Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12494 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
"Anyone who sleeps indoors and cares about the world will find something of interest inside."--Carol Venolia, Eco-architect, Natural Home & Garden columnist, and EcoDwelling faculty member at New College of California

"I cannot recommend this book highly enough. For anyone who has ever dreamed of getting off the mortgage rat race and creating not just a house, but a cozy nest that fits--this is the book! Every page is an inspiration, filled with real-life stories and lessons learned on creating better, more affordable, sustainable, and very personalized housing. There is something here that will fit nearly every lifestyle. For those who want to live in a better way: Read this book!"--Janet Luhrs, author of The Simple Living Guide and Simple Loving, and publisher of Simple Living Oasis

"Salomon offers the savviest plan I've read for figuring out what house you really need. . . . her questions have forced me to rethink so much." --Marta Salij, Detroit Free Press

From the Back Cover
Live in less space but have more room to enjoy it. Does that sound like a contradiction? Smart readers will discover that, on the contrary, living small can free up your mind, your wallet, and your soul. With the cost of living rising, and the environment suffering from excessive building, now is the time to scale back. Join the movement.
Little House on a Small Planet is a guidebook and an invitation. With floor plans, photographs, advice, and anecdotes, this unique book asks and answers, “What fills a home when the excess is cut away, and how do we get there from here?”
Discover how to
– Build, remodel, redecorate, or just rethink your needs
– Think, sometimes literally, outside the box
– Live close and simple
– Apply spiritual and social solutions to your material desires
Pockets of people all over the continent are realizing the benefits of scaling down. You, too, can build a joyful, sane life that emphasizes home life over home maintenance. to get more information on how to live simply visit: www.littlehouseonasmallplanet.com

About the Author
Shay Salomon is a carpenter, construction manager, and workshop leader. She's built several tiny houses and now dreams of converting her smallish cottage into two apartments. Nigel Valdez once dreamed of owning half a dozen houses all over the world. Now he dreams of having dozens of friends all over the world, and a small tent to sleep in when he visits them. Salomon and Valdez visited more than a hundred homes in researching this book.

Customer Reviews

Excellent and Inspiring
This book is totally well prepared. And if a person is looking to modify their life to lessen the effects of the "rat race", this book will suggest excellent options that will save a person YEARS of labor and savings and costs, which can then be devoted to ???? making a better life all around !
HikerBOB

Not well written
I am a developer in Dubai and want to address the problem of the middle class that can't afford to even rent a house. I bouhgt this (and other) books to help me in undersdtanding how to go about it. Unfortunately this book is totally useless for what I need with no floor plans, and no description on how and what I can do to help. Tee discussion on reducing the space is fine but not suitable for me.

For crunchy people with resources.
It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know and it made a lot of blanket assumptions about people who want to live in something bigger than a garden shed. Maybe it's just that I'm an introvert, but asking me to live in a pile of people in a house with minimal privacy and elbow room is a recipe for mass murder.

The house shapes and building materials are diverse, but the people featured in them, in many ways, are not. There is really only one working-class family. Most of them are people with at least some degree of financial or occupational flexibility (freelancers, telecommuters, self-employed, people who could afford to have a spouse either stay home or work reduced hours; people whose jobs provided sufficient income at a part-time level); a surprising number had family or friends who could make them low-interest loans. Most of the houses are in suburban, small-town/bedroom community, semi-rural, or rural areas where housing prices are often a bit lower but where there are fewer jobs. Several of the small older houses featured cost twice as much as my parents' large house (which, yes, they had to buy to get us into a good school district and safe neighborhood. Such is life in a major metropolitan area). I was hoping this would be more city-oriented since, if we all move to the country, it will no longer be the country. The author decries the bulldozing of greenspace for cheap subdivisions, but the small-house-on-large-lot option is financially out of reach for many people and also contributes to sprawl (small planet, remember?). We can't all live on Walden Pond.

I was a bit surprised that she was so quick to advocate converting the garage to house space, even after you've decluttered. Unless you can get rid of your car, how about putting the car back into the garage? Garaged cars last longer, which reduces pollution since fewer cars go to scrap.

This book is not very useful unless you have the time, money, and support network to allow you a fair amount of lifestyle flexibility. If you live in a city, have a job that requires fixed hours and requires you to be on-site, and are single and comparatively low-income, and don't have an extensive and strong family/friends support network, only the more superficial suggestions apply (like getting a more energy-efficient refrigerator. Duh). It's not that I'm a McMansion fan or anything; I'm not, but this isn't a realistic solution for many of us.