Bright green homes = small green homes
Last week I posted about the way our houses will be built in the future, and CanadaGuy brought up a really good point: these days, our houses are much larger than they really need to be. I wrote about it a while ago (“How much room do we really need?”), but for some reason it slipped my mind when talking about bright green homes.
Anyway, I thought you’d all like to see a video on this topic. It’s a tour of the smallest house I’ve ever seen, owned and built by Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. I came across it on the 37signals blog and wanted to share it with you.
If this guy can live by himself in this tiny space, I guess the rest of us could at least give up the formal dining room or spare bedroom, yeah?
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We have a two-bedroom apartment, and I could *not* give up the second (“spare”) bedroom, which functions as home office/guest room/craft storage.
I think there’s a balance. If your space is too tiny, then you have no room to store anything and keep having to throw things out and then buy a new one when you need one – and that’s not green either! With the extra space I can do things like store balls of wool from op shops/school fetes for when I want to knit.
Fair enough but note you’re using your “spare” room for lots of different purposes – office and storage as well as guest room. You also have one less bedroom than what people consider “average”.
Too many people build these 4- or 5-bedroom homes with the idea that one of the rooms will be for guests. And yet most of us hardly ever have overnight guests, and if we did, could unroll a futon mattress on the floor of the home office or get the kids to share for a night or whatever (*some* of us don’t want to make our overnight guests too comfortable in case they hang around too long). So the guest room with its carefully made-up bed sits empty…or gathers junk.
In the same way people will buy skis for the 5% of the year they might spend skiing, people will build an entire extra room for the 5% of the year they might have guests. Rent the skis. Send the guests to a hotel.
Ooh yes, Rebekka, I wouldn’t consider a 2-bedroom house too large. Although I have a 3-bedroom house and think it’s a bit big for me and my husband – I’d love to have a 2-bed instead. One for us, one multipurpose for guests/hobbies.
Wendy, I’ll keep in mind your guest policy next time I visit you
It’s interesting though how much room we think we need – I’ve been reading some minimalist blogs lately and am intrigued by the idea. So far my fave is Chris Baskind’s More Minimal site. Mnmlist.com is good too.
I would love to have so little stuff that we could live in a house that small. How liberating!
That house and a few other small houses are featured in this months Sanctuary mag. They had me wishing I had a smaller house.
It certainly makes me want to tidy up a bit, at the very least