{"id":167,"date":"2014-06-20T10:20:40","date_gmt":"2014-06-20T14:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shinytinymansion.wordpress.com\/?p=167"},"modified":"2025-09-11T14:18:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T18:18:56","slug":"thinking-small-102-size-is-relative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/2014\/06\/20\/thinking-small-102-size-is-relative\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking Small 102 – Size is Relative"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n

Working through some philosophy and the big picture on small living before I get into the meat and bones of building<\/strong> .\u00a0 .\u00a0 .<\/p>\n

How big is big enough?<\/strong> If you’re homeless I would say a 500 SF house would be a mansion – If you are in the top 1%, 500SF would be your guest bathroom! I bring this up because there’s a big difference between what each one of us feels is adequate for our own comfortable home.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, here in the US, that’s pretty BIG!<\/strong> \u00a0 “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average single-family house completed in 2013 was 2,598 square feet.”\u00a0<\/a> WOW! I get that. Really I do. When you have kids, you need more room, but again, WOW! Do little Billie and Lillie really need their own private areas when they already have a basement and the outdoors? Build character folks, not entitlement! For me, I would rather spend that money on a smaller house of higher quality. Then if I still had some left over,\u00a0 I could support causes important to Sue and me.\u00a0 Let’s see, add a guest bedroom for my twice-a-year overnight guests or keep 1000 families from going hungry. . .Hmmm? If it’s all about you, that’s gotta make you feel better than that 5th bedroom. Altruism causes joy!<\/p>\n

I will be the first to admit that a 500SF house is small, tiny, or even micro by US standards.<\/strong> I made the mistake of titling a You Tube video of our cottage – “520 SF Micro<\/em> House”(This video has been removed because of audio property rights). That was back in 2011, and since then it’s been viewed over 325,000 times! I have dealt with countless folks telling me “This is not a micro house” and “I live in a cardboard box” or “I live in a 150SF Tiny Piney Trailer*<\/em> with a dog, and in fact, your 520SF cottage is a veritable mansion!” This is where the name for our blog and website comes from. I always (usually nicely) asked these cyber-scolders,<\/em> “Who made the rules and guidelines for proper small sized house descriptions?” My favorite answer was, “Curiously enough, in 1947 Katharine Hepburn defined the size of a “Micro House” as anything under 385 square feet. And, in 1963, comedian Buddy Hackett agreed. So there!” <\/em>Sarcasm and wit when backed into a corner. I love it!!!<\/p>\n

As we think about smaller homes, let’s not argue about what size is comfortable for each of us<\/strong>. That’s personal. I can’t tell you what fits you and your family. For our conversations here though, I want to talk about long term, sustainable homes from about 500SF-999SF. Honestly, even Sue and I often discuss adding a small kitchen. Sue cooks a lot and could use a nice small kitchen without the kitchen tango every morning and evening. I’ll still figure out a reason to smooch her though!<\/em> So we may add another 100-150SF on sometime and make our home a ridiculously HUGE 670SF McTiny McMansion, LOL!<\/p>\n

*Side note – IMO if it’s on wheels, it’s a camper or trailer. I call them Tiny Piney’s because they are almost always pine sided and void of color.\u00a0 They can be a great home, but are not a house. *<\/em><\/p>\n

So the lessons we learned today –<\/em><\/p>\n

1) The\u00a0 Downturn economy made us build smaller and fewer homes.
2) The Downturn is allegedly over, so now we are building bigger homes than ever ~ YAY!
3) Feed the hungry instead of your 5th bedroom.
4) Folks feel they need to share their prejudice about house sizes, and sometimes they are really funny.
5) Sue wants a kitchen instead of 50SF kitchen\/pantry\/foyer. ~ “Proofreader Sue” says, YAY–And says in her best Jewish Momma Voice~”So, It took a blog to finally convince you?” ; )<\/em>
6) Ron feels it necessary to share his opinion about putting a Tiny Piney box on wheels and calling it a house. “It’s a camper damn it! You can live in it 365 and call it your home, but it is not a small house!”
7) Ron can be a Dick sometimes ;>)\u00a0 ~”Proofreader Sue” agrees. : ) <\/em>(How Dare Sue!)
<\/em><\/p>\n

Until next Friday,
Cheers fellow Tinies~
Ron<\/p>\n

PS. Don’t forget to share and spread the word all over the place!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Size is relative even when you are talking about a house.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[50,91,99,115,118],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-living-small","tag-downsizing","tag-small-house","tag-small-living","tag-tiny-house-living","tag-tiny-piney"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/shinytinymansion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/breno-assis-r3WAWU5Fi5Q-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/2515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}