Frugal Housing…or just plain crazy?

Personally I’ve always been a function over form kind of person. I don’t need a huge house with 6 bedrooms and an in-ground pool with the stables outback. Currently, I do not own a house and I have no intention of buying one until I have sufficient capital to do so. This subject has been blogged to death, but I’ll give my own mercifully short take on it. I don’t like the idea of a mortgage. Paying bank so I can live in a house that they can take away at any time if I don’t pay, while also giving them a healthy amount of interest each year, isn’t very appealing to me. Not to mention that I’d like to do quite a bit of traveling, and may want to relocate here and there before settling in on a place. I wouldn’t be able to do that if I owned a house unless I wanted all sorts of headaches.

Ok, done with that, out of the way, ready? On to the real content.

I recently read a short article about 5 designs for small to tiny houses and I was admittedly intrigued. My first impression was “There is absolutely no way I could fit everything I have in there.” Now, that either means I have too much stuff or the houses are really just too small. The more I think about it, the more I think I’d be able to handle it. I would love to be able to buy a house out-right, and skip the whole “Well I have to work for the next 30 years, I have a mortgage!” phase. Instead what I would like is a small, affordable, comfortable home, preferably somewhere relatively remote (I love the mountains).

What do you think? How efficient is your space?

-Xias