It’s not common, but it is available. Most people tend to only use it for if they temporarily (even a few years) have to live in a smaller house and need somewhere to put furniture etc in the meantime, but they intend to move back to somewhere bigger in the forseeable future. Some people also utilise it for 6mo or so when moving house, they take the house down to the bare bones before the move and put the rest in storage, and then get their stuff out of storage and into the new place in bits, so that they don’t have huge numbers of unpacked boxes cluttering up the place. So they bring it back a room at a time or whatever and unpack that before getting the other stuff. It is very much seen as a waste to hire storage for stuff there just isn’t room for. (On the other hand, in a lot of british houses, there is a lot of “stuff” in almost every room. Every bit of wall space is usually utillised with something, and wall space is sort of more important than room size. People like rooms that aren’t tiny, but having a big space in the middle of a room is seen as a waste too..)

My suggestion isn’t selling the house – everyone has the right to whatever size they like, but if you’re just using a room for storage of things you’ll never use then yes, to me, you’re throwing away your money.

Why not clear it out and put it to good use?

We live in a 1400 sq ft townhouse in the best location in the city and we’ve had to live de-cluttered for years due to a lack of space (not a bad thing). But now we’re moving to a smaller city where we’ll be living on the edge of town in a 3500sq ft house that actually doesn’t cost much more than our small townhouse. I can’t wait to get in that big house. I’ll probably immediately shut off 2 of the 5 bedrooms cause they literally will be storage. I doubt I’ll accumulate much simply because I like living a clutter free home. But it will be nice to know that I won’t have to move again when I have kids.

It’s especially interesting to think about that “extra” space in terms of getting a boarder or a roommate. That space could be turned to good use generating money, instead of sitting there uselessly.

Thanks for discussing this.

* “But moving sucks!”
* “We already have one of the smaller places in the neighborhood.”
* “Sell? You’ve noticed the neighbors for sale signs that haven’t changed in months, right?”

Our guest room does get a lot of use, and so does our bedroom, kitchen, TV room, and library/living room. It’s the 3rd bedroom that’s setup as a home office but never used…

I’m with Sean! Most people don’t buy a house and immediately clutter it. They bought the house, and over the years the clutter happened. Uncluttering won’t change the size of the house.

Unless you are recommending uncluttering, selling, and downsizing….but I hope not since the best you can do when you sell is lose 5% of the equity. Not frugal!

What home you initially buy is another topic. But, I hope that before you made that offer, you wrote a list of your needs, examined your budget, and decided what you need to have in the house in order to quickly resell should you have to. And obviously, bought what you could easily afford…but from market conditions today I guess that last point was missed by some!

While it is certainly cool to live in a 500 sf home, and I know I could, I bought a 3 bd/2 ba home as a long term investment. I keep it up (and uncluttered!), knowing that I would need to resell it fast should financial disaster strike. I have rooms that I don’t use. I have kitchen drawers that are empty. So what.