Some call it microhousing, small-space living, or the tiny-house movement. Over the past 10 years, a trend is gathering steam in response to the wanton excess of the McMansions of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Data from the National Association of Home Builders shows the average home size in the United States is 2400 square feet, up from 983 square feet in the 1950s. But tiny homes, like Tumbleweed Tiny House Company’s designs (which range from 65 to 297 square feet) are still popular. The company sells plans for diminutive dwellings that include a kitchen, heat and electricity, a bathroom and a sleeping space.

Popular retailers like Target and IKEA boast best-selling lines of space-saving furniture. ApartmentTherapy.com, a website devoted to beautifying and organizing your home regardless of size, typically averages 34,000 page views per day. The site profiles tiny apartments and condos, some as small as 175 square feet.

“We’re really emotionally and psychologically attached to our homes,” says Genevieve Ferraro, creator of TheJewelBoxHome.com, a website focused on decorating and entertaining in a smaller home. “Someone will meet you and that will be their impression of you. It’s kind of unique to our culture.”

When Less Gives You More
Ferraro, a publishing manager from Evanston, created The Jewel Box Home in 2007. There she shares her advice with readers interested in living well in a small house. With her husband, Rick, she’s lived in a quaint, 1500 square-foot three-bedroom colonial for the past nine years. It’s where they raised two sons, now ages 15 and 20. Her eldest son is now away at college. But growing up, the boys always shared a bedroom.

From the start, Ferraro says she had plans to move to a larger house. But her husband refused the added expense and hassle of moving. He also nixed the idea of putting an addition on the house.

“He turned out to be the hero of this,” Ferraro says. “It turned out to be the best thing.”

She dealt with the setback by planning strategic improvements to their home’s interior.

“I was trying to get over what I call ‘big house envy.’ I did tons and tons of research,” she recalls.

Beginning with no interior design experience, Ferraro now spends her spare time consulting with clients seeking her expertise, many of whom found her through her website or word of mouth.

“I’m coming at this from a completely different angle than anybody else who’s a decorator. I’m self taught,” she explains.

Ferraro says her design philosophy is simple: “It’s all about making it beautiful and practical, affordable and making you feel good about your home. It’s about the people in your home. It’s not about making an impression, or creating this status symbol.”

Kim and Scott Vargo have lived in a 650- square-foot Logan Square condo for the past two and half years with two cats and one dog. They chronicle their home’s design improvements on their blog, YellowBrickHome.com. 

Kim, a tech coordinator for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Scott, a sales service rep for a uniform company in Schaumburg, previously considered an 800-square-foot condo prior to signing on their current home. Multipurpose furnishings coupled with creative use of color make their home appear much larger than others twice its size.

“Honestly, space wasn’t that big of a deal for us,” says Kim. The couple wanted a home with a more open floor plan to maximize room sizes and make entertaining friends more enjoyable. They found it in their current home with a kitchen that opens into the living room. A curtain hanging from a ceiling track sections off the kitchen, if necessary.

“We’re in the kitchen serving drinks, making food, everyone’s hanging out [in the living room] we’re all together,” says Kim, of the increased interaction the smaller space offers.

Organizing for Small Spaces
Molly Boren, owner of Simplicity Works Home and Office Organizing in Chicago, regularly assists clients in culling clutter to save living space. She’s made an under-600-square-foot one-bedroom her home for the past three years and feels its smaller size makes her life easier.

“It forces me to stay lean,” she says. Boren recommends a three-pronged approach to dealing with items that are consuming more space than necessary.

First: Pare down, ask yourself what is bringing value to my life?
“What of those can I honor and treat well and the other stuff, can I let that back out into the world so that its value can be used?” Boren suggests.

Second: Find homes for the items that don’t make the cut. As a free service, Boren takes clients’ cast-offs to recycling centers and recommends keeping a “donate bag” in the car for easy drop off.

Third: Decide on the maintenance of any remaining items. Set up a system for dealing with clutter, communicate the system to all household members and don’t underestimate kids. According to Boren, children are usually more receptive to letting go of an item than parents estimate.

Dinah Sanders, founder of the simple living website, Discardia.com, suggests ridding your home of object-related guilt she terms “Dream Duty.”

“[Dream Duty] is associated with objects you keep because they represent someone you want (or wanted) to become. If I don’t get rid of this guitar/skateboard/ballroom dress, I will eventually get around to using it proficiently, even though I don’t practice…. Start making time to work on that dream or let it go. If you want to fit into those pants again, eat less and exercise or get a pair like them in the size you are now,” she writes.

Preserving Space and Land
Ed and Eve Noonan founded the conservation community Tryon Farm (tryonfarm.com) in 1997. Their development, located an hour from Chicago in Michigan City, Ind., features detached and attached homes, designed by Ed, that range in size from 400 square feet to 2500 square feet.

Ed’s designs include environmentally sound features that provide highly significant energy and water savings. Built on a former dairy farm, the development incorporates the existing landscape of woods, dunes, wetlands and meadows. Two-thirds of the 170-acre farm will remain open indefinitely.

Noonan says the terms “green architecture” and “green building” are now part of the common language—so much so that bankers and appraisers are fast becoming acquainted with, and are receptive to, green building and smaller home sizes.

“The trend is toward a much more appropriate-size house,” he explains. “There’s a definite change. I think it’s an economically driven change.”

Do It Yourself
Scott Vargo takes pride in refinishing furniture he and Kim discover from flea markets, alleys, antique shops and on Craigslist.org. “We just sort of wing it,” he says. “A lot of it has to do with seeing the potential of what something could be, seeing past the chipped, nasty paint job.”  For now, they do makeovers “pro bono” for friends and family and are building an online portfolio of their work. Neither is formally trained in decorating, but thanks to Kim’s employee tuition benefits at the School of the Art Institute, they’ll take their first interior design course together this spring. The Vargos have several suggestions for living well in a small space:
1. Avoid clutter
2. Buy appropriate sized furniture
3. Be realistic about what will work with your lifestyle
4. Don’t be afraid of color. But be wise with it. Paint one or two accent walls rather than a full room