Downsizing Your Home

New Philosophy

The average American house has more than doubled in size since the 1950s, standing at more than 2,300 square feet. But there is a growing sentiment that bigger is not better.

Of course, size is relative. A space might be called home by one family, while another would consider it only large enough for a guest bedroom. But the sustainable, simpler, and smaller idea has its supporters. Whatever space you have, it seems, living well in it is possible. It all begins with a bit of creativity, a few design essentials, and taking advantage of what the marketplace has to offer.

Several factors may be fueling an increased interest in smaller spaces. Worries about rising utility and other bills, concern for the environment, more single heads of households, retiring Baby Boomers not wanting excess room, and the growing desire to have more free time to pursue interests and spend less time maintaining a home.

Marcia Gamble-Hadley of Gamble Hadley LLC in Seattle, WA, is a longtime advocate for socially responsible housing development. A housing consultant, she was involved in that city's Pine Street Cottages condominium project. It revitalized 10 cottages, each about 500 square feet, into a successful example of an alternative residential form.

When people think of living in a small space, she says, “there's the element that you are doing without or deprivation, thinking of it as sacrificing their daily enjoyment. That is a misconception.”

Instead, living in a small space is an opportunity to rethink life's priorities, she says. It becomes “a process of distilling out for yourself those activities or qualities that bring you the most pleasure and satisfaction—then supporting those and letting go of the complications that go with ‘stuff,’ caring for it, tripping over it, constantly accumulating things that don't really add to our daily enjoyment and satisfaction.”

Dan Rockhill, founder of Studio 804, a not-for-profit design-build program, and professor of architecture at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KA., says the "tendency to look toward more efficient living and general disdain for ‘McMansions’ is particularly evident in younger people who see their footprint as having some consequence."

He suggests that living in small spaces is made easier by open designs that embrace technology. Those types of homes allow people to create rooms, move walls around as needed and build in as much flexibility as possible.