My Little House: Maximizing Space and Minimizing Costs

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.)

[dropshadowbox align=”none” effect=”lifted-both” width=”auto” height=”” background_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]If you’re interested in building your own tiny home, check out the Tiny House Plans book. It has some great building plans.[/dropshadowbox]

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.

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).