I think the answer lies in the clever design, so you don't end up with any 'dead space'. That way you can your square metres into having larger single rooms, rather than having multiple rooms spread out all over the place. eg, one decent size kitchen/family room that you can move your furniture around in as you need to is worth more in my mind than a small kitchen and a small dining room that's only big enough to fit a table into, kwim?
Our house was built in 1974, and the entire entrance room/hallway is a complete waste of space, it's not the right shape or size to be used for anything other than walking from room to room. I compare that with the townhouse my sister bought recently, and that had a wider hallway, which had functional storage, bookshelves, a study/workspace, and a laundry (in a cupboard - but quite large) so that every bit of wall/floor was actually functional. Having said that, ours is the good old L-shaped lounge/dining area, with an open plan kitchen and we live and entertain quite adequately in that space, even if I do find myself wishign some times that they had built the room just 1 metre longer (to allow for more storage space...oh for a buffet LOL).
i agree with MaryDean, i think it's about what kind of space you have, rather than how much? If you utilise everything well, then you could probably afford to have a smaller house than if you have a massive house with just heaps of useless square metres all over the place.
i personally love the idea of straw bale houses, DH and i one day would love to have a little bit of acreage and build our own place, that would be awesome
We are going through same thing at the moment, trying to design a strawbale house that is liveable, but not too huge. Lived in bigger homes, more to heat and more to clean.
We won't be having a formal dining or formal living room, just an open plan kitchen/living/dining area. The dining table will be huge, but will also serve as an every day table for cooking, projects etc We may have some bar stool at a kitchen bench, but we feel no need for a separate breakfast table etc. Don't see the need for parents' retreat, we will just make our bedroom that bit bigger if we feel the need to have a quiet corner to ourselves. Actually same with the girl's bedrooms, they will have room to move in there, not into tiny bedrooms and then having multiple rumpus rooms/kids retreats instead.
Some friends of ours have what we call the McMansion from hell. It takes longer to sweep the main living room than what it does to sweep my current lounge and kitchen, along with mopping the kitchen floor.
I think if you have suffiencent storage space, then you're okay. We have an 18 square house, 4 of that is garage. We don't really have anything here we don't use, and we're bursting at the seams. We have one double cupboard that was half shelved and half for brooms - we ended up shelving the entire thing just for some extra linen space. We don't have a lot of everything, but towels and things are bulky! Our kitchen is too small - no cupboards, just drawers, it looks great, but is useless for people like us who enjoy cooking and have a range of things for it. Our house doesn't look cluttered, but we do need the extra space because to get what I need from a cupboard, I need to pull everything out, find what I need, then put it all back. Our next house (we've already picked it) is 24 squares, with plenty of storage, and we believe it will be our "forever" house.
On your bigger bedroom idea, go for two double wardrobes. We had that in the house I grew up in and it was fantastic. Plenty of room for clothes on one side, and things like books, drawers, school bags, school stuff etc in the other side. Makes the bedrooms look large and open and not cluttered. My cousin did this and she even put in a power point in the wardrobe so her tv could go in there.
When we moved down here we rented the typical 80's build (the precursor to the McMansion). 3 bed, 2 living, 2 bath, lots of wardrobes. I found it too big, well overall size was fine, just the rooms did not work. 2 living areas does not work with us, I thought it would, but sadly it did not. The walk-in robe the main bedroom was useless. There were cupboards everywhere, even the full length of the hallway, which I thought be great, as I assumed if everything was easy to get at that I would use things. I was wrong there as well, yes storage in bedrooms,kitchen and laundry is a must, but honestly the rest just needs to be stored properly in the shed.
Do you know, if you had posed this question 12months ago, I would have said I couldn't possibly downsize any further than my beautiful new spacious house.....then I packed up my life and lived out of two standard suitcases for the four of us for 3+ months. We lived in a tiny two bedroom unit (main room with living, kitchen and dining, two bedrooms and a combined bathroom and laundry) with very basic home furnishings. At the end of it, I could have easily continued to live there. Granted a few more of our own things would have been needed (like toys/children's stuff and a proper lounge lol), but we would have managed just fine.
When we did get our stuff out of storage and moved into a proper house it was much smaller than our previous house (company allocated). It just made us realise how much superfluous stuff we carry around in our lives.
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