apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

the house above is 90 square feet? nup. couldn't do it.

my place is 400 square feet and i have enough angst trying to store and decorate. i'm so used to this amount of footage, i think i'd have a hard time getting used to anything smaller.

I like/understand the idea, and I try hard to keep my possessions under control. I believe in the freedom of this represents yet I find it hard to live this way. It's definately a process.

It's interesting... I'm intrigued by the folks who actually LIVE in these homes. It's a huge life change that can be freeing (I'm living in 380 sqft, and never been happier with a place). But many of these people including they guy building his own from scratch are using them as offices or retreats. That's hardly revolutionary. It's just another toy to them.

I liked a lot of the houses in this story, but I have to note that probably hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. already live in tiny houses . . . they're called trailers. At least one of the houses in the story is a sexed-up trailer, too (you can see the license plate) in the picture. Doesn't sound as revolutionary if you call it that.

Our family built our own tiny cottage two years ago. It is about twice the size of the one in the photo you have above but only about 1/5th the price. We've spent less than $7,000 to build it.

Beyond the usual advantages of tiny living such as less housework, lower taxes, less stuff, etc our house is made of stone, concrete and brick. This reduces the fire risk and got us a better homeowners insurance rate. Additionally the house's high thermal mass (100,000 lbs) makes it super easy to keep warm in the winter. It soaks up enough passive solar energy to keep well above freezing even in our frigid Vermont winters. We burned 3/4 of a cord of hardwood last year to cook and warm the cottage up to a very comfortable level. The stone construction also means less (almost no) maintenance.

The biggest reason we built small was because it was doable. We had a month or two before winter was going to set in. With two adults, a 14 year old, a 9 year old and a 3 year old anything more would have been too much since we were doing it all ourselves. As it was, it took us a solid two months of intensive work to close in the tiny cottage. Two years later we're very happy with it. The one thing we miss is more space for books. Someday we'll build a library. :)