Love the blog!

We’d like to get a small house someday with at least 3 bedrooms because we’d like to have 4 kids and want the boys and girls to have separate bedrooms, if we end up with kids of both genders. I want enough space for a vegetable garden, but what’s nearby is more important to us than what’s on our land.

Our family of 4 (2 parents, 1 14-year-old girl, and 1 2.5-year-old boy) live in a 907 square foot apartment in NYC (Brooklyn precisely).

There are 2 bedrooms: 1 for the teenager and 1 for the rest of us. Our daughter uses her room to practice in and has a different sleep schedule than the toddler – so we’re just trying to ensure that each of the children have the right balance individually.

There is 1 bathroom, 1 galley kitchen, 1 hall (which takes up space), and 1 everything else room (parlor, guest room, tv/entertainment room, living room, dining room, study/library, playroom, and office).

We go through our belonging regularly (don’t wear all black contrary to the joking post above), select objects that have multiple purposes, scan files in so that the data/files are accessible in soft copy (music, video, photos, documents, etc.), and so forth. I’m into donating and there’s always a pile ready to give to friend, family, and the Salvation Army.

An extra bathroom would be amazing – but we’re making out okay. Heck, a family in our building is due with their third child any day now and lives in a 2 bedroom 790 square foot apartment. And yes, we’ve had sleepovers for my daughter’s birthday wherein there were 17 girls in sleeping bags in our everything room (furniture had to be moved of course).

Having a small space forces you to make decisions on what is important to you. Recently, I moved my treadmill to the garage since they built a beautiful new fitness center here. That is free and I also have a beautiful walking trail that surrounds the golf course and nature area that I use almost daily. If after six months, I determine that the fitness center is working out just fine, I’ll sell the treadmill. A small space forces you to “pare down” otherwise you will have a cluttered space.

One other interesting thing is that if people are really interested in being “green”, small space living goes a long way to accomplishing that. Less space equals less energy used and a reduction in consumption and purchases. I am always taken aback sometimes, when I go into a client with homes with larger square footage and they are concerned with being green. They often are very large consumers with supersize quantities of back up supplies and supersize collections, etc.

I think an easy way to move to small space living, it to reduce your current size home by 25%. You’ll still reap the advantages and it will give you an opportunity to see what it’s like.

None of them had much stuff, and they were all very social, so there was usually only six there on any given night.

What’s the going rate for burger-flippers there, $79,000 a year?

One of the nice things about being used to the tiny footprint is that when we are ready to move back into a big city, we’ll be happy with a studio apartment. That will open up more neighborhoods and make them affordable.

I think I’ll stay in the country. And btw — raking leaves is great exercise