{"id":7281,"date":"2009-11-17T05:00:41","date_gmt":"2009-11-17T12:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/?p=7281"},"modified":"2019-05-29T02:18:32","modified_gmt":"2019-05-29T09:18:32","slug":"how-much-house-do-you-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/how-much-house-do-you-need\/","title":{"rendered":"How much house do you need?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For more than a decade, Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company<\/a> has lived in an 89 square-foot home<\/i>.<\/p>\n

His decision to live in a tiny house came from concerns about the effects a larger house would have on the environment, and his desire to not maintain a lot of unused or unusable space.<\/p>\n

Obviously Jay’s home is at the extreme<\/i> low end of how small one can go with living space, but it meets his needs and allows him to live the simple lifestyle he was seeking. While it may seem impossibly small to the majority of people, 89 square feet is Jay’s right-sized home.<\/p>\n

Contrast this with the average American home, which in 2004, was 2349 square feet, up from 1695 square feet in 1974. In 30 years, the size of kitchens<\/a> doubled, ground-floor ceilings grew by more than a foot, and bedrooms increased by 54 square feet. In 2004, the average family size was 2.6 people. Thirty years ago, it was 3.1 people. Our homes have been getting larger while our families are getting smaller.<\/b><\/p>\n

But earlier this year USA TODAY<\/i><\/a> reported a change in that trend:<\/p>\n

New homes, after doubling in size since 1960, are shrinking. Last year, for the first time in at least 10 years, the average square footage of single-family homes under construction fell dramatically, from 2,629 in the second quarter to 2,343 in the fourth quarter, Census data show.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The average size of a new home is approximately 15 percent smaller than it was just a year ago. Architects and designers believe this trend toward smaller homes was caused by the economic meltdown \u2014 but they expect it to be a lasting change.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Too Big, Too Small<\/span><\/h2>\n

I’ve mentioned that my husband and I will be building a home soon, and we’ve gone back and forth with our architect on several sketches, trying to find our right-sized home. Most of the designs have been appealing, but some have been bigger than we need, and others smaller.<\/p>\n

Buying or building too much home has a lot of drawbacks, including:<\/p>\n