Small houses are not the legal trap they once were. Watch Part 1 of this documentary, “Living Tiny Legally,” below and see how these tiny homes make a big impact.

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We’re trained to think that bigger is better, but the development of uber-cute, ultra-efficient homes of 500 square feet or less, have some questioning this wasteful assumption.

Our homes are our castles. Inside their walls, we grow, laugh, cry, cook, work, play and sleep. Before the housing market crisis, homes were getting massive. Dubbed “McMansions” these cavernous dwellings sucked up energy at an alarming rate, despite being empty more often than occupied.

But the economic crash appears to have been a reality check: builders and architects are seeing more request for small homes that make more efficient use of space and electricity. In recent years, designers have taken the idea of tiny homes even further, proving that a few hundred square feet is all we need to live in comfort. Don’t believe it? Here are four tiny home designs that will make you want to downsize immediately.

1. Micro Compact Home

Measuring only 91 cubic feet, Micro Compact Homes (pictured above) somehow manage to include room for two double beds, a bathroom, lobby, dining space for 4-5 people, a fully functional kitchen and top-notch entertainment technology. Made mostly from aluminum, Micro Compact Homes can even be recycled if worn or damaged beyond acceptable use.

 2.Rollit House

OK, I’ll admit that this one’s more experimental than practical, but it was too cool not to include. This cylindrical design is a modular prototype that provides flexible space within a minimum housing unit, explains Arch Daily. Three different sections are dedicated to different functional needs: there’s a bed and table in section, an exercise cylinder, and a kitchen with a sink. To change the functionality of the house at any given time, you simply “roll it” by treading down the center pathway, just like a hamster wheel.

3. Nano Living System

At only 200 total square feet, the Nano Living System is billed as “the world’s smallest sustainable house.” Despite its diminutive size, the designers claim the house can contain a family of four inside its convertible rooms. Solar panels on the roof provide electricity while a rainwater catchment system enables grey water recycling. A green roof and argon-filled windows or solar heat pumps can be added for enhanced self-sufficiency. Inside are all the basic necessities of a home, including the kitchen, bathroom, closet, dining room as well as two king size beds that are built into the ceiling and drop down to rest on the dining room table and the sofa and coffee table.

4. Tumbleweed Homes

The beauty and clever design of Tumbleweed Homes almost makes you forget that they’re smaller than the average apartment! The Zinn, featured above, is a mere 99 square feet which means that you can ignore the permits required to build a house in most towns. The Zinn is one of the company’s Box Bungalow designs, which means you pick the shell and then customize interior options according to your needs. You can purchase the building plans for $49. Buying the kits start at $12,999 or you can get it assembled for you starting at $14,999.

Images furnished by companies/designers mentioned.

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Potentially NSFW: tiny getaways from the big, bad wolf called life.

Clearly, we have an issue with downsizing, as in we can’t get enough of it. We acknowledge that minimizing, tiny-fying and compartmentalizing has its limitations (space being one of them), but the myriad incarnations and manifestations of the tiny house movement are boundless.

From modernist bunkers to treetops on high, tiny is popping up everywhere – most notably on sites like Tiny House Swoon and Tiny House Blog where we sourced a few of our itty bitty dream homes. Without further ado, twenty we could squeeze into right now.

UFO Tiny House…

Tiny house at the lake…

Tiny house on wheels…

Tiny Victorian…

Tiny double-decker cottage…

Tiny carport house…

Tumbleweed Tiny House…

Rustic tiny house…

Modernist tiny house…

Tiny bunker house…

Tiny piece of heaven house…

Tiny in Texas house…

Shacked up tiny house…

Floating tiny house…

Tiny house a-go-go…

Tiny tree house…

Tiny beach chalet…

Tiny creatively re-used house…

Grown up tiny house…

The “pretty please with sugar on top” tiny house.

Images: Toby Bradbury; Tiny House Swoon (3); Sharona Design; Apartment Therapy; Apartments Interior Design; Angry Unicorns; Tiny House Blog (4); The Stir; The Style Files; The Tiny Life; Tinyhousing.ca; Design Boom (3); Dwelle; Not Martha

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EcoSalon’s favorite quotes about minimalism, downsizing, and living small.

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. -William Morris

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness. -Henry David Thoreau

Poverty is my pride. -Muhammed

With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy. -Lope de Vega

You know you have reached perfection of design not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away. -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Live simply so that others may simply live. -Elizabeth Ann Seton

Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves. -Edwin Way Teale

Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it. -Leonardo Da Vinci

Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life. -Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. -E.F. Schumacker

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less. -Socrates

The simplest things are often the truest. -Richard Bach

Less is more. -Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like. -Will Rogers

If one had taken what is necessary to cover one’s needs and had left the rest to those who are in need, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, no one would be in need. -Saint Basil

One can furnish a room very luxuriously by taking out furniture rather than putting it in. -Francis Jourdain

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art. -Frederic Chopin

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. -Hans Hofmann

There are two ways to be rich: One is by acquiring much, and the other is by desiring little. -Jackie French Koller

One of the advantages of being born in an affluent society is that if one has any intelligence at all, one will realize that having more and more won’t solve the problem, and happiness does not lie in possessions, or even relationships: The answer lies within ourselves. If we can’t find peace and happiness there, it’s not going to come from the outside. -Tenzin Palmo

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. -Confucious

We go on multiplying our conveniences only to multiply our cares. We increase our possessions only to the enlargement of our anxieties. -Anna C. Brackett

You say, ‘If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied,’ you make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled. -Charles Spurgeon

Any half-awake materialist well knows – that which you hold holds you. -Tom Robbins

The intention of voluntary simplicity is not to dogmatically live with less. It’s a more demanding intention of living with balance. This is a middle way that moves between the extremes of poverty and indulgence. -Duane Elgin

If one’s life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness. Having few desires, feeling satisfied with what you have, is very vital: satisfaction with just enough food, clothing, and shelter to protect yourself from the elements. -The Dalai Lama

The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things. -Elise Boulding

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. -Lao Tzu

I bet most of us have experienced at some point the joys of less: college – in your dorm, traveling – in a hotel room, camping – rig up basically nothing, maybe a boat. Whatever it was for you, I bet that, among other things, this gave you a little more freedom, a little more time. -Graham Hill

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? -Mary Oliver

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Images: D. Ferragamo, Tammy Strobel, Alexandre Dulaunoy, Baijg, Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, Johnrobertshepherd

The post 30 Best Quotes On Living Small appeared first on EcoSalon.

Looking for something to daydream about? These woodland hideaways blend scenery with inspired whimsy.

Some call them Hobbit homes, but let’s try on permaculture-minded, fairy-tale inspired woodland hideaways. Dug into a hillside or camouflaging with their natural environment, they could even be called latter-day Smurf dwellings.

What’s so appealing about a home tucked away in a hill or hidden amongst a cluster of trees is that it visually resonates with a kind of eco-idealism most of us can relate to or have read about in Tolkien tales. The homes I’m about to wax on about look like life as it’s meant to be lived, in harmony with the natural world and not geometrically opposed to it.

The most stunning example of a “Hobbit house” hideaway I’ve ever come across is this low-impact woodland home in Wales, United Kingdom. Excavated stone and mud was used to construct inner walls and the foundation. Straw bales in the floors and walls allow for insulation, while a mud/turf roof protects against the elements.

Japanese architect Kazunori Fujimoto designed this strikingly stark and minimalist home as a vacation hideaway, nestled into the few remaining trees adjacent to a heavily-traversed tourist road. Meant to provide privacy separated from their otherwise suburban-esque surroundings, it melds in rather than stands out. Though it is certainly unusual.

As one blog described it, it’s more of a sculpture than a house, “a concrete bunker obscured by the surrounding trees.”

Perhaps an obvious treatment of the wooded vacation home, I nevertheless can’t get enough of small houses like these, partially obscured by both design and the woodlands.

Finally, this prefab house in Adelaide, Australia spans a creek via a trussing system. That means the structure of the home is supported by those triangular units below, like a bridge of Madison County.

Or a moon over my river.

Images: A Low Impact Woodland Home; Kazunori Fujimoto; Mango and Ginger

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