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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

Having unintentionally lived in a "tiny house" at university, never again. Mind you, it wasn't supposed to be a "tiny house", they had a rush remodel and half the apartment was rendered useless.

My wife (then girlfriend) and I agreed never to live in one again. Just this morning, we were reminiscing about how we used to have to get our utensils, then eat on the utensil box I made to hold them because we didn't have counter space. We also recalled the brick wall had a brick sticking out just slightly too far that you couldn't open the oven. So we had to file down the brick.

Just... just no. Give me my 2600+ square feet house any day.

The real trick is not living somewhere where you need that kind of housing. Outside of a submarine, there really is little reason.

I live in rural Illinois, make close to an SF salary, enjoy my 5 min commute, and pay less than this guy for a five bedroom house.

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There's a wide variety of options between "tiny house" and 2,600 square feet. Many of the post world-war 2 era homes in my area are ~1,000 sq. ft. (+/- 100 sq. ft). It's more than plenty for 2 people.

For reference, we have a roommate and two kids. Only one guest room left so pretty much a good fit.

Agreed 1000 sq. ft. Is great for two. Living in SF I had a 750 sq. Ft. Apartment with three people and it felt fine.

We have a 1926-built 1,400sqft house and it's more than enough for a family of 4.

Bay Area post war housing just a bit over ~1k sq.ft. There’s 5 of us + a dog. We survive, but the overhead of having to constantly repurpose the same physical space for multiple activities (homework, dinner, etc) gets tiring at times now with kids entering teenage years. For my family size, I think ~1600sqft would be ideal. A two car garage would be nice as well.

Will probably have my kids help me plan, permit, and build an ADU in another year or two. Figure that’ll be a good summer project they’ll probably hate at the time, but appreciate down the road.

> I live in rural Illinois, make close to an SF salary, enjoy my 5 min commute

You are certainly a statistical outlier in multiple ways. Rural incomes rarely match their urban counterparts. Rural commute times are less than urban but hardly 5 minutes.

He may be an outlier, but that is only because he chose differently. He didn't get lucky beyond having the mental ability to do a high-paying (software?) career.

I have about the same deal. I'm in a low-density part of Florida, enjoying my 3-minute commute to a workplace across the road from the beach. I can afford my 12 kids. If I were willing to live in a 2-bedroom house on only 0.17 acres (for about $172,000), I could pole vault to work. I prefer my 0.39 acres of course. People wanting a dozen acres have to commute about 25 minutes.

Unless you live in a tiny studio apartment, income simply doesn't keep up with cost of living in the expensive areas. I don't know what income it would take to have acres of land in San Francisco, but it is something frightful that isn't generally being offered.

For a different anecdote about Florida, I grew up in Tampa. When I left in 2002, it was because finding tech jobs there that weren't based around Windows networking or AS/400s was... difficult. The market for Unix web developers wasn't entirely non-existent, but when the company I was at laid me off, the best I could do was a three-month contract.

When I did have a full-time job, it was to a company in a business park. Nobody had a 3-minute commute there. I don't know if anyone who works in an office anywhere in Tampa Bay has a 3-minute commute. My mom lives in a genuinely rural part of Florida, and if I lived there, I'd either be working remotely -- giving me a zero minute commute, I guess -- or I'd be lucky if my commute was under an hour each way, because the chances of finding a tech job anywhere within a twenty-mile radius are pretty much zero.

> I live in rural Illinois,

To me, living somewhere is more than just the physical structure. My wife and I grew up in “tiny towns” and after we left, we swore we would never go back.

We love cities and are willing to live in a smaller home for a bigger city.

I mean one reason is that you like it? I’ve never lived in an apartment larger than 600 square feet and 2600 seems so excessive to me.

Heating it, cooling it, filling it with stuff. Why bother?

I can bike/walk anywhere I need to go in town, have a $20 electric bill, am 90 minutes from the pacific and 90 minutes from the mountains. 80 miles of running trails 3 miles from my door. I’ll take that over some giant house in the middle of nowhere.

Why bother? So there's space for your spouse and two kids.

I grew up with 2 parents and a sibling in a house under 1,000 square feet. I guess just a different approach to wastefulness and what it takes to be comfortable.

I think the is a difference between having space and hoarding things

It may work, but it is not necessarily ideal.

This is really helpful! I’m planning on having 2-5 kids. Can you let me know what square footage home would be necessarily ideal for those family sizes?

I had to check the unit conversion but I think that 1000square feet is almost the same as 92 square meters. If that is correct it's the regular size of a flat in Spain for a family. The flat where I was raised was 80 square meters and there where my parents, my sister and my. 3 bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and a bathroom. Thats the usual here.

Wife, kids, and me, all home all the time. I work from home, wife takes care of the kids and school. Plus we have hobbies. I would like a larger garage for shop space, but we could deal with a smaller yard tho.

Like I said in another comment. I grew up in a similar situation 4 people, home under 1,000 square feet. Just takes a different mindset and more conscious thinking about stuff and what you really need, I guess.

Or you have different needs and don't need as much space? Please don't be so dismissive about other people's lives and imply that they aren't being "conscious" about what they need.

Did you even read the original comment I replied to where people jumped all over me?

> Outside of a submarine, there really is little reason.

Because unless I missed it, I don’t see where you jumped to my defense.

Well, if you look around at older houses, they tend to be small, so it doesn't really make sense to frame it as some elevated consciousness.

When I was a kid, we didn't have anything like the monster SUVs of today. That's because an SUV in those days was basically the same as the now-mostly-discontinued mini-pickup trucks with a built in cap and two doors. There was nothing with seven seats and four doors and 300 hp and so on. So people weren't making conscious decisions not to buy that.

Yeah the area where I grew up had no older houses. Florida swamp getting filled in with what would now be called McMansions and one 1000’ house designed/built by my dad — no air conditioning either. Definitely a conscious choice lol.

But thanks for the education on older homes and SUVs.

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