Little House on a Small Planet

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We found ourselves in a wonderful, frightening place. We were starting from scratch, and we could re-define the course our lives would take. There were certain basic things we needed: bedrooms for ourselves and our two children, and land enough to build a shop. Beyond that, we were pretty open.

With such freedom, we looked at many incredible possibilities, from turn of the century farm houses, to log cabins, to contemporary homes, to 1960's ranch houses. Big, small, old, new. We looked into purchasing land and having a pre-fab home brought out, or building something from shipping containers. We even considered living in a yurt.

OK, so I was the only one who wanted to live in a yurt.

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It had not really dawned on me to look small. After all, you want to buy the biggest house you can afford, right? One day, while perusing the offerings at my local book store in the home renovation section, I saw a nearby book titled "Little House on a Small Planet." I picked it up with a pile of other housing related books, but two hours later it was the only book I took home with me. I read it from cover to cover. It completely changed the way I looked at our housing dilemma.

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I am a classic hater of housework. In the larger homes we had, I struggled to keep the chaos managable. I began to think about our last home, and how we had used the space. I realized there were large portions of the house we never entered, or we merely passed through on our way to the parts we did use. What was the cost to heat and cool that space? What about the insurance for all that space? The time to clean it? The furniture to fill it? We began to think about what we could really do without.

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Some of the decisions on what to keep and what to lose were easy. We don't entertain, and we always eat in the kitchen, so a formal dining room was stricken from the list.

Another easy-to-forgo item was the horrible garden tub. Really, I never have time to soak. And besides, have you ever tried to clean one of those things? What a monumental waste of space and water and time. No garden tub.

An extra bedroom also found its way to the cut list. That was harder, but not as hard as losing the space for art. That would require a good bit of sacrifice, but it had to go.

In the end, we went for a very small house on an absolutely beautiful six acre lot with a pond and a variety of fruit trees. It has two bedrooms and two bathrooms and an attic space that became our bedroom. The closet space under the staircase is now a tiny 4'x5' office, and the staircase landing makes a cozy reading nook. The only eating area is a section of the kitchen, and there is no formal anything. It's cheaper to heat, cool, and insure, and the small indoor space encourages us all to be outdoors more. Less space is easier to keep clean and organized, since we had to part with lots of "stuff" in order to make this work.

I know we've made the right decision, although it has not been without serious challenges. If you'd like to read more about our on-going adventure, you can visit our site, ottoblotto to read more about our "small" adventures.

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