5 Reasons We Love Living Small
Over the last couple of weeks, we got to thinking about what it’s like to live in a 450 square foot house. And you know what? At this point in our lives, it’s absolutely perfect. Maybe some day when we have kids it won’t be. But even then, I wonder just how many square feet we’ll be looking at. Chances are, we’ll still be sticking on the smaller side because when you live in a smaller home…
1. You buy less stuff.
When you don’t have a lot of room in your house, you kind of lose the desire to buy new things. After all, where would you put the stuff? It’s a constant battle over getting rid of something you already have so you can make room for something new. So why not skip the department stores all together? I know our no-new-clothes summer challenge has been the perfect lesson. We buy less; we appreciate and use what we have.
2. You save money.
The cost of the home is cheaper. Utilities are cheaper. Taxes, insurance, mortgage or rent, remodels…. the list just goes on in ways you’ll spend less.
3. You work less.
If you can only spend 15 minutes cleaning your house every day, it makes a bigger impact in a small house. They’re so much easier to keep clean. Keeping up with maintenance is less work (and less expensive). In the end, you have more time to play and do the things you like.
4. Stuff stops owning you.
Sometimes we see the most beautiful airplanes. They’re mortgaged. So are the cars those people drive and the homes where they live. I think that’s perfectly fine until you spend most of your day just working to pay those bills. A small home and simpler lifestyle makes us feel like we’re not chained to work just to pay for what we want. We learn to want less.
5. You help the environment.
Small homes need fewer resources to build than a home of the exact quality that’s twice as big, obviously. They also use less energy to heat and fewer utilities since odds are our family is all in one room. Fewer resources = greener living.
Images are of our tiny kitchen that we remodeled last year with fresh basil and tomatoes from the grocery store. I find it strange (but oh so delicious!) to buy fresh herbs in small pots instead of in small, cut bundles wrapped with rubber bands. You can guess basil is going into everything!
What do you love about your space that you wouldn’t have if it were bigger? Please chime in!
I agree with you. My place is small. Not tiny-small, but small (785 square feet for me, my boyfriend, and our golden retriever). I love that I’m almost forced to be a minimalist in a reasonable way. I don’t accumulate things in the way I did when I had a massive, pre-war apartment in Boston with 14 foot high ceilings and storage everywhere. I like that I have to pause before acquiring something. When I bring something home, it’s usually something of good quality, that isn’t going to get tossed in a closet in a few months. That closet space is precious!
I so love the little splash of red that comes from the pendant lamp, potholder, and even tomatoes. I really appreciate your blog. Am following closely and get great inspiration. Working toward down-sizing and simplifying. People can be so materialistic , then have to work so hard and surrender so much to keep up. DO NOT want that. Family and health are much more important. I’ve taken a 365 day challenge to buy nothing for myself or my home that isn’t thrifted or handmade and necessary. Really makes me consider what I buy. Please keep up your fine blog.
Our new apt is double the square footage of our old one, but still really small compared to 3 bdrm houses in the US. We have a large balcony, but we don’t have a yard – and I really don’t miss one in my rainy corner of Germany! We were responsible for a section of yard in our old place and it was SUCH a hassle! Weeds, cutting grass, sidewalk rules — all for a space not private enough to enjoy with friends. This is not a region known for huge summer cookouts and so on, so having a large balcony I can quickly sweep clean, plant a weed-free container garden, and still have enough space to enjoy a meal outside with friends is really perfect for us. I could totally live like this until there were toddler-aged kids in the picture!
Small outside is also nice =)
You totally live into your space … though, in my case, I feel like we’ve actually lived PASSED our space and I need to start getting rid of stuff. There’s a beautiful simplicity to living in a smaller space, being surrounded by less stuff.
Great post! Although our apartment isn’t really that small…about 900 sf, we can not afford to buy much. It was hard for me at first right after moving from Houston, TX where everything is big and shopping is a hobby and a bit of an addiction. I’m glad to say I’m happier now. We have the basics…and I mean basics and it makes our life simple and easier. I would love to be able to put up some DIY art and we can’t even afford that yet (frames can add up) but it will make it so much more gratifying and exciting when we do! It really has made me realize how much consumerism there is in the US. Yes, it can be anywhere, but America is particularly bad. I don’t want to go back to that. Keep up the good work!
As I’ve started my renovations, I’ve realized how much cheaper the material costs are! Looking at granite prices gave me a new-found love of the small galley kitchen that I own :).
I loved your post and you have many good points. I can’t chime in. When we moved here, we found out we had the job and had two weeks to find a house and move with 5 children and a 6th on the way. There were NO rentals in the whole town. We called a realitor and she knew of this house for sale, but not for rent, but she gave us the owner’s phone number and over the phone, sight unseen, we talked the owners into letting us rent.
We moved into this 6 bedroom house with almost a full basement and a finished floor in the attic. I was pregnant out to here, ready to deliver in exactly a month, so I had them put all the boxes in the front room as I had each one labeled with numbers and the corresponding numbers were in a notebook with everything listed in the box. One by one, I went through those boxes and organized our new house. Eventually a year and half later, after looking and looking and looking in the country and not finding anything to accommodate our large family, we made an offer on the house and purchased it. Because of the economy, and lack of potential buyers, we were able to knock off $15,000 from the original price, and we have been here ever since.
Sadly the attic has become a great storage place which haunts me, thinking about what is upstairs in those boxes. No idea. They aren’t as carefully labeled as they were when I first moved here. It has been 23 years, and that stuff owns me now. So you have a great point, well many great points. Life is much simpler with less STUFF. You are a wise person.
I think I was happiest one time when we moved into a tiny trailer when I had two children. My hubby got a job 4 hours out of town, and we had to decide whether we would just put the farm into mothballs and move up north, have him commute every weekend (I hated that) or what. After Christmas, I just took what we had gotten for Christmas and stayed with him. We had a small bw tv, four plates, two pans, one cookie sheet, the presents we got for Christmas, a vacuum, a dog and a rug to latch hook. we slept on the floor in sleeping bags. I had a wonderful time. Dishes were done in a SNAP, so we played a LOT in the snow. One bad thing. Because I was so bored, I got hooked on General Hospital soap opera. But when we moved back to the farm, I couldn’t get good reception, so I was weaned off it fairly quickly.
love you
~a
What a joy it’s been to read all of your reflections on small spaces and not-so-small spaces. I love Sarah’s thoughts on living into your space… and how easy it is to go past it with our stuff. I find myself constantly trying to keep check on our house, and I wonder if there’s ever a point where you don’t have to keep checking. It just becomes natural.
Annie, thank you for chiming in with a very different perspective and a description of joy you found in that smaller home years ago.
Moments. That’s what life is all about. Bleck – not chores.
Katie
We lived in a 1300 square foot house which is 2x your size but still small in relation to most homes. I loved this little house- I could clean it in no time and it had a lovely yard where I love to spend most my time in. We now live in a 3400 sq foot home and though I love it I can sincerely say I miss my little home!
blessings
mary
congratulations and
please use silicone caulk around the counter tops to tile.
“Stuff stops owning you.” This is so true. I could not have summed it up better. A simple concept, yet so many fail to understand and miss. Good stuff.
I love this post, I always read to inspire me to get ride of stuff:)
Can you tell me about your pendant lights hanging in your kitchen? Are they part of track lighting? Are they halogen or LED bulbs? We recently installed some energy efficient track lighting in our girls’ bedroom and it has that box on each light. (Sorry, don’t know the technical term for it.) I am looking to install pendant lighting in my kitchen above the island and those look interesting. My husband won’t install anything but energy efficient!
One of the things that I TOTALLY love about living small is that you are ALWAYS… right where the action is… and I get more done because I can do several things at once.
I can quilt, and stir the soup; I can quilt while I chat with friends or family; I can quilt and keep an eye on what’s in the oven. Before, when I had to go to the extra bedroom to quilt, I felt BANISHED to the back room… to engage in my creativity. I had to carve out dedicated time to be creative, rather than merge it throughout my day… and I never had the time to set aside, so I never did it.
We knocked out a wall, and I’m now able to be creative ALL the time, again!
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I think that small homes help bond the family.
My sister and her family have a 3,500 sq. ft. home (not counting the 4-car attached garage/ workshop). We are now in 770 sq. ft. We have watched her family grow farther apart, while we have grown closer.
As children, we grew up in a 2-bedroom, 1-bath house, for a family of four, and did very well together.
I think all family members learn to be more cooperative and considerate; otherwise, personal interactions become intolerable. Small spaces REQUIRE us to stay engaged with, and tuned in to one another. There’s no place to go to escape your issues with someone; you just face them and get over it!
Amazingly, we lived in 160 sq. ft. while we were remodeling… for a YEAR, and made it through with the marriage intact! Whew!
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I also think that smaller homes provide an opportunity to be more creative in general; particularly in providing storage and such. We don’t have room to add another’s bulky (purchased) one-size-fits-all problem-solving-solution to our unique situation.
For example, I HANG my trash cans in two rooms; it takes up NO floor space… yet I’ve not run across too many hanging trash cans over the years; it’s too outside the box (creative).
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I find that the small space requires/allows me to become very CERTAIN about which SPECIFIC THINGS enhance my life, and which things just clog/clutter it up. That is a GREAT SERVICE (and a GIFT) in today’s society… where “enough” is usually TOO MUCH.
Kathryn Kistner in Texas
I thought you might be interested in this man who lives in a very small apartment in Hong Kong
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/videos/worlds-greenest-homes-hong-kong-space-saver.html
Hi Katie,
I love your blog. Simple yet chic and economical ideas. I’ll be visiting often!
I live in 230sq. feet: bedroom and salon/kitchen. I can see the moon when I’m lying in bed.
I sold my shore condo (1050 sq ft) and a fairly large home (2600 sq ft) and moved into a 380 sq ft rental loft above my landlord’s garage. Although it was extremely difficult to get rid of all I had accumulated in those residences, living small is a joy. I like to be warm and snug in the winter and it costs very little to heat my new digs; I can afford to turn up the heat! What a difference from my cold, drafty old place. And I’m not spending every waking moment cleaning those two past residences. I clean my new place from top to bottom in about an hour. The best thing by far, though, is that I have been able to retire early. By using the money from the properties I sold to purchase an income property, I avoided paying some capital gains taxes and now live off the income. I’m so glad that I decided to change my lifestyle! My life has truly changed for the better!
I just love, love, love reading your blogs and comments. While our house is neither small nor huge, we have SO much to get rid of. Sadly, I was a packrat for many, many years, never dealing with the stuff – always sticking it in a box and putting it SOMEwhere. Now my goal is to be free of so much of it, but God had to remove it from my heart first. I’m finally of the mindset that I don’t want it all anymore. It’s not important; in fact, it’s distracting and it’s bondage. The challenge at this point is to find the time to go through it and rid myself of the excess. It’s slow and tedious, but I press on. And coming here is just one place I gain encouragement and motivation. Thanks, Katie!! :-)
When I bought our house 10 years ago, I was a single girl with a cat. At 998 sq ft with a decent-sized yard, it didn’t seem small to me at all. It was affordable to heat and cool, maintain, and pay taxes on. Now, I’m in that same house with a 6’4″, 250 lb husband, a 4-year-old, a 2-year-old, a dog, and that same cat. Over the past few years as we kept adding family members the house felt claustrophobic at times. But I’m so glad we endured that time in our little house. Now I’m watching my friends struggle desperately with money, selling stuff to stay financially afloat, walking away from houses and letting them go into foreclosure, and afraid to drive their SUV’s. While my kids do not have a dedicated play room, they do have tremendous security. They have a mom who gets to stay home with them, and a dad who has free time to spend with them because he’s not always working. We have the financial freedom to have a lot of fun as a family. While I realize our financial situation can change on a dime, we would need very little income to get along just fine in our little house. Anytime I start to envy a family with a playroom, I just stop to give thanks for the little house that allows me to play every day.
I’m enjoying these small house posts so much! I’m a fan of the not-so-big-house concept. I think my parents would have been, as well, as they designed their small, modern, ca. 1952 home with sensible storage, minimal and modest building materials and plenty of light. Some of the smart things I remember are….
-a tall, shallow cabinet in the small, sunny family room for storing the full-size ironing board, iron and water to sprinkle on the clothes or pour into the steam iron (complete with outlet)
-pull-out bins for my brothers’ sports equipment, and the laundry awaiting ironing. The laundry room was just a few steps away.
-a breakfast bar tripled as an art center or a sewing center (with outlets for lamps and machines) as well as a snack or overflow eating area
(and was frequently employed in all three ways)
-convenient storage right next to that surface: a wall with built-ins for a low, central games cupboard, topped with a surface for the tv, and flanked on either side with storage for sewing things, art things, toys, and holiday decor (no attic or basement in a coastal-region flat-topped house). Nothing fancy, just simply designed and executed out of modest wood and sheetrock, and we never needed a fancy tv cabinet or an ugly tv cart.
-The little laundry room had a load-bearing wall that was left open, and oblong plastic buckets with each child’s name on it were inserted on rough shelves to receive clean laundry as it was folded.
-The kids’ bathroom had a generous linen closet area with labeled shelves.
-Closets were sliding-door style and generous in the bedrooms, and mom and dad also had a mini walk in.
-The big kitchen island doubled as a cutting table as needed, served as a holiday buffet surface, and when Mom sewed less, it became a great spot to garden (skylight above).
–the island also had an indented cubby so the trash can was accessible but out of the walkway.
–there was another indented cubby for a rolling storage/serving cart with matching white formica surface
–the phone connection was built in there, and a cupboard that exactly fit the city phone books was also in the island
—a low, pull out surface in the island was perfect when I was learning to cook as a little girl, and a great extra surface during big cooking events.
–No dining room hutch – a few danish cabinets with tambour doors were mounted to the DR/LR walls
–the DR table was a drop leaf affair that made a nice credenza to set of a favorite piece of art, only brought out for formal occasions, so the living room was spacious and lived in.
- The kitchen table was round – easily accommodating different numbers of diners
–it also came with its own matching turntable to make serving easier, as well as making it easier to play Scrabble, Monopoly, whatever.
–They designed a place for the vacuum cleaner that wasn’t the hall coat closet, but separate, which also housed wrapping paper, extra fridge (big family), and other hobby things.
–the kitchen had plenty of light maple cabinets (the big splurge), including a place for tools, recycling grocery bags, cleaning stuff, and everything that usually doesn’t fit in kitchens. We never had to use the top of the fridge for food storage!
–several built-in bookcases would fill the needs of most families (we needed more, lol).
–tiny workshops adjoined the laundry room and the back of the house (complete with large, recycled
fiberglass privacy window) so we could have a carport instead of a mucky garage that wasn’t planned to hold a workbench or lawn & garden tools. I LOVED playing in that carport, especially on rainy days. We could skate or play make believe there, in the fresh air, and out of the hot sun. It was a great place to refinish furniture with ventilation and protection from the elements, too.
–their living space was extended into a courtyard off of the main kitchen/family area, laid with pavers with good old-fashioned sweat equity
–the carport entry went through the laundry room which had a door onto a tiny 3/4 bathroom (with a shower) perfect for stripping and sluicing small, filthy-grubby persons on their way back from the beach or mud pile, and dumping the clothing right into the washer – and having clean clothes ready! Mom knew how to prevent unnecessary housework like a pro!
–The living room had a built-in hole for storing firewood and featured original art my mom did to disguise it
–the fireplace was elevated in front of an 18″ high tiled surface that doubled as children’s performance area and extra seating, made comfy with cushions.
–the water heater and hvac were easily accessed. The hot water closet was a perfect place to set bread to rise in the winter (and the island was the perfect place to knead the bread without interrupting the rest of the kitchen activities.)
–they did one addition when we were at our peak population of 7, to accommodate all the bodies, and then re-purposed bedroom space for a home-based business as kids left the nest. Until then, mom and dad managed to almost invisibly convert their tidy desk spaces into the kitchen/family area and I think the file cabinet/safe lived in one of bedroom closets for awhile.
All this smart design meant that we could live really well in what was really a small home. We did so many things! I remember it as having places for doing lots of wonderful things, and with places to put everything away easily and neatly after each project was done. It has given me a real appreciation and affinity for well-planned, small homes. no wonder Sarah Susankah’s Not-so-big-house books were such a breath of fresh air to my soul, and why I sometimes peruse sites like this one!
So happy to find your blog. One of my readers referred me and I’m so glad she did. I’m currently living in 204 square feet with my husband and really enjoying it. We downsized from about 400 square feet and it’s gone really smoothly. We’re living in Paris for a year and wanted to be more in the center of things and we gave up space for location. So happy with our decision. Makes me rethink so much about what I would someday want in a house. I love that we buy less, have less clutter, and are living a very simplified life. Before we moved here after being in Scotland for four years, we got rid of nearly everything. It’s so liberating!
Looking forward to following your blog! Cheers!