I thought this Apartment Therapy post hit the nail on the head: Why We Chose a Small Space.
Part of the answer, of course, is that space is expensive, and doing without more of it allows you to spend your money and time on other things.
I love to be space-savvy, to not hoard stuff and to be clever about how I fit our family of four into our tiny apartment. However, sometimes, when I am trying to cook a big dinner with no bench space, or attempting to bathe my kids and getting a leg cramp since there's nowhere to sit, I need to remind myself: we chose this. We chose this, and this is why...
On the flip side, there's this: The Worst Room. This blog has been getting a lot of attention lately, for featuring really tiny, nasty-looking living spaces in NYC, not all of which are even all that cheap! Things like this make me realize once again how relatively luxurious my $850 per month (including gas and electric) 242 square foot studio was. Examples:
East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. $750.00
“Walls will be repainted white before you move in”
“NO windows”
Williamsburg, Brooklyn. $750.00
“YOU CANNOT STAND UP”
(Floor 7½?)
I guess there are all sorts of things that can be tolerated, at least temporarily, in order to save money! But the other thing this site makes me think about is raising the rent on my tenants! If someone can charge $750 for dumpy rooms like those, I think I could be doing a lot better than $2k for a nice two-bedroom in a perfectly nice, if less hipster-ish location!
