But wait... there's less!

Have you seen these shows? People are shown three tiny houses and they choose one to buy. Here in Australia, double episodes of Tiny House Hunters currently screen on 9Life; Tuesday at 8.30pm, Saturday at 5.30pm or streamed online . Some things happen so often on these shows that we've made a Tiny House Hunting bingo game. ( Download the pdf version ) Here's the bingo sheet, with explanations below. Play along next time you're watching. See if you can get three in a row. Composting Toilet These are a common feature in tiny houses, particularly houses on wheels that are going to be moving a lot. Some people love them; some are freaked out. Mark this square if someone is passionate about the matter. Accommodating Pets Even in tiny homes, it feels like having pets is as common as having kids. I've seen an under-couch run area for guinea pigs, a cat walk for kittens to traverse from one loft to the other, and special built-in areas for dogs to sleep and eat. M...

I often mention the expense of our homes. Whether it's renting or a buying, it's a major cost in our lives. Here in Australia it's widely accepted that prices are too high. Compared to four decades ago, we earn ten times more - but house prices are 30 times more expensive. So what do we do about it? This Australian documentary looks internationally to see what solutions other countries are coming up with. Solutions involve town planning and financial arrangements, and a lot of ideas involved living in a smaller space. While a lot of solutions take a long time to implement, one of the quickest is a change we can make ourselves. More about that at the end. First here are some of the ideas from the documentary: Just keep building In Tokyo each year there are more new homes built than in all of England. Commercial areas have been more flexibly re-zoned to allow enough new homes to match the need. As a result, prices don't increase alarmingly as they do elsewhe...

Have you seen those fold-out desks that attach to the wall? I see them on the tiny home shows on TV. Here's what I'm talking about: They're ultra-space efficient as they fold right up when you're not using them. Very handy for a tiny house Artwork Too If the 'legs' form a frame shape, it can be an artwork when it's pack away. In the tiny home shows, people use this to display art, inspirational words, or to have a chalkboard for changeable messages or art. It's a desk that takes up no floor space, or art that also has a function. Either way it's a winner of an idea. Not just for tiny homes Until now I thought it was specifically something people made themselves for tiny homes. But my friend has one in her apartment. (Yes, the same friend I mentioned last time ). They're available in Australia and can be quite affordable. Due to the wall-mounting aspect, it's probably more for the home-owners and landlords. But it's definite...

Could you live in a converted barn? Could we? My wife and I tried out this small cottage. I'm guessing it's around 35 - 40 m 2 . It's decorated to have that barn look from the outside, but inside it is quite modern. Down one end are the bathroom and the kitchen, which are more spacious than I expected. At the other end is the bedroom and sitting area (along with a table of tourist brochures). Behind the central curtain is an outdoor seating area. Tiny home enthusiasts: there is also a loft. It looks like there are hooks for a ladder to get up there. Could we live there? Obviously, visiting on a holiday is different to making a permanent home. On a trip you leave things behind. Your washing machine, musical instruments, bicycles, and Christmas tree - to name just some. Having said that, I think it would be very possible to live in a space this size. The height is a great feature as it allows for much storage, both in a loft above a room and by having even more...

Our new table transforms itself, and our view of furniture Here is our new table It has 3 modes. Friends mode: Seating up to 6 for dinner or board games. Couple mode: Great for the two of us. Or for doing some writing while looking out at the view. 99% mode: Most of the time we don't need a table, so it folds away. Storage in the side drawers. Best of all it allows the space to be multipurpose. Ordinarily a traffic area (between the kitchen, other rooms and the balcony) it can also be a spacious area for the two of us, a table for 6, or an expanded lounge area if we push the lounge furniture back. How it transforms homes Traditionally each room has one purpose. TV room for TV; bedroom for bed; study for studying; the dining room for the dining table. When furniture is cleverly designed , spaces can be multifunctional and we don't need so many rooms. It's one of the key concepts behind tiny homes . One of the architects from The Tiny House Company showed...

I love hearing the stories of people on this show. Tiny House Big Living screens Sundays at 9.30pm on Channel 94 (in Australia). Each week there's two half-hour episodes. While it's fun seeing (and critiquing) the various designs, I really get inspired when someone is making a big positive life change. Recently we got two good stories in one night. Paul and Bekah Dreisbach Paul and Bekah each grew up overseas. Their families were in the Philippines and Africa. Paul shares how this changed them. "Our backgrounds of growing up in a third-world culture and country have affected why we're going to go tiny. People living in shacks or the smallest little places are just as happy and we've realised that it's not necessarily the place you live in or how many things you have but it's the people you're around." Bekah reflects on the moving back to the USA: "Here it's just a struggle to have more and buy more things and you surround yours...

Who has ever had four saucepans cooking at once? So why do we have four hotplates on cooktops? Back in the day of all-in-one units, four hotplates were a nice fit on the top of the oven. These days the cooktop and ovens are usually separate but we've stuck with four hotplates. In many homes and apartments it's worth re-thinking. Is this is a wise use of bench space? Two-saucepan cooktops are making an appearance and freeing up some bench space in smaller kitchens. Aldi are taking it a step further with the Induction Cooking Plate . It's a stand-alone single-hotplate device that can be packed away when not in use. Aldi says it has 8 temperature settings, 5 preset cooking functions, a timer, touch controls and overheat protection. Could this be the future of smaller kitchens? Cost-savings in building. More bench space. Less energy consumption with the efficiency of induction cooking. Another great example of less is more. I don't mean this to be an ad, but...

Choosing to live small has many benefits. The positives are obvious: less overhead, less clutter, fewer financial commitments, less stress and more time. That's one of the first statements of the book Living the Airstream Life . The author goes on to the consequences of these benefits. ... learning more about yourself through having the perspective to consider the bigger picture rather than having to focus on the chores of daily living ... those who live this lifestyle for a long period of time find other ways to make positive contributions, figuring out what their true skills are and how to use them to be a productive member of society rather than having to focus on paying a massive mortgage and credit payments or keeping up with all the chores of modern day living. That bit resonated with me. I recently left a job to now figure out what my next 'positive contribution' might be. A number of people told me how lucky I was. How they'd like to do that, but can't ...

Part of the inspiration of the tiny home movement is saying goodbye to insane mortgages. Psychologists have identified that we humans are good at comparing similar items - like one car versus another - but much less good at comparing between items from different categories. This house auction satirical ad points out the things we sacrifice to be an owner of a home. I think it could go further. Many people spend years, or decades, in jobs they hate - just to afford a house they can call their own. I guess that's fine if you value the house more than those lost years. But if that's not the case, are we better off having smaller homes? Or renting? Or both? Part of what I'm doing is discerning what I value in life, and working out how to make a life that reflects that. I reckon that's part of the key to happiness - lining up our values and our actions.

One of the things you look at when thinking about tiny living is better use of space. This video, with more than 13 million views, contains some amazing designs that make it so easy to save space. Why have a bedroom and a study if one room can do both. The furniture may cost a bit, but it would be far less than the cost of an extra room. This is the kind of thinking that is involved in the tiny living scene. It's not ordinary, but it's brilliant. Update: Check out the new transformer table my wife and I recently found.

We first got interested in tiny homes when Christine found an article of this amazing tiny home . It looks great, costs hardly anything, and looks great to live in. There is a full photo gallery of the house, along with a guided tour of the house by its creator Andrew Morrison. But it's not all about the ability to build a well-designed or cute house for a fraction of normal housing cost. It's about an alternative to the "normal" life of working longer and longer hours under more and more stress to pay for a house we hardly get to see, and buy endless amounts of junk to fill it with. That alternative can be very attractive, and the Morrison tiny house is one great example of that.