How much home is enough? With the downturn in the housing market, and the concern over preserving green spaces, well, you get the picture. There are innumerable reasons for going smaller. Building Home & Garden has interesting review of Micro Homes on their site —

Micro homes are tiny houses, and an exciting new trend in housing options. I define them as ones with less than 500 square feet. Why have more house than you need? A little place is cheap and easy to own and maintain.

Now, 500 square feet sounds really small to me. But, if you figure that a standard row house living room is about 170 square feet, that would leave you with two generous rooms and a bath. Suddenly, it doesn’t sound micro so much as small. You would certainly save a lot on your utilities in a space that small.

While there is a case to be made for conservation in choosing a smaller house, the AARP is finding that many Boomers and seniors are opting for smaller houses in their retirement —

AARP reported Wednesday that nearly eight in 10 adults have either started to cut back on spending or have started to save more money in the past year, with almost three in four doing so in order to save for retirement. Read the Post Gazette article

Some of the concepts for Micro Houses can be quite fun. Check out the review for the Top Five Tiniest Pre Fab Homes on Inhabitat. (The below image is from the post.)