Comments on: Choosing a Small Home for Economic and Environmental Reasons

By: Dorea

Dorea — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:12:16 +0000

We live in 2br/1bath 660 square ft condo (3 unit building) with a family of four (kids are ages 3 and 5 months) and it felt like a palace after our 1br 400 sq foot apartment where we were until our daughter was about 10 months. We gave up space in order to live in a walking neighborhood near public transit, and figured that if our kids ended up being different genders, we’d move after 8-10 years when sharing a room became impractical. We love small living for all the reasons you list. We particularly love that we can clean our entire house top to bottom in about an hour if both of us are working on it.

Well, it turns out our second is a boy, and we were starting to dread the prospect of saving/finding a home and moving, even though it’s years away, mostly because we’ve fallen so desperately in love with our neighborhood (and our neighbors). Well, that, combined with a sobering tour of prices for bigger homes in our neighborhood.

Now we’re thinking of living small long term, taking inspiration from the tiny house people (none of whom seem to have kids). If we put money into what we have now, to make it truly efficient and really what we want, carving out three small bedrooms where we currently have two, we might be able to make it work long term. The financial freedom that would come from staying here would be absolutely huge, combined with staying in our neighborhood. Living small long term is sounding nicer to us right now than trading “up.”

By: Ana

Ana — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:51:06 +0000

We’ve purposefully stayed in a small house for many of the same reasons. We also did it because we didn’t want to get used to something bigger, then downsize when we moved overseas. Now that we have made the move, I’m very glad we did it. It would have been very painful to go from a big place to our current trailer. When we get back to the States in three years, we will probably search for something a tad larger, but I’m more interested in a good yard than a big house.

By: Cathy

Cathy — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:27:04 +0000

cool photo! we live in a small home, too, for the same reasons.

By: Mindy

Mindy — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:52:46 +0000

We just bought/moved in to a smaller home (2 bed/2 bath and around 1200 sq ft). We are a family of four. Our realtor kept steering us towards 3 bd/2 bth homes, but the neighborhoods were awful, no walkability to anything, and the homes were huge.

I found the listing for our new home. It is in an affluent neighborhood, we can walk everywhere (library, grocery stores, park, pediatrician, insurance agent, coffee, etc…), except preschool, which I drive to two days a week, and the house is on a cul de sac. We LOVE it. Our mortgage payment is lower than our rent would be in an apt. and our utilities are about the same as if we lived in a 1000 sq ft apt..