Less is More Part I – What are YOU doing to DOWNSIZE your living space?

Less is More Part I – What are YOU doing to DOWNSIZE your living space?

Less is More – expression coined by Minimalist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Have you seen the movie Downsizing with Matt Damon? Don’t bother. It’s silly and banal, although its premise is a good one. To save the world a Norwegian scientist has figured out a way to shrink people so that they will consume less energy/material but still live with a high standard of living. What can go wrong? Well, everything! In spite of this, the fact is that if we lived in smaller homes and had smaller cars and travelled shorter distance and …. Well, you get the idea: downsizing actually makes sense – IF done well.

Want to help save the world? Downsize? Less house means less stuff to fill it, less energy to heat/cool it, less material extracted from Mother Earth to build it and most importantly – more need to get outside in Nature and also to be social with your neighbours. The average size of a new house in the US has doubled since 1960.  Indeed, space per person has been growing even faster than house size.  Because as our houses have been growing, our families have been shrinking, and this means that per-capita space has doubled during that time. In fact, if you compare homes today to 1910, US homes now larger by 74%, personal living space went up 211%! Canadians have twice as many square feet to live as most other industrialized countries. Does this make us happier? Doubtful. Does it contribute to making us lonelier and living inside more? Probably.

Big houses contribute to lower population densities and, thus, more sprawl and driving.  And, all things being equal, big houses require more energy to heat and cool.  In Canada and the US we are compounding our errors: making our houses bigger, and making them energy-inefficient.  A 2,600 square foot home with leading edge ‘passiv haus’ construction and net-zero energy requirements is one thing, but a house that size that runs its furnace half the year and its air conditioner the other half is something else.  And multiply that kind of house times millions and we create a ‘built in’ greenhouse gas emissions problem. Then there are the issues of cost and debt.  We continually hear that houses are unaffordable.  Not surprising if we’re making them twice as large.  What if, over the past decade, we would have made our new houses half as big, but made twice as many?  Might that have reduced prices? And how are large houses connected to large debt-loads?  Canadian debt now stands at a record $1.8 trillion.

These facts are irrefutable, so why don’t we downsize? Perhaps larger homes, like larger SUVs, make us feel more ‘successful’? Maybe the social pressure to be ‘normal’ or even ‘above average’ makes us act in ways that are actually counterproductive. Perhaps our activities, mostly computer/internet based, which require rooms at home, contribute to this destructive choice.

I have just retired – a natural time to downsize. A good friend of mine did just that – he downsized from a large home on the Rideau river into a bungalow quadraplex for seniors. I am considering doing the same, but moving is so hard! Besides, I like my large garage and my large property with a pond surrounded by forest and farms, I invested in geothermal and microfit solar panels – both of which are saving me a bundle. So what should I do? What should YOU do? Well, clearly I have no idea what is best for you, other than to say that finding some way to cut the number of square feet you live in significantly is a good start in your attempts to save the planet. As for my wife & I, well, I am unsure. Let’s get concrete now and use ourselves as an example of how downsizing can work in different ways.

While it seems a no brainer to sell our large 2 story, 4 bedroom, double garage, 4 acre place and move into a seniors quadraplex there is a case to be made for staying. How is that possible? We live in a 4 bathroom home – it’s crazy! Well, it wasn’t so crazy when we had 3 teenage daughters living with. It’s still not crazy as we have our 2 Mothers living with us and at the moment, albeit only for a few months, 1 of our 20 something year old daughters. So, right now, our square foot per person is quite sensible. Do you want data from me to prove it? OK! The average CDN has around 800 ft²/person. In our home with 5 people we are each living with 400 ft²/person! [basement not counted] So for us is how to keep more people living here when our daughter and mothers leave? For us it is simple – we have a finished apartment in the finished basement with a separate entrance and washer/dryer and a place to park the car. If 2 people move is we would be 500 ft²/person – well below the national average. Furthermore, we have had the crazy idea of also turning the second floor into an apartment, as it also has a separate entrance, washer/dryer – all we have to do is build a kitchenette in what is now a large sitting room. If two people lived there that would mean 333 ft²/person [not counting basement area].

Of course, you will be thinking: who wants other people to live in my house! Well, it’s that or move or shrink myself like Matt Damon to 6” tall or help destroy the planet. Downsizing isn’t really an option – if you consider all that we will have to do to stop the planet wide destruction we have set in motion by our incessant demand for more, more, more. The minimalists have it right: less IS more. For now, I wish you well as you find the best way for you to downsize.

Next in this series of writing on “less is more”: the latest thoughts on Minimalism, how the 20 somethings are rejecting the rat race and big homes plus lots on Degrowth

References

https://www.darrinqualman.com/house-size/

https://www.minimalismmadesimple.com/home/17-reasons-why-less-is-more/