Homes are shrinking in America. After doubling in size during the last 50 years to over twice that of European homes, the national average house size dropped for the first time in nearly 15 years (by 9%, the size of one average room).
The smaller house movement afoot in the United States can take many forms, from houses the size of a walk-in closet to several thousand square-foot family houses.
On the far end of the spectrum are the so-called tiny houses. Also called wee homes, mini dwellings, or micro-homes, the definition is not exact, but they run as small as 65 square feet. And yes, people really live in them. Why? Reasons range from economic to environmental to psychological.
Even families are taking a page from the micro-homes. While a family of four may not choose to live in a walk-in closet, there are all sorts of beautiful homes with footprints well under the 2,000 square-foot average. And with the size of the U.S. household shrinking, smaller houses make even more sense (the U.S. fertility rate shrank from an average of 3.5 children in 1960 to 2.1 children in 2006)¹.
The Wingardhs Mill House is a pricey Swedish mini-home based around traditional sauna and bathing rituals.
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