Authors XS House in 2020.
Have you ever watched one of the tiny house shows, Tiny House Hunters or Tiny Living? I’ve binged watched all of those shows about living in spaces that are mostly 500 sq. ft. or less. I can’t get enough of the uncluttered minimal efficiency of the converted shipping containers, house boats, converted buses, and small bungalows. The tiny tables, lofted beds, hidden storage and general lack of clutter make me happy.
After thinking about downsizing for about five years, I persuaded my husband and two tweens that it was a great idea to move from a size S house of 1484 sq. ft. to a size XS house of 890 sq. ft. According to the 2022 American Home Size Index, the average median home size is 2,014 sq. ft. So, I’m shooting for an XS home that is 1124 less sq. ft. or 66% smaller than the average American. Persuading my family to go XS was a process that went about as well as it could have.
I first saw the XS house listed on Patch, that Facebook news aggregator that your grandparents read. The next day, my husband and I did a walk through of the house, and then abruptly departed on a two week National Park road trip. Five days later while relaxing in Bryce National Park I received a broken voice mail informing us that another buyer had placed an offer on little XS, and if we were still interested we needed to send in our offer in less than 48 hours. We spent a long day in Bryce discussing the pros and cons of such a major change while hiking and stargazing. Two days later we emailed in an offer from Yellowstone National Park. Hubby was fairly easy to convince with the promise of an outdoor smoker (what is it with guys and smokers) and my proposal for him to retire at 43 (well that's another story). I didn’t give the kids a vote, nor did I show them the house until move in day. I was hoping to win them over with a smartly designed tween bedroom.
My XS home is a two bedroom, two bath manufactured home in the Seal Beach Shores formerly known as the Seal Beach Trailer Park. That’s another interesting story for another time. It has a dedicated laundry room, a main bedroom with ensuite bathroom, and an open concept kitchen and a good room. It's too small to be a great room, but it's darn good. No garage, no yard, no pets, and no sleepovers (thank Jesus). I’m just not that sleepover mom, sorry kids.
After purchasing the house we rented back to the owner for six months while waiting for our existing lease to end. I spent all of those six months downsizing our stuff including the loss of a 830 sq. ft. garage fully outfitted as a working woodshop, a boat, a classic car, and all the trappings of consumerism accumulated over 16 years of marriage and kids. I have no problems selling and donating stuff. It actually brings me joy to have less stuff. What wasn't bringing me joy was plotting how to squeeze two tweens into 108 sq. ft. Did I mention that this was the first time two tweens were ever sharing a room, right at a time when teen angst was about to spike? And yes, I’ve heard those statistics that back in the 1950’s all children shared rooms in XS homes and children then were more respectful and happy then today’s over-scheduled anxious phone zombies. But, I’m still saying that this whole move hinged on my tweens sharing a room and not killing each other, and it was stressing me out big time.
I researched the perfect sized bunk beds with equal head room, space saving wall hanging desks, multifunction storage and a tricked out closet system to shoehorn these tweens into a clean, cute tween den. Think of the smallest dorm room you’ve ever seen, it's kind of like that but even smaller. Next came the room rules which are still pinned up to the family organizer. My favorite rule is “Don’t be the Mom.” I agree totally with that, because I’m the mom and don't need my position to be challenged.
The next major modification to move into XS land was sizing down our custom craftsman furniture. My husband is a freakishly talented guy. One of his myriad talents is handcrafting fine furniture, and he's been making me the most beautiful wood items since high school: boxes, bowls, tables, skateboards, rocking chairs, frames, wine cabinets, buffets, Morris chairs, desks and clocks, frames. Yup, since high school, we've amassed quite a fine collection. Understandably we couldn't sell these sentimental pieces so hubby had to shrink them. He cut down a dining table he made from an XL cherry tree in Wisconsin to fit our new XS life. Table for eight is now a table for four and fits perfectly into our minimal home. He did a similar shrink to a live edge cherry desk. Now, most of his hand crafted pieces fit like they were custom made for our good room, and we found loving family homes for pieces that didn’t.
The last bit of sacrifice came from my husband and his loss of garage space. He’s a guy who likes to use his hands to create so this was a major compromise. He built a surf shack just behind our home for tools and surfboards, including a little flip down workbench. The most recent modification to our XS home was converting part of our laundry room to a chat shack for the tweens to have privacy to do homework, paint, make phone calls and most recently it's a makeup studio. It's a little nook with a desk built from the leftover cherry wood cut off of our larger dining room table. I’m hiding in the chat shack writing this blog right now.
So the kids are alright, hubby retired at 43 and surfs every day and I’m living my best life in my minimalist dream XS beach house. Did I mention that my XS house is one block from the ocean and walkable to dining, music, grocery, shopping and a historic wood pier? It's true what they say about real estate location, location, location. Yup, I’m spoiled. Or as my older siblings would say about me, I’m a spoiled brat, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
PS:
You may be wondering what’s the difference between a tiny, XS and S home? I just made up my own house size scale, here it is.
Rhea’s Unofficial House Size Scale
Tiny House: 500 sq ft or less. Eccentric types.
XS House 900 sq ft to 600 sq ft. Minimalists. My XS home fits in this class.
S House: 1400 to 1000 sq ft. Hawaiians smallest median home is1200 sq ft. The size class of my second home.
M House: 1900 to 1500 sq ft. Illinoisans median home is 1700 sq ft.
L House: 2400 to 2000 sq ft. Montanans median home is 2200 sq ft. The size class of the first home I owned.
XL House 2900 to 2500 sq ft. Utahans largest median home is 2800 sq ft.
XXL House above 3000 sq. ft. MTV Cribs.
So that puts me solidly in the minimalist category right in between eccentric types and Hawaiians, sounds like a fun group.
-Rhea P.
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