Earlier today, I got into a conversation on Twitter that prompted the titular question. It started with a tweet about gas prices,
I replied, “Sometimes easier said than done, though. Esp. if one is required to drive to/from or for employment.” This prompted a few more tweets about living closer to one’s employer and the impracticality of that, in my opinion (low vacancy rates/high housing prices).
Kris replied, “well, it all depends what what you feel your req’s are. Do you need a huge house to impress people, for example?” I’ll admit, this pushed a button. I have never, ever felt the need to impress someone with anything (other than perhaps a quick and witty retort) let alone something as basic as a house. But, he said “huge” so I replied, “We need a reasonable-sized house for gatherings — family & friends.” adding that we do live close enough to my employer that I do not drive but do use transit or bike. He returned, “My condo is sub 500 sq ft. I had a dozen people over at one point this week-end, and I host a lot. Big is just for ego…”
Let me just bold that out there: “Big is just for ego…“
I fired back with, “Totally disagree, and may blog a reply because 140char will not suffice,” which brings us here.
Here’s just a few reasons I (and many others) require (or believe we require) more than sub-500-sq-ft:
- Family. We are a family of three. Our extended family grows to 9 or more around a dinner table for Christmas, Thanksgiving and other celebrations. Of that extended family, we were the branch most able to afford a larger space and host those celebrations.
- Friends. We regularly host game nights for 8-10 people, group gatherings, meetings, and parties. While we can get a dozen people in our living room, many of our friends have kids and it’s really nice to let those kids ram around the rest of the house while the grownups have time to socialize and not worry about where the kids are (they’re always in earshot).
- Pets. While some pets do fine in small spaces, others need more room to co-exist with people.
- Self-sufficiency. While we don’t grow all the food we need for our family, we do have space to grow a lot and nothing tastes better than a backyard salad or an apple plucked fresh from the tree. Should we choose, we could also add chickens to the mix. We have a kitchen which is not quite as big as we’d like to do all the cooking, baking and preserving that comes with self-sufficiency. We have space needed to work on building and repairing things (and store the tools).
- Socio-cultural expectations. Canada is a country that has so much land it’s embarrassing and we were raised to believe that we were entitled to some elbow room. Had I been raised in Europe or India, my expecations of space may have been different.
- Generational expectations. I’m pretty sure Kris and I are in different places, generationally. This article, while it does focus on the kind of “high end” houses that might actually be attributed to “ego,” outlines some key differences in the dream houses of Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y. I think extrapolating from that article, and throwing out the high end, it does underline the above points (I am, BTW, firmly in the Gen X category, as is Mike).
I was raised in big houses. Yes, that was a different era, when families could buy a 3000+ square foot house for 40K, but I was raised to believe that “families lived in houses.” This was underlined when my parents split up and my father moved into an apartment. I’m not arguing that I am “entitled” to the 1500 square foot home we currently inhabit, but I do feel that each of us has our own recipe for the right home.
When I was in my 20’s and out most nights of the week, I didn’t need much more than a bedroom in which to crash but now that I have a family & pets, I need more than a bedroom. I always admired two of our friends who lived on a tiny boat for many years; once they got pregnant, however, along came a house (rental) and pretty soon thereafter, their own home in the City. Among our close friends, we were the first to have a child and couple by couple, as they have each had families, I have watched them all move our of condos or apartments or boats and into homes.
Big is not just for ego. Big is for family. Big is for support. Big is for comfort. Big is for a lot of things and, frankly, Big just isn’t that big.
We live in a small apartment because we can. No kids, no pets, even our houseplant population is kept manageable. But we’re starting to talk about a family, and a major hand in that conversation is the house that we want to live in to raise this family. Still modest, sure. But definitely something more spacious than what we’ve got now. Yeah. Your needs change as your needs change. Guess you need to pack a few years on before you realize this ^_^
I find it really odd to see creatures that lose the genetic imperative of reproduction. We demonize Monsanto for developing seeds with a terminator gene and then people consciously behave as they have a terminator gene built-in. We have a lot of people on this Earth. I accept that people take personal responsibility for that issue by limiting the number of kids they have, including making the conscious choice to have no children to further the goal of that population decline through their personal decisions. But that conscious choice is an aberration: like terminator genes, like putting animals in zoos; or raising battery chickens.
Embracing small has big faults: First, it buys into the scarcity plays that keep our current world and social misery going. Second, it makes a large portion of your life into an externalized set of expectations: someone else it going to keep a restaurant going where I can run a gathering; someone else is going to keep a workshop operating so that I do my projects there; someone else is going is to continue to funnel food into my city and do so at an economical cost; someone else is going to have a patch of land to pitch a tent for me to take refuge in should my dwelling suffer from a disaster.
When you think small, the prices should slide appropriately. Our house sits on about 6,000 sq. ft. and it’s assessed value is $463,000 ($80k for the 1600 sqt. ft; plus $380k for the property. Not a secret, anyone can look it up at BC Assessment). If you put an 10-storey condo into that footprint and allow 30% of the square footage to be used for communal purpose (halls, elevator, etc.) then the space should yield 80 500-sq. ft. suites. Saying that the condos split the lot price and each suite costs $75,000 to build, the suites should retail from $82,600. No suites are going for $82,600 or you’re hard pressed to find anything going for less than double that. A small suite approach buys into and accepts a profiteering mindset.
Lastly, when you start thinking small: this is where you stop: http://www.joeydevilla.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/casual-friday-on-the-borg-cube.jpg
Heh, thanks Mike, we enjoy being aberrations. We live in a 1950’s house that was designed to have storage and car garage downstairs, now that downstairs is a suite there is little effective storage upstairs. We have about 950 sq ft upstairs designed for tables, couches, pets, CRT televisions all 1950’s size and about 125 sq ft of that is hallway. Additionally we’re older and my S.O. was already a cat lady and I was already in the snoring like a m—–f—-r stage of life when we met. Hell hath no fury like a sleep deprived partner who lives with you so i.m.o. a second bed can save a relationship. Really, over 500 sq ft isn’t for my ego, it’s for our health, (and the cat’s health). Now if there was a 3 car garage, pool and gate house………
Just so that I’m clear:
aberration = deviation from the de facto approach.
abomination = bad. I didn’t say “abomination”
We got onto this Earth because someone had a kid. Some people can’t have kids. A number of parents shouldn’t have had kids. I don’t have a problem with people who decide to not to have kids, but it is a departure from what circumstances put that decision maker onto the Earth in the first place. But kids, cat and snoring require space. Likewise, people should have as big a place as they choose to afford even if they have no easy justification for it. After all, if we went solely by justification, the government would be able to limit the hours you were outdoors and would be able to declare and take all of your excess money. (Spoiler: those are in Harper’s 2013 Throne speech).
We should be free to live as we please unless it directly impacts on the lives of others; or we all have to live inside of the unified set of each others expectations. And that’s a long list.