Post by ogeezer on Apr 1, 2007 9:32:48 GMT -6
To live successfully anywhere outside the mainstream of life you must have an unconventional spirit coupled with down-to-earth practicality — a combo that can be hard to find and harder still to balance.
We live in the country have 40 acres of our own & 200+ acres under lease but our life choices have involved living in smaller spaces — which presents an additional set of challenges, both to the soul and to practicality. Our house has a footprint of less than 1200 sq ft; altho now there's only two of us living here, we raised four kids in it; and today still have sufficient space for overnighters from our extended family (spouses & grandkids) because we learned a long time ago that size doesn't matter.
Even as the size of the average new American house has more than doubled (from 1100 S.F during the post-WWII housing boom to more than 2500 by 2006), more and more people are also exploring small-space living. These include, most visibly, RVers spending months in their cleverly designed rolling homelets, simple-living advocates wanting to use fewer resources, homeless camper-dwellers, folks living on boats, and country newcomers who are camping out in garages, trailers, cabins, or sheds while building their dream homes.
RVers and boat dwellers have built-in advantages. Literally built-in. RVs and boats, with their endless crannies, hidden storage spaces, and double-purpose furnishings (like tables that turn into beds) provide the construction model for the rest of us.
Unless you’re interested in doing what it takes to “live small,” there’s no point in even thinking about other options.
Living small inevitably brings some surprises. The need to find a place for everything and put everything in its place as soon as you’re done with it is something that takes the laziness out of people.
If you can’t immediately put things away, then have a transitional junk drawer or cabinet where you stash stuff until you can file, fold, sort, or dispose of it. Banish clutter from your kitchen countertops. Eliminate small appliances you don’t need. Stash those you do need inside cabinets. Buy the under-cabinet mounting types of appliances where feasible. Buy or construct a countertop “appliance garage.” An uncluttered kitchen is the biggest step toward small-space sanity.
Don’t own a lot of stuff. If you can do without it, do without it. If you can’t do without it, cheat. Build yourself a small garden shed, rent a storage bin, or purchase one of those $350 Rubbermaid instant-sheds at your local garden supply, and use that for your extra possessions. Resolve that you will never again go on mad acquistion binges, host your entire family reunion, or have giant parties—unless you have them outdoors during nice weather.
DESIGN & BUILD FOR LIVING SMALL
Before tackling any small-space building or remodeling project, take a look at the interiors of boats and RVs. Go to a RV & Boat show, get brochures, see how these venues deal with space limitations. Make note of their space-saving design features—like underbed storage, dual-purpose furnishings, fold-up tables, compact water heaters, and especially the way they turn every bit of “useless” space into a cabinet.
Don’t underestimate the amount of storage you need. This is the biggest mistake you can make. Figure one modest clothes closet for each person, one linen closet for everybody, and kitchen cabinets where enough wall cabinets fill the walls and base cabinets (except under the sink) are devoted to only drawers of various sizes to store items not kept in the wall cabinets.
Use pocket doors that slide into the wall; that way you don’t have to leave lots of space for doors to swing open. Consider constructing (or buying) a platform bed with big storage drawers underneath. Consider a Roman-style bathtub, again with a platform underneath. Design it cleverly with a hidden, spring-latch operated panel and you can even use this as your top-secret storage space.
Build with good attic access or an easily accessible storage loft. The typical hatch-in-the-ceiling access discourages us from using that space above our heads. A generous-sized hatch with a ship’s ladder (or specially constructed folding ladder) encourages use by making access less formidable.
If you’re building your own kitchen cabinets or having them custom-built, extend them all the way to the ceiling. While furrdowns are fashionable, they're a terrible waste of usable space. You may have to use a step-ladder to access the top shelves, but you’ll avoid the maddening waste of standard-height (30-inch) cabinets, which end a foot below the standard 8-foot ceiling.
If you must have 30-inch cabinets, then don’t enclose the above-cabinet space with the traditional soffit. Leave the above-cabinet space open and use it to display attractive, seldom-used kitchen items.
Where feasible, replace traditional walls with half-height walls, pass-throughs, or movable screens. The bigger area you can see, the less cramped you’ll feel. Construct in-wall cabinets (set between studs with/without doors), similar to bathroom medicine cabinets but made of wood for storage of spices, fancy dinnerware, nic-naks.
Design with multiple use in mind. A built-in fold-down workbench can double as a kitchen table. A kitchen countertop with a knee hole under it becomes a desk. If you still iron, a built-in fold-down in-wall ironing board works well.
Build niches to hold your TV and electronic gear. Electronics not only take up a lot of space when sitting out on countertops or tabletops; they take up a lot of visual space. They’re always in your face, wherever you turn. And they’re not pretty. Tuck them into a cabinet-wall and they’ll be easier to live with.
Whatever else you do, be sure to let in lots of light using thermal glass doors, big windows, skylights (to reduce energy use loads in extreme temperature swings), big doors that can stand wide open in Spring or Fall, and entrance doors into the house that open onto shaded porches where the air is always cooler. No matter how tiny your interior space, make the entire outdoors a part of your design.
We live in the country have 40 acres of our own & 200+ acres under lease but our life choices have involved living in smaller spaces — which presents an additional set of challenges, both to the soul and to practicality. Our house has a footprint of less than 1200 sq ft; altho now there's only two of us living here, we raised four kids in it; and today still have sufficient space for overnighters from our extended family (spouses & grandkids) because we learned a long time ago that size doesn't matter.
Even as the size of the average new American house has more than doubled (from 1100 S.F during the post-WWII housing boom to more than 2500 by 2006), more and more people are also exploring small-space living. These include, most visibly, RVers spending months in their cleverly designed rolling homelets, simple-living advocates wanting to use fewer resources, homeless camper-dwellers, folks living on boats, and country newcomers who are camping out in garages, trailers, cabins, or sheds while building their dream homes.
RVers and boat dwellers have built-in advantages. Literally built-in. RVs and boats, with their endless crannies, hidden storage spaces, and double-purpose furnishings (like tables that turn into beds) provide the construction model for the rest of us.
Unless you’re interested in doing what it takes to “live small,” there’s no point in even thinking about other options.
Living small inevitably brings some surprises. The need to find a place for everything and put everything in its place as soon as you’re done with it is something that takes the laziness out of people.
If you can’t immediately put things away, then have a transitional junk drawer or cabinet where you stash stuff until you can file, fold, sort, or dispose of it. Banish clutter from your kitchen countertops. Eliminate small appliances you don’t need. Stash those you do need inside cabinets. Buy the under-cabinet mounting types of appliances where feasible. Buy or construct a countertop “appliance garage.” An uncluttered kitchen is the biggest step toward small-space sanity.
Don’t own a lot of stuff. If you can do without it, do without it. If you can’t do without it, cheat. Build yourself a small garden shed, rent a storage bin, or purchase one of those $350 Rubbermaid instant-sheds at your local garden supply, and use that for your extra possessions. Resolve that you will never again go on mad acquistion binges, host your entire family reunion, or have giant parties—unless you have them outdoors during nice weather.
DESIGN & BUILD FOR LIVING SMALL
Before tackling any small-space building or remodeling project, take a look at the interiors of boats and RVs. Go to a RV & Boat show, get brochures, see how these venues deal with space limitations. Make note of their space-saving design features—like underbed storage, dual-purpose furnishings, fold-up tables, compact water heaters, and especially the way they turn every bit of “useless” space into a cabinet.
Don’t underestimate the amount of storage you need. This is the biggest mistake you can make. Figure one modest clothes closet for each person, one linen closet for everybody, and kitchen cabinets where enough wall cabinets fill the walls and base cabinets (except under the sink) are devoted to only drawers of various sizes to store items not kept in the wall cabinets.
Use pocket doors that slide into the wall; that way you don’t have to leave lots of space for doors to swing open. Consider constructing (or buying) a platform bed with big storage drawers underneath. Consider a Roman-style bathtub, again with a platform underneath. Design it cleverly with a hidden, spring-latch operated panel and you can even use this as your top-secret storage space.
Build with good attic access or an easily accessible storage loft. The typical hatch-in-the-ceiling access discourages us from using that space above our heads. A generous-sized hatch with a ship’s ladder (or specially constructed folding ladder) encourages use by making access less formidable.
If you’re building your own kitchen cabinets or having them custom-built, extend them all the way to the ceiling. While furrdowns are fashionable, they're a terrible waste of usable space. You may have to use a step-ladder to access the top shelves, but you’ll avoid the maddening waste of standard-height (30-inch) cabinets, which end a foot below the standard 8-foot ceiling.
If you must have 30-inch cabinets, then don’t enclose the above-cabinet space with the traditional soffit. Leave the above-cabinet space open and use it to display attractive, seldom-used kitchen items.
Where feasible, replace traditional walls with half-height walls, pass-throughs, or movable screens. The bigger area you can see, the less cramped you’ll feel. Construct in-wall cabinets (set between studs with/without doors), similar to bathroom medicine cabinets but made of wood for storage of spices, fancy dinnerware, nic-naks.
Design with multiple use in mind. A built-in fold-down workbench can double as a kitchen table. A kitchen countertop with a knee hole under it becomes a desk. If you still iron, a built-in fold-down in-wall ironing board works well.
Build niches to hold your TV and electronic gear. Electronics not only take up a lot of space when sitting out on countertops or tabletops; they take up a lot of visual space. They’re always in your face, wherever you turn. And they’re not pretty. Tuck them into a cabinet-wall and they’ll be easier to live with.
Whatever else you do, be sure to let in lots of light using thermal glass doors, big windows, skylights (to reduce energy use loads in extreme temperature swings), big doors that can stand wide open in Spring or Fall, and entrance doors into the house that open onto shaded porches where the air is always cooler. No matter how tiny your interior space, make the entire outdoors a part of your design.