By Paula Pant at AffordAnything.org

For my first guest post at Little House, I thought I’d discuss my little house. Fitting, no?

I live in the urban heart of Atlanta (Midtown), surrounded by condos, restaurants and movie theaters within walking distance. Needless to say, space is at a premium in this ultra-pedestrian-friendly part of the city.

And so I own a little house. A VERY little house. (Although, in the interest of full disclosure: it’s no where near a valley.)

As Little House often discusses, small homes are great for reducing costs. Let’s review the obvious price savings:

1. The house itself is usually cheaper.
2. Utility bills are lower.
3. Insurance is (presumably?) lower since there’s not as much house to cover. (My insurance is a ridiculous $3,000 a year, but that’s an entirely different story.)
4. Maintaining the house – such as replacing the carpeting and tile – requires less material, and is therefore cheaper.
5. Furnishings are cheaper (you need fewer).

For all the savings, though, a little house also comes with some big price tags. Here are three I’ve discovered:

#1: The Efficiency Cost.

You need to use your space more efficiently – and that can mean shelling out big bucks, plus hours of your time, to install custom shelving or built-in storage units.

Paula's Kitchen - LH's Note: I love the brightly colored walls with the wood floor.

For example: Our washer/dryer is already consolidated into the kitchen. The only “utility closet” is jam-packed with a vacuum cleaner, brooms, mops and other cleaning supplies. But unfortunately, some of the people who live here are professionals, and their bosses expect them to show up to work without wrinkled shirts.

The only way to have space for an ironing board is to hollow out a section of the kitchen wall, between two studs, and install a pull-down ironing board on hinges.

This strategy is similar to our guest “room” strategy. Right now our friends sleep on couches, but we realized we’d have to upgrade after one of our friends literally left our house and checked into a hotel.

We’ll need to build a Murphy Bed into the living room – you know, the kind that attaches to a wall, with hinges and load-bearing chains. When guests come, we’ll surround the bed with a foldable Japanese screen for privacy.

All these space-efficiency retrofits require tools, lumber, and hours of your time – unless you want to pay someone to do it for you.

#2: The Furniture Costs.

Ironically, you might actually spend more on furniture when you have a small home.

When every square foot counts, you realize how spatially-inefficient most furniture is. This doesn’t matter when you have room to spare, but it matters a great deal when you’re wedging your so-called “home office” in that sliver between your bed and the bathroom.

At this point, you start to scrutinize desks, cabinets and bookcases for usable storage capacity. (I’ve coined the term “footprint-to-storage ratio”, referring to how much floorspace it eats relative to how much it can store). You’ll start spending weekends scouting for furniture with built-in storage capacity – like ottomans that open up – or you might, as I did, just build your own desk when you realize there’s nothing off-the-rack that’s as tiny and efficient as you need.

#3: The Landscape Costs.

If I had a huge swath of space, I’d just let it be grass. But my tiny strip of earth doesn’t really merit the cost of a mower.

Solution? Landscape it with trees, flowers, and rocks. Use mulch and compost. Surround it with pavers and flagstone. Plant perennial groundcover. Maybe anchor the whole setup with a fountain. It’s a lot of fun to landscape your yard – but the fun comes at a price.

Learn more about how I save money on my little house – and discover why on earth I got stuck with $3,000 annual insurance – at AffordAnything.org.

Little House’s Side Notes: Paula isn’t sure exactly how big her place is in regards to square footage, but here are some fun facts she shared with me:

• I do know that the width of that walkway in the kitchen — the one you see pictured — is one and a half feet, big enough for one person’s hips plus a cat or a small dog to stand side-by-side.

• I also know that the length of my desk — the one wedged between the bed and the bathroom — is 30 inches. And it’s literally right up against my bedframe (on one end) and the bathroom wall (on the other).

Tumbleweed Tiny Houses on Sale

I’m engrossed in little house plans and have done extensive research in my quest for the perfect little house. Though I’ve found lots of options for small and tiny house plans, Tumbleweed Tiny House Company is still one of my favorites. Many of their homes can be built on a trailer and offer excellent space utilization. They also have small, stationery homes as well that require a foundation. Now, fitting a family of 4 into one of these homes may be a stretch.  Their homes are meant to comfortably fit one to two people; say a single person or empty-nesters who are ready to downsize and be more mobile. I also just wrote a post about how inflation over 40-years has really modified the “American Dream” and maybe it’s time to think outside the suburban track-home.

For those ready to make a move and go small, Tumbleweed is having a sale on one of their tiny house plans, the Popomo, until the end of this month. This mobile style home appears to be one of their easier to build homes. It’s basic structure is a rectangle and estimated cost to build is $20,000. This home is also one they have actual photos of inside and out. By the looks of it, it’s quite modern and can easily be pulled by a full-size truck. Ready to make your move?

Now, for some weekly reads:

• Money Beagle shares his debt perspective over the past four-years. He’s been doing a terrific job paying off their student loans.
• Bucksome Boomer with Should Retirement Include Living Apart from Spouse? I can’t imagine living apart from my husband, but the couples discussed in this post had very different views of retirement. For some, this works, but I can see where it wouldn’t work for all. Interesting topic.
• The Squirrelers with Gift Cards: Hurry up and Use Them! Not all gift cards are created equal. Some expire, some stores close, and sometimes the vendor who sells the gift card has no affiliation with the gift card store. Beware gift card users!
• Mighty Bargain Hunter with Netflix is still Cheap! I agree. Even with their price increase and change in plans I’m still a Netflix subscriber and have been for years. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.
• Mom’s Plans with I Closed My eBay Store. Melissa’s been working on decreasing her inventory and closing out that store and she finally did it.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a post about small floor plans, so I decided to focus on functionality and design. How many times have you walked into an enormous house, yet were disappointed with the layout and functionality of the floor plan? I know that in my personal experience, the McMansions that were so popular during the housing boom were some of the most poorly designed floor plans I’ve seen. Plans that had too much wasted space; cubbies that seemed to have no purpose; open areas in places where there wasn’t any flow of traffic – these floor plan mishaps not only take away from the functionality of the design, but also cost money  -square footage that still must be heated and cooled.

Of course, if you had a choice over what kind of floor plan to choose, functional floor plans make the most sense. But what constitutes a functional floor plan?

• Rooms that serve a purpose
• Traffic flow throughout the house – the rooms should be laid out in such a way that you don’t have to walk through a bedroom to get to a living room or den, etc. Or walk past an unused living area to the “main family area”
• Plenty of storage
• Minimal wasted corners, landings, or seating areas

Some good choices include bungalow style plans. Bungalows vary in size, but are typically under 1,500 square feet. Their exterior design can range from Craftsman to Cape Cod. These small floor plans normally focus on the living/dining/kitchen area as the central “living area” with the bedrooms anchored towards the back or to the sides of the house. Bungalow plans include both open floor plans, where the kitchen is open towards the dining and living areas, as well as more “closed” floor plans, where the rooms are only connected by doorways.

Bungalow Small Floor Plan

Ranch Style Small Floor Plan

Ranch style plans are another preferred, functional choice, depending on your individual style. Ranch style plans are traditionally one-level, however newer styles offer two-levels. The main living area (living room, kitchen, dining area) are clustered together either towards the middle of the house or on either end with the bedrooms grouped together as well. Ranch plans can range in size from small (1,000 sq. ft.) to very large (over 3,500 sq. ft.)

The benefits of choosing smaller, more functional floor plans can mean huge savings in your electric and gas bill. It may also mean you accumulate less “stuff” because you have fewer wasted areas that end up getting filled with things you never use. Another good reason for a small floor plan.

When you bought your home, did you consider the floor plan and its functionality? Are you thinking of buying or building a home and seriously considering a smaller one?

When Thomas Kincade’s paintings first started showing up in galleries years ago, I’d imagine myself living in one of his cottage homes near a babbling brook. His namesake is now so commercialized I don’t necessarily think I’d feel this way today. However, the cottage style house plans in his paintings still make me feel warm and fuzzy. Perhaps I read too many fairy tales as a child. Nevertheless, I am still fascinated with cottage-style homes of all sizes. To clarify, cottage really isn’t a style of its own. The term can apply to many styles of homes, but usually describes comfy or cozy plans (quite subjective, I suppose).

A house plan site that has drawn my attention lately is eplans.com. Their site is easy to navigate and allows you to select the features you’d prefer and style that best suits your needs. For a small fee, you can receive an estimate of what your house plan would cost to build, a service many companies don’t offer.

Some of their plans include actual photographs, like the Craftsman below, while others include an illustration.

EPlan's Craftsman cottage style house plan

Another nice feature of this site is you can choose plans that fit within your budget. So if you can only afford to build a house that is under $200,000, you select the minimum and maximum cost variables and only house plans that fall within your range will appear within your search. Quite helpful for people like me who are hoping to save money though building my own home.

Now if only I could find land to build one of these fabulous plans, I’d be set.

Have you thought about building your own home? How far have you gotten on your plans? Do any of these ideas inspire you?

I’m obsessed, I know. I just can’t help myself,  but kit homes from a century ago are just charming and adorable. And of course it doesn’t help that I found this amazing website that lists tons of antique kit homes. I could spend hours drooling over the house plans and advertisements of yesteryear when a bedroom was referred to as a “chamber”. Of course “chamber” sounds a little archaic, but it’s nostalgic just the same.


My current favorite (and this changes on a day to day basis) is the Harris Homes bungalow collection of the 1920′s. Many of the bungalow plans this company offered were on the small end of the spectrum, under 800 sq. ft., but some of the two story versions were a comfy 1,200 sq. ft. I think the large porches with the staunch pillars are what draw me to this style the most.

Harris Home Design

Harris Homes also dabbled in Four-Square and Colonial Revival residential architecture, but the majority of the 1920′s models revolve around bungalow, or Craftsman style, home designs. Their bungalow floor plans were much more open than their Four-Square plans. Most of their kit homes delivered regionally around their business in Chicago, Illinois and can be found throughout the Great Lakes Region.What’s interesting about this company, is they were truly pioneers in the “green” movement before it was ever popular. Their specialty was wrecking and offered “money back for waste” according to the Antique Home Style description. The only thing I see that’s missing in most of their floor plans, was a second bathroom. However, I’m sure that in 1920 it was a treat to have indoor plumbing!

Today there is still a desire for Craftsman House Plan designs. A few companies I’ve come across that sell similar plans, though not necessarily kit home plans, are The Bungalow Company. I’ve written about this company before; they have some amazing bungalow house plans including a small house plans design area. They also have slide shows of sample interiors and exteriors which helps in determining a favorite plan or style.

Another company that offers a lot of bungalow style plans, as well as other architectural designs, is Designs for Living. They have lots of plans to choose from and many of them have actual photos of completed homes instead of just illustrations or mock-ups. Their floor plans are really open and unique and not so cookie-cutter. Also, the architectural plans are quite reasonably priced compared to other companies I’ve come across, however I’m not sure if you’d need additional sets of plans upon construction. Comparatively, some companies include 4 sets of plans for one price that are called “construction” plans.  Since I’m not ready to build my dream home yet, I’m a little unsure of the materials needed.

At least I’ve found companies that offer bungalow style plans. Once I get serious about where I’m going to build my home, find a reasonably priced lot (this is the kicker of them all!), and decide on a design style, I know where to look!

What style is your dream home? Does antique architecture pique your interest?