Lose your stuff find your life...tiny homes.

http://www.nextworldtv.com/videos/shelter/tiny-houses-taking-off-into-cities.html

Here we have the Tiny House Movement and they are walking the walk when it comes to downsizing! These are eco-friendly homes, often on wheels that incorporate solar energy and they are small: how about 120 sq. feet?

Meet some people who are relieved to jump off the consumer bandwagon, being forced into a life where there is no room at all for anything extraneous. Here we are seeing a home with one towel, one stove burner, one teeny tiny closet, and it resulted in one very happy woman.

http://www.nextworldtv.com/videos/shelter/tiny-houses-are-not-a-fad-mcmansions-were.html
Jay Shafer of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company gives us a tour of his 89-square-foot home on wheels parked in Sebastapol, California.

"People are living in 4,000 - 6,000 sq ft debtor prisons and they spend 30 years or more paying off for more space and stuff than they really need." says Jay as he shows us his cozy, well designed and organized domain.

Many Americans have combined closet space larger than the size of his whole house. At long last, the tide is turning and we are beginning to question established norms of how much we think we need. New architecture is beginning to reflect our need to spend less, to heat less, to own less stuff.

"The Tiny House movement is not a fad -- McMansions were a fad. That is the thing that came and is now leaving" says Michael Jansen of the Tiny House Design Blog, and that certainly makes sense.

I think we're going to see a trend of smaller homes from here on.

Personally, I like more space than a couple of hundred square feet. I have lived, family of 4, in a small Japanese house. It sucked. Really, it did. When we went back to Japan a second time, I told hubby that I would not live like that again. So the second time we went to Japan, hubby secured a rental on a nice house BEFORE I moved there with him. lol. It still was not up to American standards, but it was much more comfortable than the first house we had lived in.

But...4000+ sq feet is just more house than I would want, even if my kids were still home. Have you seen those house hunter TV shows where people have a million or so to spend on a house? I never like any of the houses shown. Most of them are just ugly to me.

Funny timing on your thread, Teo. I am still Facebook friends with a company I worked for in Japan. When I checked my FB this morning, I saw that they are advertising an apartment for rent for foreigners. It's actually pretty nice for a Japanese apartment....this place is about 200 sq feet, around $650-$700 a month (I'm not sure of the exchange rate right now)

http://www.realestate.co.jp/kimi/en/rent/view/152604/1R-Mansion-in-Minamiotsuka-Toshima-ku-Tokyo

It does work in Japan. And their housing is getting better. New homes/apartments in Japan have more creature comforts than in the past. But Japanese kitchens...I would never get used to them!

my largest electric bill was a little over 60 dollars and I keep my place comfortable...who knew with a little thought a FEMA trailer could be cozy. Of course it's huge at 429 sq ft. I am quite sure I could live in under 200 sq ft just fine.

TEOTWAWKI wrote:my largest electric bill was a little over 60 dollars and I keep my place comfortable...who knew with a little thought a FEMA trailer could be cozy. Of course it's huge at 429 sq ft. I am quite sure I could live in under 200 sq ft just fine.

By myself, I could live with 429 sq feet. I'd prefer a little more than that but I could do it. But I'd have to get rid of a lot of stuff. When we recently moved, we had over 16,000 pounds of household goods. It's way too much crap but we've had a lot of fun and some great memories collecting it over the years. The time is coming where we will need to downsize and make some choices about what to keep/get rid of. I'll try to pawn some of our stuff off on the kids, but I don't know if they'll want it, lol. But even after downsizing, with two of us, I think hubby and me would not really be comfortable with less than about 1000 sq feet.

I inspired my daughter and she moved into an 1100 sq ft house and she loves it...she has less cleaning and less cost. She spends more fun time with the kids. She really likes smaller houses. She used to have a McMansion which ate up all her time in cleaning not to mention the costs..

We went from 4k to 1k square feet, and I have never been happier. The average size of the American home for four decades kept getting bigger. I would like a three car garage though, and our current one car garage is filled with tools and lawn equipment......no car in the garage is the way I lived 40 years ago, and that would be my only regret to downsizing.