In his book Walden; Or, a Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau extolled the virtues of living simply. In his first chapter, “Economy,” Thoreau discussed the possibilities for making one’s life less complex by living in a small space:

I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night, and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid…, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this.

In the end, Thoreau himself did not go the toolbox route. But the house he built for himself, where he wrote most of Walden, was a simple and economical dwelling:

I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the usual price for such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all of which was done by myself, was [he gives a line-item accounting, then the total,] in all, $28 12 1/2 [cents].

Perhaps reading Thoreau as a teenager had its effect on me, because my favorite living spaces have been small. Before I was married, I spent an adventurous winter living in a camping trailer in the woods in Guilford, Vermont, where I pumped my water by hand from a spring and used a latrine that I dug and built for myself. For two years in the the early 2000s, while we were living in Connecticut, I spent three nights a week in Keene, N.H., on a consulting job; instead of paying through the nose for a hotel room, I rented a cozy room with a bath at the back of a lady’s house in a residential neighborhood within walking distance of the job. (Photo: Replica of Thoreau’s house at Walden Pond apparently with the great transcendentalist himself frozen in carbonite in the yard. Credit: RhythmicQuietude, CC BY-SA 3.0.)

My wife and I are now living in my favorite place of all, the beautiful woodsy Whitehall community in the Millbrook area of Raleigh, N.C., where we inhabit a 1,300-square-foot (SF) townhome built in the 1970s.

I’ve never been attracted to the idea of living in a sprawling McMansion lit up like Times Square and radiating BTUs like the Death Star reaching critical mass. And apparently I’m not alone in that. Whether it’s the tough economy or a lifestyle decision, many people are investing in small living spaces, certainly in hard-pressed areas around the globe, but also here in the United States.

According to Greg Johnson, director of ResourcesForLife.com and facilitator for the Small House Society, smaller dwellings save money in a number of important ways. He tells me that

In addition to having a smaller mortgage, people recognize that the amount of money paid in interest over the period of their mortgage is reduced dramatically. Lower purchase and construction costs make getting a loan easier. Smaller homes generally have less land and a lower assessed value, so taxes are lower.

In addition, utility bills are lower, as well as costs of lawn care and other external care. The difference between large and small houses in heating and cooling costs can be considerable:

Larger homes have larger furnaces and sometimes several furnaces with zoned heating and cooling. Smaller homes can be heated using smaller and more efficient heating systems and alternative fuel heating systems such as bio-fuel.

Also, he says, “Smaller homes can make better use of newer lighting technologies such as LED lighting, and less power is needed to light smaller homes.”

Designing and Building Small Houses

A number of architects, designers, contractors, and manufactured-home companies are specializing in small homes.

Jay Shafer of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company sells plans and builds houses from 65 SF to 837 SF. On his web site, Shafer says he has been living in a house “smaller than some people’s closets” since 1997. He writes that

My decision to inhabit just 89 square feet arose from some concerns I had about the impact a larger house would have on the environment, and because I do not want to maintain a lot of unused or unusable space. My houses have met all of my domestic needs without demanding much in return. The simple, slower lifestyle my homes have afforded is a luxury for which I am continually grateful.

A cost chart shows estimates for Tumbleweed houses ranging from $16,100 to $23,000, if you build the house yourself. The company delivers ready-made houses also. The 65-SF XS-House costs $38,997 ready-made. The 172-SF Pomomo (a little larger than Thoreau’s house) costs $44,997. (Photo: Jay Shafer and a Tumbleweed Tiny House. Credit: Nicolás Boullosa, CC BY 2.0.)

During the Hurricane Katrina recovery, a study revealed that a standard FEMA trailer cost a whopping $70,000 to built, transport, set up, maintain, and decommission — plus those trailers were only designed as temporary housing. In response, a design team came up with a series of Katrina Cottages that would be much more durable and comfortable, and would cost thousands of dollars less.

The group of designers that worked on the Katrina project developed a set of basic cottage types, all designed to be ready-made and shippable. The Katrina Tiny Cottage is smaller than 500 SF, even down to 170 SF. The larger Katrina Courtyard Cottage is 2,050 SF and is made up of two or more wings that wrap around a courtyard. Some houses are two stories, such as the Katrina Tall Cottage, which is 700 SF.

Designer Marianne Cusato, who created the original core Katrina Cottage, still designs the houses and sells plans. Until recently, she had a deal with Lowe’s Home Centers, which served as distributor for pre-built cottages. That relationship ended recently, but Cusato’s media representative tells me that a new sales channel is in the works and will be announced in Fall 2011. (Photo: Katrina Cottage, Ocean Springs, Miss. Credit: Jeffrey K. Bounds.)

This Small House Society resource page lists a large number of designers and builders of small living spaces.

You can see a variety of small-house designs at Kent Griswold’s Tiny House Blog, where he links to plans by several different designers. Here he has a gallery of photos of tiny houses.

Architect Sarah Susanka, developer of the Not So Big House, sells plans for homes in the moderate range of 2,000-2,400 SF. Ross Chapin Architects offers plans for cottages in the range of 300-1,300 SF and small houses from 1,300 to 2,800 SF.

In investigating small houses and the people who design and build them, one of the most interesting outfits I discovered is Tiny Texas Houses in Luling, Texas. The houses they build are “99 Percent Pure Salvage.” That means, according to their web site, that “everything from the doors, floors, windows, lumber, porch posts, glass, door hardware, and even the siding has been saved and re-used to create houses that we hope will last for a century or more… there are presently enough building materials sitting on the ground to build much of the next generation of housing.” Houses are pre-built and delivered on a trailer. Their houses start at about $35,000 for a 10′ x 12′. A 12′ x 28′ is around $75,000.

According to the Small House Society, the movement it represents is “the result of concerns about what we are doing to the environment, and what the environment is doing to us (wild fires, flooding, hurricanes), as well as a shifting economy.” So what are the environmental implications of small dwellings? And how does this design-intensive small-house movement fit into the larger housing picture in the U.S. and globally? I plan to explore those questions in my next article. (Photo: Tiny house interior. Credit: RowdyKittens, CC BY 2.0.)

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