When less is more: building small brings big rewards.

Building smaller can be an appropriate housing solution. By current housing standards, 2,200 square feet is considered small, but its possible to build a comfortable home that is 1,200 or even 500 square feet, depending on your household needs.

Typically, home buying/building begins by finding out what mortgage we qualify for, and then looking for the most that we can get with that amount of mortgage. Very seldom do we consider how little we really need. We want more, and we are led to believe that more square feet is the "more" we want. What if the "more" becomes a more "whole" istic quality of life? Sometimes, it's important to keep in mind that the small home doesn't have to be the "dream" home--everything we could possibly ever dream of wanting in a home. How about a "reality" home instead? You can balance out our home with what we really need in life.

If we really whittle down our home needs to the most basic needs then our needs are functions: sleeping, eating, cooking, storing food, cleaning, bathing, and the biggie: storing all of our stuff. We add an elusive desire: comfort. Then comes marketing and consumerism, and we end up paying for things that we never even use. We tend to over fill our house with stuff and get a bigger house because we have too much stuff, then we just get more stuff and over fill the bigger house. If designed well, smaller can feel good too.

How do we make a house smaller? Utilize rooms for multiple functions, eliminate multiple areas with the same function, minimize hallways, and eliminate luxury that we don't use. Do we need a dining room, a breakfast nook, and a raised bar in the kitchen? Do we need a living room, a den, and a sitting area in the master bedroom? Are we willing to spend $40,000 of the mortgage towards a formal living room and dining room for entertaining guests, but actually have formal guests maybe once every few years? Do we need the big two-person whirlpool tub, which very seldom even gets used because there isn't enough hot water in the tank to fall it? The sex appeal of luxurious master bathrooms is often used as a marketing tool to sell homes. Maybe we don't really need that unused expense to feel sensuous. As a whole, we are building bigger, more expensive kitchens and cooking less often. Kitchens used to have pantreys: often higher function and lower cost than the cabinets that have replaced them. We still need ample storage in smaller homes. Designing and building small has its own challenges, and it's better to get educated early, before lot selection and design phase. Home building issues are less expensive, easier to deal with, and more effectively dealt with if planned for in advance--more so than finding problems later and trying to put band-aids on them. (Kind of like health care: conscious people are focusing on staying healthy rather than fixing sickness.)

Smaller homes can come in many forms. For some, condos, duplexes, or quads are appropriate solutions. Others might build a smaller home with future expansions preplanned. Another option is to build a larger home with an accessory apartment that can be closed off and rented out separately. Or live in the accessory apartment and rent out the larger portion. The accessory apartment can be combined when the family grows, and separated to rent when the family downsizes. Yet another option is to build a shop/studio with an accessory apartment (or just the accessory apartment if you don't need a work space at home), and leave the primary house site open. Neighborhoods of smaller homes can have the side benefit of increased community interaction.

There are financial advantages to building a smaller home. The Smaller our mortgage, the sooner we can get it paid off, the less interest we pay. Maybe our homes are investments, but they don't earn an income. A smaller mortgage will allow us to make other investments that actually earn income. It also takes less to live in the home (heating and for lighting expenses.)

Consider the side benefits of paying off the mortgage. Work is no longer a "have to," but a "want to"; we get to work at things that inspire us. What kind of health benefits could that bring? Who was it that said, "For the first part of our lives we give up our health to earn money, and in the latter part of our lives we use up our money to try to fix our health"?

A smaller home can still be a nice, comfortable, healthy space to live in. It's possible that life has more in store for us than a mortgage payment and a place to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. We may even find that the "reality" home suits our real needs better than a "dream" home ever could--we may never even want a larger home.

Scott Saxla of Shelter's Edge does design/build and consulting work on health-conscious, environmentally responsible homes. ShelterEdge.com, 828-628-1090, Scott [e-mail]