By Kathy & Thom Gottberg

             How big a house does a person need?  Just over a year ago, we decided to sell our former house and downsize in the name of green.   It’s easier said than done. Just like everyone we know, we’ve lived our baby-boomer lives on the fast track of upwards and onwards—toward ever bigger and better.  We started out small by buying any size house we could afford—one of our first houses was only 550 square feet.   But like all upwardly mobile yuppies, we persevered and our last house was 2,300 square feet with every upgrade we could imagine.  

          Then simultaneously the real estate market collapsed, the economy faltered, and Thom and I decided that our collective future was going to be more green and sustainable, or not at all.  But how does one go green?  To begin with, Thom and I went for the low hanging fruit.  We changed our light bulbs to CFL’s, started buying only recycled toilet paper, paper towels and copy paper, began eating more organically, converted a vehicle to run on natural gas, and created CoachellaVallyGreen.com. But eventually as the path gets clearer, it became time to examine our lifestyle footprint—namely our home.

                We started with questions like: Do we need this much house?   Do we need the added expense of a swimming pool & spa that only gets used 50 times during the entire year?  Is a 3-car garage necessary to store stuff that never gets used? Do we need a large lawn with big trees that require lots of water and gardening every week?  Do the two of us require 1,200 square feet each in a home that needs to be cooled, heated, lighted, furnished, cleaned and maintained regularly?  How much space to we really occupy on a daily basis? 

            We knew that we wanted smaller, but how small?   According to statistics provided by the National Association of Home Builders (NHAB), the average size of a home in 1970 was 1,400 sq. feet, and in 1980, it was 1,740.  During the span of 38 years, the average house size rose to a high of 2,538 square feet by the end of 2007.   It wasn’t until 2008 when a downward trend in home sizes began to shrink the unlimited growth of the ultimate American Dream.

            Yet, that growth in square footage didn’t come cheap.  During 2004-06, huge numbers of Americans financed their way into the largest square footage they could possibly obtain, without the actual means to pay for it.    Worst of all, that bigness didn’t seem to make anyone any happier.  According to quality-life-indexes, America ranks only 7^th on the Quality-Of-Life-Index meter.  Other countries rate higher on the index with smaller square footage averages. For example, the average in the UK is just over 800 square feet, Ireland is 945, and France calculates at fewer than 1,100 according to CABE (the Commission For Architecture and the Built Environment.)

        Correspondingly, the highest rated country for quality of life in the world is France—even with only 1,100 square feet!  What makes them so happy with their way of life has nothing to do with the size of their home but rather the quality of their living.  The French avoid bigness—like big houses, binge drinking and pig-out buffets.  Instead, they are known to take two-hour lunch breaks at Cordon Bleu restaurants and sip wine at tiny sidewalk cafes all afternoon with friends.  Every August the French take off an entire month for vacation, with pay, rather than a frantic weekend getaway or no getaway at all.  In addition, the French have the best health care system in the world, guaranteeing coverage regardless of age or income, unlimited sick days, and full childcare for young children.  When it comes to happiness, statistics show that once basic needs are covered, a person’s happiness level has everything to do with quality—and little to do with quantity or the size of your home.

             But how small do you go?  Instead of focusing on size, we decided to concentrate on what improved our quality of life.   We analyzed the actual space that we used over the course of a day and realized we needed only three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an open room concept of a kitchen, dining and living room.   We also recognized that indoor/outdoor living was important to us.  And a critical choice came when we determined it was essential that we live near to a community where we could easily walk to and enjoy local services like restaurants, libraries and grocery stores. 

            Eventually it was our strong desire to live in a walkable neighborhood that determined the size of our new house.   Surprisingly, our new home has only 1375 square feet!    But because the neighborhood is right, the location easily walkable to all the local services we desired, the floor plan and outdoor space suit our needs, and the home price extremely reasonable, we made the choice to proceed.

            Still, in spite of our clarity, our downscaling feels like an experiment.  Even with the logic behind the choice, I am aware of the subtle doubt that creeps into my mind whenever I tell others about our “new house.” And why do I still feel the tempting need to apologize for our downsizing?   Hopefully those doubts will diminish as we move in and eventually, our “new” will become the norm.

            It’s true we could have bought a bigger home or comfortably stayed where we were.  But as we walk the path to living more green and sustainable, we are attempting to use our time, money and resources in ways that supports a new lifestyle.    Up until recently, the striving for more and bigger has gotten a lot of people into a great deal of trouble—that thinking has been disastrous for individuals, our country and our planet.  What if we all started living well below our means, rather than above them?  What if we each attempted to live a new experiment in which we learned to embrace and love “quality” instead of “big”?  We’ll let you know how our experiment goes.