
(Aside to honeybee: I move to Cambridge in January… I’ll try keep your “upside” in mind!)
The graphic cracked me up, because our house was built in 1973 and is 1515 square feet. It’s 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. Up until this year, we’d used the extra bedroom as my office, a guest space, and storage — but now we’re expecting another child.
The purging we’ve done since we found out #2 was on his way has been really freeing. We have re-evaluated all the stuff we had stuffed in that room (and it was a lot), as well as the stuff in other areas of the house. We donated a lot of things, including taking so many books to the library that they are starting to flinch when they see us coming.
But truly, I don’t want more house. I like that we’re using the space we have more intelligently, and that actually makes cleaning and maintaining it easier on us.
Finding a small house that my wife and I both loved was a great thing for us. It was about half of what we supposedly “could” afford if “could” means 200% of your income. I’ve got it on a 15 year note and the mortgage is less than 13% of our combined take home pay. I’m shooting to pay it off in ten, and still put plenty towards retirement. (lets not start the great “should I pay off the house early” debate. Unless you want to 🙂 )
As other posters have noted, it is a great check against getting “stuff” that you don’t have room for. We thought we would just use it for a starter home, either to build up equity for the next one or to keep as a rental when we needed to step up after we had kids. Mother Nature took that variable out of the equation, so now we can just be happy with it. And we are.
Knowing that I could lose my job and my wife could still cover the mortgage (as a school teacher) is also great piece of mind.
Over the course of 4 years I spent at least a year or more in:
1) an average townhouse
2) a large 4 bedroom single family home
3) a 1 bedroom apartment.
I now believe that the only way to practically maintain a large house is if you either have a bunch kids old enough to help maintain it or hired help. The benefits of the smaller places are the low yard maintenance and utility bills. The only benefit I truly enjoyed of having a larger place was hosting parties (there is ample parking and room for all). If hosting parties is part of a hobby or business that generates you income, then it may be worth it. Otherwise I think a house should be like any other product we buy. Like J.D. said a few days ago, “Use it or Loose it”. Why pay all that money to maintain a house that no one is using?
I’m looking at getting a new place for just me right now. I have to admit, while the big numbers do hold a certain allure, I can’t imagine keeping up anything more than 1200-ish. Part of that size is from my want for a spare bedroom for guests.
But, for me, when I’m visiting others homes, the ones that I like the best are always the ones that feel like a home, regardless of the size. That’s what my real goal is, and that’s why having a spare bedroom always available is so important for me.
So many comments from people who don’t like big houses, and I don’t fit that bill. We are a family of 3 (plus 2 dogs, a cat and a guinnea pig) with 2300 square feet of 4 bedroom 2 baths.
Here’s the difference with us.
1. Our house is 85 years old in the city of St. Louis and is thus not contributing to the rise in the average home size. We are “recycling” by re-using perfectly good housing stock and maintaining it well.
2. Because it’s older, it was made to have public spaces. It’s not meant to have tv’s and computers in bedrooms and such. There is room, but electrical just won’t allow it, so we still spend more time with each other. Oh, and there’s no seperate Master Bath retreat like so many homes today either.
3. We actually LIKE being around each other! We don’t feel the need to go hide somewhere to get away.
4. One of the most important, working on house projects and the small yard is actually like meditation for me.
5. Being older and needing repairs, it wasn’t any more expensive to buy than a smaller new home. Yes, heating is more, but only because the boiler is also 85 years old and very inefficient.
Basically, it’s not the size of the house, it’s your needs for the house. Buy a house for the spaces it provides your family to interact, not to retreat.
The NPR McMansion report is a little misleading by drawing the conclusion that we are building bigger houses because our sensibility has changed.
There are some subtle supply/demand forces at work here too. We see a lot of people posting here that they are perfectly happy in a 900 – 1200 sqft house. The fact is that there are actually many houses that size available already and in the past there weren’t many larger houses to choose from. You either had a small family home or a mansion, no happy medium existed. But now we’re filling that gap. If a new home builder wants to sell a house one of their considerations is the relative availability of the particular house they’re trying to build. Why build a really nice 900 – 1200 sqft house when I could build a mediocre 2000+ sqft house for the same money and sell it for more? Why compete for buyers when I can select from them?
Some new house construction is aiming to just fill a niche in the market that is not yet saturated. Sure we are buying bigger cars, houses, buildings, etc… but not all of it is driven by simple consumer desire. A good amount of that desire is provided for us by clever marketing in the conference rooms of eager suppliers. Heck look at the ipod…there wasn’t really a desperate clamoring for portable music devices when the original came along. But when it did, we all of a sudden realized we needed it. A more potent example might be HDTV, we were just getting used to DVD quality when the HD craze hit and now we seem to have a desire to view HD content at any cost.
If you don’t want/need a big house don’t buy one. If we buy large houses because we can’t find small ones then we have a problem. At that point we are most definitely being under supplied by builders.
Where we have land, there’s a minimum sq. footage requirement of 2000 sq. ft. and we’ll be sticking around that.
I sew and my husband paints minis and we both game, so having rooms to do that stuff in is important to us. We live in about 1000 sq. ft. right now, and there’s not much extra room in here. I hate not having the room to spread out my sewing or him to paint.
For some folx, smaller works, for others, it doesn’t. It’s pretty relative.
I have a one bedroom apartment that’s tiny, tiny, tiny, but I love it. Three little rooms but three big closets! I have enough space to have everything I need, and just a little bit extra to make it charming. I’ve got crown molding, hardwood floors and great wall color, so I don’t need much decoration.
A family friend in New York had a tiny apartment for decades, and it always seemed so organized. I asked him his secret and he said, “Trash can by the door. Throw it out before you even take your shoes off and you’ll be just fine.”
We moved from a drafty open ranch on 1/2 acre in rural Indiana to a condo near Chicago. We went from almost $200 heating bills to about $60 and cooling bills were also cut in half. I do miss having a yard and we would like to move up to a larger townhouse with a nice patio to compensate until we can afford a house again. I also am a sewer/crafter who would like to have my own business which means I really miss my extra studio room in my house. Right now it is in what is supposed to be a dining room. We would never be able to entertain like we did in out house and we can’t be in the rotation for family holiday events anymore. I don’t miss the heating bills but I do miss the space although I cannot see having more than 2000 square feet other than a basement to put a game room for my husband who swears none of the house is actually his.
Seeing a McMansion “great room,” my first thought is always how are you going to clean the cobwebs in those ceiling corners.
My wife and I recently decided not to “upgrade” to a larger house for these exact reasons. We decided we would be fine where we are right now. It is just the two of us for the time being. Eventually we will have kids and reevaluate our situation. Nice post.
Yes, yes!! I wish I had been reading information about this and thinking this while I was in college, but it wouldn’t have changed where I am today.
My dad was a realtor and said to buy the biggest house you can afford. I’m glad I didn’t follow his advice! I ended up buying a house mainly because a relative was selling it, and I’m so glad I did. Had I gone out to buy the biggest, nicest house I could “afford”, my mortgage would be atrocious.
I didn’t love the house, but it was acceptable, close to work, and the mortgage payments were really nice. Now I love the house more and more every day. It’s a 1970’s 1500 sq foot house with a very open floor plan. I have been remodeling it (paint, new floors, etc) to have an inside that makes it feel more like home. Yet, even with two people here, there are still two bedrooms and one bathroom we really don’t use.
The more I read articles like this, the longer term I see staying in this house. There are great stores and restaurants filling in former empty spaces, and all within biking distance. Downtown isn’t that far by bike or car. We may even be getting a commuter rail stop within a mile or two in the future.
Of course, a realtor isn’t about to point out these things to a new couple looking for their first home. They’re going to try to steer them to the bigger houses because it’ll bring in more money. That’s why we need articles like this to reach out and give a different perspective to people!
Exactly the info I was looking for in the regular forum. Maybe retiring into MUCH smaller is not such a bad idea after all
JD also
Really thought-provoking! My boyfriend and I are currently building our first house, and it’s about 1800 sq ft. We were strongly influenced by Sarah Susanka, and also by the Japanese design book that Brad mentioned (you can see a garden plan from that book that we implemented here: http://www.albo-rae.com/blogs/house/index.php?s=step+garden).
My BF grew up in very small houses that his parents built or renovated, and they had a large common room, and small bedrooms, so everyone spent time together. I still see that family closeness reflected when I’m with them now. In contrast, my family had a large Victorian with lots of separate rooms, and our general mode of relaxation was to all go off and do separate things in our own rooms.
As we’re trying to be as green & energy efficient as possible, we’re keeping our new house small, but it’s nice to know that it’s a more social arrangement, too. I’m happy to see that even the readers who like bigger houses have well-considered reasons for it – no McMansions around here!
I am on edge about what I want. Part of me loves living in the city and having a nice apartment in a nice high rise. the other part of me wants a cozy house (around 1300-1500 sf) on a chunk of land because I like dogs, big dogs. Im only 22 so I have a lot of time before i make my choices, and where I live (Hawaii) if I want that house on a chunk of land, it will probably cost me a million bucks (not exaggerating…land prices here are ridiculous). What will probably happen is I will get an apartment, then save up for the land and build on it, then rent out my apartment. I want kids and a family so Ill need a 2-3 bedroom apartment, and when I build my house I will want an office to run my business out of.
I agree; we need to think smaller for many reasons. From macro to micro, you just get more when you think small. Ironic I know. More time (less cleaning), more places to visit (density encourages parks and retail), more money (to save or spend), etc. I am an architect and deal with this issue all of the time – it’s hard to convince builders to think this way when they haven’t experienced it themselves. Per square foot cost is definitely more important to them. More square footage means less cost per square foot. It’s tough to find new smaller homes.
2 Resources for building smaller homes:
cottagecompany.com in Seattle have perfected this concept in many ways. Infill small courtyard developments.
http://www.homepatterns.com is my own site. We try to create smaller bungalow home plans that fit into infill situations as well.
Ok, just because it’s been posted about how everybody hates to clean so much and because I am a big techno-geek. Check out the Roomba!
http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=122
I bought one of the early models and completely love these things. They vacuum “OK”, but it keeps the floors clean and I schedule it to run when I’m not home, so my house stays clean as if by “magic”.
There have been mixed reviews all over the place and it’s really not a replacement for a true vacuum cleaner, but it does cut down on the cleaning and leaves more time for leisure…
“There is also the hidden cost to relationships in a large home. In a smaller house, togetherness is somewhat enforced and as a result bonding occurs. With large houses the ability for all to go to separate areas to do their own thing is increased. As a result there is an unintentional tendency towards separation. With a smaller house, those same activities may occur but the individuals are closer to each other and thus bonds form.”
I read an article recently about exactly that. There was a new home show where the reporter saw the “ultimate” family home, and it was designed to provide maximum separation. They had separate bathrooms, multiple televisions, separate game rooms and living rooms and computer rooms–basically so that an entire family could live “together” without having to actually see each other. Very very odd.
One question I have for JD is why do you have to heat and furnish and clean the rooms you don’t use? Seal them up. Use them for storage. Turn the heat off and forget about them.
Uh, JD? Put only business stuff in those unused rooms. Presto magic tax write-off.
Good time to really think about these things.
Currently I live in a 1400sf condo, 2 bedroom + den, and its way to big.
Considering purchasing a house to rent out and build a second building on the property that would be a mini house of 600 ish sq
Do we really need all that space ? It just piles up with stuff.
I don’t own a house yet, but i’ve always dreamed of a two story house. as time has gone by and i’ve shopped for homes, (I live in california so despite being 4/5 of the way to 6 figures i can’t afford to buy) I’ve realized that if i do get a large place in my current situation (single no kids) All that room is an invitation to create clutter/ store stuff. I’m coming to embrace the necessity of buying a smaller place and making it work for me.
Did I miss something? None of the plans on that website (Tumbleweed Tiny House) had tubs or showers…they are really cabins.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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./
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.
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.
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!
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
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”.
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.
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
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.
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?
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
“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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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…
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.
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.
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.
Great perspective here. I have noticed some of these things both from the perspective of being a homeowner and also being a contractor who improves people’s homes.
My values and needs certainly have changed over time. I love living in a condo where I don’t need to worry about the outdoor maintenance, especially shoveling the driveway or mowing the lawn. Over time, less maintenance is just easier.
But, there certainly are trade-offs because I do have to pay common charges for the building maintenance. Nothing is free. But, I’m willing to pay for that to live in a building with a pool, parking lot and security guard.