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Tiny House Living, How small is your house?

post #1 of 75
11/3/08 at 10:37pm
Thread Starter 
We are presently living in a huge (2600 sq ft) house and I long for a tiny house. I love the Tumbleweed houses, but they would be too small for myself and four children. I just need to see other families living in small spaces, and how they make it work. How tiny is your home?

Cheers,

Lyn

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post #2 of 75
11/3/08 at 11:50pm
Ours is 1200 sq ft. Not tiny but it feels pretty tiny sometimes!
post #3 of 75
11/3/08 at 11:52pm
Mine is less then 900 square feet for four. It is too small.
post #4 of 75
11/4/08 at 12:48am
Girl, I too have 4 kids and we are moving out of our 1300 sqf suburb house & into our 2700 sqf farm home. I am LONGING for the room. I love & respect all you moms making it work in those 350sqf apartments but I get to stressed out! Let me ask you this, how old is your house? During Hurricane Gustav I stayed in a home that was very new & 3000 sqf. I never stopped cleaning. 4 bathrooms, double sinks in the master, seperate shower & jacuzzi tub, kitchen sink, bar sink, laundry sink etc etc... Having big rooms doesn't create extra work ( okay yeah there is more room for dust & vacuuming) but all these new accessories certainly does. I personally don't need anymore toilets to stick my hand in twice a week or sinks to scrub out my kiddo's dried on toothpaste.
post #5 of 75
11/4/08 at 1:01am
264 square feet
We live in our 5th wheel with our 4 young kids. Someday a 900 square foot house will feel like a mansion!!!!!
post #6 of 75
11/4/08 at 1:10am
My house is 814 sq feet for two of us. The actual square footage is plenty but I'd adjust the floorplan a little in my dream house.

My current house is a typical four square on the first floor with a kitchen, dining room, living room, bedroom, and bath. We use the bedroom as the playroom. I'd love to tear down the wall between that bedroom and the living room and make them into one larger room (still less than 400 sq ft total though). I'd also like two bedrooms upstairs because while us sharing one bedroom is fine right now, it won't be fine in 10 years or so. Finally, I'd move the full bath upstairs and just have a powder room downstairs. I feel confident that I could easily do that in 900-1000 sq feet and we'd be more than comfortable... and if I could bump to about 1200 sq ft, I'd add in luxuries like a linen closet, a pantry, a laundry room on the second floor (*dream*), etc. for better, easier to organize storage options.
post #7 of 75
11/4/08 at 1:24am
well, i just had to chime in...about 200sq.ft! my partner & i share a one-room hutt with our 18 month old. space is definitely tight, but for us having a big chunk of land & a tiny house is much more ideal than a big house squashed into the suburbs. when the money falls out of the sky, we would love to build a bigger house. BUT, still quite small. it feels cozier that way. helps keep things simple. so it all depends on where your priorities are. we certainly couldnt live here with 4 kids either! and as our family expands we'll have to come up with more creative ideas on how to make the space work....
post #8 of 75
11/4/08 at 1:33am
Right now we're living w/my DH's parents, in a 1200 sqf '50s era house; there are 2 tiny bedrooms, & 1 slightly larger one with a bathroom - the other bathroom is in the hall. The IL's have 1 bedroom, the other one is computers/office/storage, & the one w/the bath attached has the 4 of us in it (it used to belong to DH's 2 sisters, the office used to be his room). The LR is also the playroom, & the kitchen is pretty small, with a sort of nook w/a table. The washer, dryer, & our refrigerator are in the garage. The kids spend a lot of time in the back yard/back porch, which is fenced, & includes sandbox, wading pool, veggie garden strip, small herb garden, & chicken pen.
post #9 of 75
11/4/08 at 2:51am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kimmom View Post
264 square feet
We live in our 5th wheel with our 4 young kids. Someday a 900 square foot house will feel like a mansion!!!!!
Wow! DH's parents lived like that for a while. But they lived on a farm so it worked out okay. Kids played outside when it was warm. Well. Even when it was cold.

We live in about 800 sq feet. I would like bigger rooms. But I don't need them.
post #10 of 75
11/4/08 at 4:02am
We have a 1400 sq ft farm house with 3 bedrooms. I wish the living room was a bit bigger. when we all want to watch a movie, it is crowded. On the other hand it is easy to heat the living areas with our wood stove. The bedrooms stay appropriately cool. We do have a separate finished space that holds our pantry and freezer. Our 18 year old son who is attending University is living out there right now but, he grew up living inside and still spends a lot of time in the house (mostly just sleeping out there). I wouldn't want to go smaller and have to give up my wall of books and I do wish our bathroom was bigger.

Blessings,
~Traci
post #11 of 75
11/4/08 at 4:11am
Definitely not tiny by any means, but I love our 1100 sq ft home. I think it's laid out quite well and minimal wasted space (ie the hallway has a tall bookshelf and a scotch chest in it in a part that is wide and it's quite a short hallway). Main downfalls are that there is only a small linen cupboard and one cupboard for pantry overflow, laundry items, preserved foods, stationery/filing etc. I love that our home has a large deck off the lounge, so it definitely makes the lounge seem really large (the lounge is big actually quite big in proportion to the rest of the house and the bedrooms quite small and we don't have a foyer at the front door - it walks right into the dining room!). We're on almost 1/4 acre, so the section makes up for the small house I think too.

We're comfy and cosy here and no plans for going bigger.
post #12 of 75
11/4/08 at 4:24am
Ours is 1700 sq feet which is large by some standards but it's not that big. Most of it is a greatroom, a central room with our kitchen, livingroom, and dining area all together. To one side of that is our room and to the other side is a bedroom and an office (the office is now dd2's room but there is no closet and it's a small room). The room suits our needs but we could not go any smaller. Especially since my IL's come from India for extended visits and then we have 2-3 more people living with us.
post #13 of 75
11/4/08 at 4:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by htcamommy View Post
Girl, I too have 4 kids and we are moving out of our 1300 sqf suburb house & into our 2700 sqf farm home. I am LONGING for the room. I love & respect all you moms making it work in those 350sqf apartments but I get to stressed out! Let me ask you this, how old is your house? During Hurricane Gustav I stayed in a home that was very new & 3000 sqf. I never stopped cleaning. 4 bathrooms, double sinks in the master, seperate shower & jacuzzi tub, kitchen sink, bar sink, laundry sink etc etc... Having big rooms doesn't create extra work ( okay yeah there is more room for dust & vacuuming) but all these new accessories certainly does. I personally don't need anymore toilets to stick my hand in twice a week or sinks to scrub out my kiddo's dried on toothpaste.
I love your post!

I agree about the wasted extras. We have two sinks in our bathroom. One started leaking underneath and dh simply turned it off and we don't use it. We only use one bathroom for all four of us because it's too hard to clean two showers/baths when I can only clean one. We use our garden tub in our bathroom as the place where I keep my parakeets. I put a little table in the tub and their cage on top. The sun comes in just right and they are happy there, and the tub catches all their seed hulls and feathers so I just have to vacuum it out. I haven't sat and soaked in that tub since I was pregnant with my dd2.
post #14 of 75
11/4/08 at 10:57am
i think a good layout is just as important as size. flexible rooms have been nice. when we realized that we could put the dining room table in the huge living room space, we created a playspace for the girls. that playspace houses all the toys and some crafts for them and the diaper changing station with drawers for their clothes. since we have two floors, this is nice to have a change of clothes and diapers/wipes handy. it's connected to the kitchen and can be seen from the living room. they don't feel alone or isolated. i like to keep an eye on them while making food.

speaking of kitchens, we have a counter below the window that the girls sit on while we're making food. it's such a great piece of space so they are not underfoot. they can help stir and mix and get me a bowl from the cupboard.

i feel like our house is too big sometimes though. it's about 1650 sq feet. 3 BR, 2BA. we used to hosts people from out of town and throw a lot of get together but not so much lately.
post #15 of 75
11/4/08 at 11:05am
We live in 675 sq ft and there are 2 adults and 4 kids. We are planning to add on and end up wit just under 1000 sq ft. I love our little house.
post #16 of 75
11/4/08 at 8:05pm
Thread Starter 

living in a small house

Wow, some of you are living in tiny houses!! I was thinking ideally under 600 sq ft, the smaller the better. How to you manage in under 300sq ft? Do any of you have any pictures of your under 600 sq ft homes to share?

Cheers,

Lyn
post #17 of 75
11/4/08 at 10:42pm
We live in 875sq ft with 5 people. The overall size if fine, my only wish, is that we actually had an extra bedroom or a finished basement. Sometimes everyone just needs their own space. I like to listen to the radio and the kids all screaming and playing the LR in the winter when I can't send them out... it's gets on my nerves sometimes. I wish I could send them all to the basement to play or something. Or I wish everyone could have their own room, mostly though because my 2 boys are 9 years apart, a 10 year old doesn't really like to keep company with a 1 y/o, KWIM? I can't keep the baby's things in his room because ODS likes to go in there to sit on the floor and read, and the baby would be climbing on him, etc. Even if they were tiny rooms, I think ODS would like to have his own space to close his door on the world every once in a while.
post #18 of 75
11/4/08 at 10:51pm
1 adult, 0 kids, 2 dogs, 1 chinchilla, 1 hamster

168 sq. feet

It is tiny! It's a studio apartment. It has a little bathroom (toilet and shower, no sink in bathroom), tiny kitchen, with miniture fridge and stove. I love it!
post #19 of 75
11/5/08 at 3:31pm
1700 sq. feet with four of us and two cats.....PLENTY of space and oftentimes wish for something smaller. someday, for sure!
post #20 of 75
11/5/08 at 4:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by didelphus View Post
Ours is 1200 sq ft. Not tiny but it feels pretty tiny sometimes!
We have 1100 or 1200 upstairs plus a basement, which is partially finished. Most of our living space is upstairs, tho. The only thing that feels crowded is the bathroom. I wish we had a second bathroom upstairs. We have one downstairs, but it's cold and the litter box is in there so no one wants to use it.

It's also feeling more crowded as the girls are getting older.

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There Is Not Always a "Fix" For the Difficult Child
10 Things You Don't Need For a New Baby
Raising Earth-Friendly Kids
Mothering › Mothering Discussion Forums › Natural Family Living › The Mindful Home › Country Living/ Off the Grid › Tiny House Living, How small is your house?