Leaning into small house life

January 4, 2024 2:11 PM

What are great things about living in a small house? What are cozy reads about the nice things about living in small places? What did you like about growing up in a small space? What were things that were hard about living in small spaces that you made better, even marginally?

My wife and I live in a small home and appreciate most things about it. We now have two small children, one just turned 4 and the other is about 11 months. We're in an up-and-coming neighborhood in a desirable town. My wife made a very smart investment in buying the home a year or so before we met, and before housing prices got nuts. We can not afford to buy a bigger house in our neighborhood and we don't want to move to the suburbs. We do have a decently sized, and largely underutilized back yard. We live in the upper Midwest, being outside for long periods in our back yard is often not an option.

We want to feel excited about not leaving and making it work in our cute little house. We're afraid it will feel unpleasant when we try to navigate the day-to-day in our little house with two teenagers. I'd love to hear positive anecdotes from folks who grew up in or continue to thrive in small spaces. I'd like to read books or blogs about people who write about enjoying their small spaces. The cozier the better.

Internet searches give me lots of results about clever storage or tiny houses, I am not interested in tiny house culture or storage "hacks." Our house is small but not tiny.

posted by sewellcm to Home & Garden (20 answers total)

I live in a small house. Poorly laid out. Needs better storage because most of big house stuff is storage. Nicer to heat and AC if you use that. In big houses, kids hang out in their rooms, and I think it reduces good interaction. Small houses are dramatically more efficient and contribute less carbon. Big houses are more profitable for builders and real estate agents, not required for better living.

I have an old tiny camper, may turn it into storage. Otherwise, get a big good quality shed and store things carefully, because, Mice.

I have a big deck that I spend a ton of time on during the warmer months. Consider adding outdoor space, like a platform with a screened in gazebo, not too expensive and so pleasant. Will also be used as a great outdoor play space.
posted by theora55 at 2:31 PM on January 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

There's a book called The Not So Big House that celebrates smaller living spaces. It was fun for me to flip through in the years before seriously starting house hunting. I wouldn't say the house we eventually wound up in is "small", but it's certainly not big, and it's cozy. Anyway, here's the author's site.
posted by May Kasahara at 2:36 PM on January 4, 2024 [9 favorites]

Well, it keeps me from buying more crap.
posted by inexorably_forward at 2:43 PM on January 4, 2024 [8 favorites]

My family lives in a small house. I love the feeling of putting two leaves in our dining table (“embiggening” it) so that the dining space can juuust accommodate it and our guests, happy crowd, and then the quiet when we put the leaves back and the space is calm again.

I love that fact that every single room in our house gets used, daily.

I love the fact that my two boys still sleep together in their tiny bedroom, at ages 8 and 12, but that they do their play and work elsewhere in the house. One sprawls on the living room floor with his drawings, the other has a desk next to mine. Nobody hides away.

I love the fact that we can’t justify upgrading our circa 1961 boiler because heating the house costs so little each month.

I love the fact that we can shout and hear each other from anywhere. (Houseguests get a little annoyed with all the shouting though!)

And I loooove the fact that my small house is surrounded by others, leading to a density that makes my neighborhood a vibrant and walkable community.
posted by wyzewoman at 2:53 PM on January 4, 2024 [18 favorites]

A large screened-in porch with ceiling fan will cost much less than any actual extension room and will get a lot of use even in the heat and cold.
posted by rikschell at 2:54 PM on January 4, 2024 [11 favorites]

I grew up in a small-but-not-tiny house and honestly I can’t imagine living anywhere larger. I like that it’s easier to clean. I like that you can shout and be heard anywhere in the house. I like that the wifi reaches everywhere without the need for repeaters. I like that every room has a use and is fully lived-in. I like the feeling of having the “right” amount of space and not living beyond my means. I like being able to smell the cooking or hear the music in the living room from anywhere in the house.
posted by mekily at 2:57 PM on January 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

Does your municipal regulations and personal asthetic + budget support having a small cabin in the back of your yard? Just a thought for future. Man that would be cosy.

Some other pros:
You get more family intimacy.
More environmental.
You’ll know what the teenagers are up to.
You won’t have to downsize in retirement.
Most of human history we’ve lived in smaller houses. Helps you not think that 3000sqft is a “must have”
posted by St. Peepsburg at 3:06 PM on January 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

I think one of the bonuses is that you can upgrade finishes if that's your thing for much less expense. Like putting in really nice tile in the bathroom.

+1 for less cleaning. We moved from around 1600 square feet to double that and I can no longer clean the whole house in 1 day which is kind of a drag.

You might be able to utilize your yard for more of the year with a few upgrades. We live in New England and we have a covered deck that gets used quite a bit when it's cold. We did get one of the upright outdoor heaters like you see at some restaurants and the patio table has a little propane fire feature. My favorite thing is to sit out there and watch the rain or snow. In the past we've even had a small outdoor Christmas tree on the deck.
posted by MadMadam at 3:07 PM on January 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

I think the family intimacy can't be understated. We live in a small but not tiny house, and when my kid was little I was lamenting about it to someone and telling her I wanted to buy something bigger. She told me that her family did move to a bigger house and they regretted it, because it made it too easy for her kids to be off somewhere completely outside her notice. We stayed put and I don't regret it in the slightest.
posted by BlahLaLa at 4:33 PM on January 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

I loved that my kids had a shared room...made bedtime so much cozier and easier for one parent to do, and helped their relationship, too. I like that it forces me to be choosy about what I buy and how I arrange my things. I like that rooms never feel echo-y or unlived-in. It's always weird to go to someone else's house and realize they have a whole extra 'living' room that is....just for display, I guess?

Getting a shed and investing in making your outdoor space as useable as possible will help (outdoor usability is both actual outdoor stuff like a patio heater and comfy porch chairs, and 'indoor' stuff like good coats, rain boots, etc. so that sending kids outside to play becomes expected in all types of weather.)
posted by Ausamor at 4:34 PM on January 4, 2024 [3 favorites]

My ex and I bought a small house when we had a toddler: three bedrooms, one bathroom, about 1100 square feet, a very standard mid-century ranch. Then we had two more kids from infancy, and one who came to live with us as a teenager.

We certainly thought about moving from time to time, but were never in a position to do it. We bought the house in 2002, and the housing market crashed a few years later. We were glad we hadn't bought a bigger house at the top of the market, because having a smaller house limited our losses, but during the worst of the kids-are-messy years, when we were most likely to have moved, it simply wasn't a possibility.

We really liked our neighborhood, both the neighborhood itself and the people in it, and we loved its location, which was convenient to just about everything. In all the years we lived there together, we never felt we'd compromised on location.

As the kids aged out of Peak Toy, we found we were really glad we hadn't moved when they were smaller and we sometimes felt overwhelmed trying to maintain any degree of order. We weren't carrying the trouble, expense, or maintenance on a larger house, and (if our relationship hadn't ended a couple of years ago for very good reasons) it was a great house to age into—not too big for a couple, still not very expensive, still in a great location.

We appreciated the low maintenance costs when we were dealing with the expenses of child-rearing, too.

Whenever we felt overcrowded and frustration, we would look around the house and say, "Palatial by world standards!" And by historical standards, as someone mentioned up-thread.
posted by Well I never at 5:42 PM on January 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

Hi Neighbor! If your profile location is accurate, I bet we live in the same type of lovely old house. I have a toddler now and we sometimes have the same feelings about how there just isn't enough space, but also couldn't imagine living anywhere else. I love this blog about small space family living.

One thing we have really leaned into is figuring out ways to stretch Wisconsin "backyard season", mostly because being outside is by far the best way for our kid to have big toys and for us to entertain more than a couple people--6 or 8 people eating inside in our house is TIGHT. We have had great luck with propane patio heaters and a little Solo Stove. Also, we are considering someday adding a backyard one car garage with a room above it as a way to get some dedicated home office space and/or a place for a teenage kid to hang with their friends.
posted by mjcon at 6:24 PM on January 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

This is my ideal housing outcome, small house, outdoor space, vibrant neighborhood. I'm pretty close with my urban condo, 2 adults, a toddler and a dog.

You need excellent and comfortable seating in your living area. Not just one big couch; something you can be together, and also the option to be together but separate.

Excellent and comfortable seating outside too. If you don't want to sit on the things outside, you'll spend less time outside during the season.

I know you're not into storage suggestions but one of the pros of small space is leaning into clever storage for the stuff you do have, and being ruthless about culling / not accepting stuff you don't want. You have every excuse to shop at the container store.
posted by paradeofblimps at 6:28 PM on January 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

You may just need to rearrange things, and a good designer can help with that, and on a budget. I second the recommendation for the Not So Big House books, especially the Not So Big Solutions for Your Home books. Small changes can have a large effect.
posted by Enid Lareg at 7:15 PM on January 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

You (and your kids, in a few years) might enjoy this video featuring FINNEAS and the small house that he and Billie Eilish grew up in, where they wrote and recorded all their music together. And how the intimacy and immediacy of their space inspired their art.
posted by hovey at 9:29 PM on January 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

We moved to an old farmstead with two ♀ toddlers 27 years ago. We only had money to refurb the minimal unit: 1,000sq.ft and 3 bedrooms, one occupied by SO's blind grandmother for a while. Multi-generational homes were alien to me growing up but common enough here. Being hugger-mugger together promotes (perhaps perforce) compassion, kindness and sensitivity to the needs of others. Shortly after gran left, the older girl announced that she'd be having her own bedroom and booted out her sister to the tiny guest room. The younger one has been 'travelling light' ever since. At ~16 she built a ladder and went to live in the half loft of a farm-shed we'd just slated and made secure against 'livestock'.
Our older son lives in an even smaller 2-bedroom house with partner and two ♀ kids. The older just turned 12 and the parents swapped bedrooms to allow their girls more space. Their guest accom is a garden shed/office/studio with bucket.
posted by BobTheScientist at 3:07 AM on January 5, 2024

I lived in a 300-square-foot two-bedroom (!) apartment in Hong Kong for eight years and loved it. Though apartment and house living differ in some important ways, the process of making it work was in its own way something I liked about it:

- By using the KonMari method to keep only my most desired and enjoyable possessions soon after moving in, literally everything in my home, from my bed to my dish soap to my dehumidifier, served a purpose and made me happy. To do this as a family is not an unchallenging endeavour but your house will vibrate with positivity if you go this route.

- Relatedly, I brought only the best (within my budget) items into my home and used them in ways that meant they never needed to be replaced or duplicated (hanging up my Japanese waffle-weave bath towels after washing them instead of putting them in a dryer meant they never became threadbare), and when possible I purchased things that required learning a new skill to maintain (for example, I bought three really good knives and some sharpening supplies and learned how I should I sharpen and hone them as needed; I still have them today).

- I entertained a lot both to make my place feel warm and inviting and socially essential to my friends and to make me maintain a cleaning routine that allowed me to host impromptu dinners and gatherings.

- Because I was living in a place where I didn’t speak the language well, I didn’t bother getting a TV, and this meant the center of my whole living space could be way more flexible; among other things, I did yoga and created some rather big craft projects in the space where the large sofa to watch the non-existent TV would have gone. (On the rare occasions I wanted to watch something on a big screen, I used a projector to beam things from my laptop to a blank wall.) Not having a TV also meant very few ads found their way into my life, which complemented my other choices around possessions and space well.

- I borrowed from friends or rented a lot of things for which I had only a very occasional use, from a beach umbrella to a barbecue, and like nearly all Hong Kongers, I never owned a car. This meant I was not storing things in my space which reminded me of how infrequently I was using them or which were too massive to move on my own or with a rolling suitcase or folding shopping trolley, and also meant I got invited along when I had a thing someone else wanted to borrow (having a digital meat thermometer meant I spent time meeting a friend’s family who had come to the city for Christmas and wanted to roast a turkey!).

- I spent a lot of time not at home, not because I didn’t like it, but because my home was mentally and financially manageable enough that it didn’t take up much room in my brain and I could focus on other things. I used the energy and money I saved on not living somewhere larger not just to save for the future, but to enjoy where I was living and pursue my long-term goals: I ate out frequently, I invested in my health and fitness, I met up with or visited friends in town most weekends and travelled widely on longer breaks, and even paid for graduate school out of pocket. Just an extra 100 square feet in Hong Kong would have eliminated nearly all of that from my life.

Living small is a conscious process in many societies and it can seem like you’re swimming against a very strong tide telling you that bigger is always better. Best of luck!
posted by mdonley at 6:17 AM on January 5, 2024 [3 favorites]

We (childless couple) bought a 1100 sq ft, “3 bedroom” house because… the owners had three children, two cats and a large dog and the situation was rapidly becoming untenable. Like, the third “bedroom” (now my office) could not have fit the third child once she outgrew a toddler bed and needed a twin — there would be no room for a bedside table, let alone a desk or any storage furniture.

I also grew up in a house of similar size, but with two bedrooms. That became a serious problem when my other-gendered sibling and I got older, and I would, for example, try to hold the door shut while getting dressed and the sibling screamed and battered at it. That got easier — when we expanded the house (which was NOT easier on my parents).

You may actually have “enough room” to live a reasonable life in your house — people vary a lot on what “small” is after all! Nor will you necessarily need to move.

But gently speaking, once your kids are older, the advantages of having a “small house” may be because of the neighborhood, not the house. An adolescent will probably not like sharing a room. An adolescent will not like “constantly being kept an eye on”.

An adolescent may, instead, appreciate being with their neighborhood friends and going to a school they couldn’t otherwise attend. Not having a quiet space to do homework may be balanced by having a library or coffee shop within walking distance, and the freedom to go there. Not having parents paying a large mortgage may mean more travel or extracurricular activities. No large birthday party in a basement, but perhaps renting a room at a pizza place.
posted by Hypatia at 6:22 AM on January 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

Like mjcon, I’m in a very similar house to yours in a neighborhood which may actually be yours (or at the very least is of a similar age and not far away). We’ve been in the house for about 20 years, and it’s the only house the kids (who became teenagers during the pandemic) have ever known. They do each have their own room — if that weren’t the case I don’t think this could have worked.

Since most of the houses around here are of similar age and size, we’ve seen various approaches to this issue. Very often people will add a room on to the back of the house, pushing a bit further into the backyard, to add a family room or similar space. (One neighbor is currently adding a second floor room on top of the first floor room they added probably 20 years ago.)

Finishing or semi-finishing at least part of the basement also works for additional family space or kids’ play space. Some people we know have done it fully DIY and others have had small-scale contractors do it.

In either case it’s a lot of hassle and not cheap, but it’s a lot cheaper than trading up to a larger home. But to get the full use out of it it’s probably a good idea to get started as soon as possible, so that once the kids are really into expansive play (giant LEGO creations or wooden train-track routes, mega-couch forts, etc) they have places to do it without disrupting the main living space. We didn’t quite have the space but ultimately decided we were fine with the living room (and dining room, and hallways) being turned upside down every so often if it allowed the kids to indulge their creativity.
posted by sesquipedalia at 1:01 PM on January 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

My small house has weird under-eave spaces which were not being used effectively. I built a desk into one for a tiny dedicated office space (would have been even better if I could have installed a skylight there!) and put a futon on the floor and installed a TV on the wall in the other. Previously, one of them had been a play space for the kids, with rubber mats and cardboard bricks. Very small spaces can be dedicated to younger kids' play to keep visual clutter out of other areas.

Nthing that we use outdoor spaces a ton- a screened in porch with a COUCH and a deck which gets sun, in addition to various play spaces for the kids (sandbox, treehouse, etc.).
posted by metasarah at 7:54 AM on January 25, 2024 [1 favorite]