Think a bigger home is better? Believe it or not, there’s a lot to love about less square footage. Check out these 5 BIG benefits of living in a small house!
Are there actually benefits to living in a small house?
I’ve moved 11 times as an adult.
I’ve lived in 300 square foot basement apartments, 900 square foot town homes, 3,000 square foot large homes and pretty much everything in between. In all those moves, one thing has been constant.
The large homes may be impressive to look at, but the benefits of living in a small house make it my favorite to live in.
Here are Big 5 Benefits of Living in a Small House
If you feel stuck in your small house, I want you to think about the benefits that the smaller house brings to your family. There are so many benefits to small house living that are hard to appreciate until you’ve moved out. These are my top 5 benefits of living in a small house.
A smaller house saves you money
Because a smaller home typically costs less, this frees up money every month to spend on things that you really want. It’s not just the lower mortgage payment that will save you money, though. There’s about a $200/month difference for our electric bill from our 900 square foot home to our 3000 square foot home. That adds up to major savings over the years that you’ll spend in your home.
Just as important as having extra money to spend every month, is knowing that you’re living below your means. Living below your means gives you peace of mind if you have a major financial setback like being unable to work, losing a job, or having a serious medical problem.
A smaller house is easy to clean
Cleaning 900 square feet is obviously less work than 3000 square feet. Let me tell you, “cleaning the house” in my 300 square foot basement apartment took about 7 minutes. Cleaning the house in my 900 square foot townhouse took about 2 hours. Cleaning the house in my 3000 square foot home took about 5 hours. The benefits of living in a small house = less cleaning!
When you’re cleaning your house every week, that’s a pretty significant time-saving. Have you ever carried a large vacuum up and down 3 flights of stairs? It’s not fun. Your only other choice is to buy a vacuum for every level of your house… or never vacuum.
A large house encourages you to have more “stuff” in it, which is more “stuff” that needs to be cleaned and cared for. We filled the 3000 square foot home to the brim with stuff we thought we needed. When we lived in the smaller houses, we thought about where we would put things before we bought them and walked away from a purchase if we didn’t know.
A smaller house can help build relationships.
There are plenty of families that grew up in mansions that are extremely close, but I truly believe that my upbringing in a small house (1000 square feet) brought my family closer together. When you live in a small space together, you learn to work around each other and diffuse problems before they happen.
We jokingly say “There’s nowhere to run to” in our house and it’s a true statement. It’s really hard to avoid people in a small home. You learn to work around your differences and mediate problems as they come up.
In the 3,000 square foot house, it was common for my husband to play Xbox downstairs and me to watch movies or fold laundry upstairs. In the small house… Everyone spends time in the living room because that’s the only option. It makes us closer to each other since we spend more time together. We choose activities that would involve everyone like game nights and popcorn parties instead of individual activities (like Fallout and Reality TV).
A smaller house encourages you to live more simply
Believe it or not, one of the biggest benefits of living in a small house is you have less space, so you’ll choose wisely what deserves a spot in it. I promise you that you don’t really need everything we buy to fill up that 3000 square foot home. And you’ll likely be happier without it. Think about the things that you use every single day. Now add in a few hobbies that you do frequently. Those are the things you need to have space for in your home.
Our great-great-grandmothers had a pot and a pan. We have 13 different types of pots, pans, steamers, fryers, griddles, slow cookers, rice cookers, woks, fondue pots, you name it. And yet, they made every single meal from scratch while I still struggle with avoiding the drive-thru. I find more and more that the fewer things I have, the happier I am.
A smaller house is easier to customize
When you live in a 3,000 square foot home with vaulted ceilings, two living rooms, and four bedrooms it can be really expensive to furnish. It can be even more expensive to decorate! Without a large amount of expendable income, it’s hard to create the warm and inviting home you dream of.
When you live in a smaller house though, having your space set up and decorated exactly how you want it is pretty easy! You can paint yourself, and start small grabbing quality items that are made to last and upgrading things slowly over time. After some time, you’ll have a magazine-worthy house that you’ll be proud of at the fraction of the cost of a larger home.
My 700 square foot apartment was gorgeous and I was so proud to have friends over for dinner. My 900 square foot townhouse was beautifully decorated and personalized. It felt like a home as soon as you walked in. My 3,000 square foot house felt really impersonal. There were a lot of white walls and it had a “bare-bones” feel to it. It felt like a large house, and not a cozy home.
While I certainly think that having a large cozy home is possible, I want you to realize that there are so many blessings in your small home that you might overlook while you’re wishing that you had a larger home. Because I’m over here, wishing that I had your smaller home.
To recap, here are the 5 big benefits to living in a small house!
- A smaller house saves you money
- A smaller house is easy to clean
- A smaller house can help build relationships.
- A smaller house encourages you to live more simply
- A smaller house is easier to customize
Enjoy the Benefits of Living in a Small House
At the end of the day, it’s not the size of your house, but what you fill it with. You can be happy in an apartment or you can be happy in a mansion. The house won’t create your happiness, it supports it.
Do you agree? Let us know in the comments below!
Other helpful resources:
- 7 Ways to Decorate with Things You Already Have
- Spring Cleaning? Here are the Most Useful Tips and Tricks Ever
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Rosemarie Groner
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I loved having a small home. It forced us together as a family & we are super close as a result. We ate meals together , had tv time together, etc….
Now that my children are adults & on their own I am so thankful for that together time. They still come over & we all hang out in the living room like old times!!!
I second this post 100x’s over!!!
We are a family of 7 almost 8 (any day now!) and we went from a huge 3,000 sqft home to a single wide mobile home!
Yikes!!!
Talk about downsizing!
We have experienced all of the wonderful things and the not so wonderful things mentioned in this post.
It’s still easy to get the “I wish our house was a little bigger” bug, especially when you have a growing family.
At the end of the day I do love our home (notice I said home and NOT house) and she’s absolutely right about being able to make a smaller house a cozy home!
Great post!!!
Great reminder and encouragement too!
Thank you for posting this. We are a large family of 8 and are looking into purchasing our second home. We are currently renting a 3100 sf house and have been afraid to look at anything smaller but don’t want to try and buy something bigger and stretch our budget thin.
Smaller house living as a big family can be intimidating for sure!
Especially when you start the purge process because you know there’s no way everything will fit into the “cracker box”.
We’ve learned a lot about what we NEED vs what we CHOOSE TO KEEP.
I do think anyone can do it, even a large family! It’s just all about attitude, perspective and being willing to embrace the change!
Hope you guys are able to figure it out
Thank you for the encouragement! It really gives me hope that it can be done.
You are so welcome!
I have been thinking about this a lot with a move planned in a few months. We are a family of 7 and live in a 3 bedroom 1700 sq ft (plus the basement). I have been wondering how small we could go realistically with 5 kids aged 1-10. The house we live in now has lots of living space, but the bedrooms are small. I have no issues with them sharing rooms, but we can’t seem to fit more kids in these 9×10 rooms. Ideally we would have 3 girls in one room and 2 boys in the other if we stuck to 3 bedrooms. We currently have 2 kids per room and the baby is still with us in our not so huge room. How do you deal with sleeping arrangements? How many bedrooms do you have? The thought of cleaning a smaller house like our first home (family of 5 with 2 bedrooms and one bathroom in a 800-1000 sq ft house) is pretty appealing.
We have done a variety of things with sleeping arrangements. We have purchased bunks, separate twin beds etc. We have constantly found the happiest the children are is when they are all together in the same bed. My girls have a full size bed and often times I will find them in the morning all huddled together. It’s really quite cute! We DO NOT make them, they choose too.
My two sons just started sharing a bed because the toddler began climbing out of the crib. They have a blast because they wrestle themselves to sleep!
The baby is in our room. He will move in with the boys once he’s sleeping through the night. He will be in a crib by himself.
So we live in three bedrooms apprx. 10×10 size. I don’t have anything other than their beds in their rooms. We don’t do dressers, they each have a plastic drawer in the foot of their closet. There are a few animals and books for when they’re in bed.
All the toys are organized in the living room inside 12×12 cubbies. It’s really all about how you layout a small house with a large family. Furniture placement and organizational tools are essential!
You just have to find what works for you and your family! i hope that helps a little 🙂
I do agree with all of the points. However, I would add one benefit of being in a larger house–being able to wake up before your children! We have three kids and live in a very small house. They seem to hear me the moment I am out of bed. 🙂
Sarah, I absolutely agree with you! I love our small home, but I have a hard time getting things done while my son is sleeping because he hears everything. 🙂
White noise machines.
All of your points are spot on! We just made the move from 3000 sq. ft. to 1300……and we are in love (both with the house, and each other :))!
What a great article!