Small House, Big Style

From time to time I have to remind myself of why we live in a small house. It can be tough when you think about all of the people who have amazing great rooms and spacious master suites. I think it's also hard during the winter months when we're stuck inside. It's hard to have friends over when it's cold outside and you live in such a small space. Every year I dream of a cozy holiday party and every year I have to concede that we just don't have the space. So while I may be dreaming of big open floorplans that look like this;

MyHomeIdeas

I'm actually dealing with a much smaller footprint and less spacious rooms. So as you may have already guessed, this post  is an attempt to remind myself of all of the reasons why I love my small house and comfort myself until the weather warms up and we can live out in the yard again.

I do love great photos of small rooms. Well decorated and organized spaces that show us that we don't have to have a large sprawling room in order for it to be functional and beautiful.

A Well-Organized Small Kitchen

Better Homes & Gardens

Better Homes & Gardens

Canadian House and Home

Style at Home

These rooms are no bigger than my rooms, and yet they feel spacious and cozy. I only hope I can create such nice spaces.

And Scott does a good job reminding me that we bought the house for the garden. I can hold on to dreams of  parties and friends in our yard.

Lolivier

Finally, here are some of my favorite small house quotes.

The Small House Movement has inspired great interest in smaller and simpler living. Below are some quotes about simpler and smaller living that help encourage the use of tiny, little, small, miniature, and micro homes. 

• “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
• “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
• “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” – William Morris
• “I believe that such smaller houses – where comfort, practicality and beauty co-exist in harmony – represent an idea whose time has truly come. They’re better for the environment and they enhance the quality of life – both in our communities and for those who live in them. I am glad to help make this option available to everyone.” – John Gower, owner and principal designer of BC Mountain Homes
• “I think that when you invite people to your home, you invite them to yourself.” – Oprah Winfrey, 20th Anniversary DVD
• “Live simply that others might simply live.” – Elizabeth Seaton
• “Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.” – Winston Churchill
• “Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.” – Edwin Way Teale
• “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo DaVinci
• “Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
• “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” – Hans Hofmann, Introduction to the Bootstrap, 1993
• “We don’t need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants. Not wanting something is as good as possessing it.” – Donald Horban
• “You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.” – Eric Hoffer
• “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