Oversized Homes Costly and Wasteful

The wasteful production and consumption of oversized houses, cars, meals, services... have created over-sized headaches for society and the world.

The big roomy house requiring comfortable transportation to and from the suburbs has been one of the costliest detriments to sensible social development.

There is an increase in life stresses to earn more to obtain products and services that are more than we comfortably need. There is also waste and the environment to consider. As concern about nature and our social well-being are becoming more topical each year, we are beginning to realize this frantic consumer anxiety needs to be reigned in.

No more, please!

There are those huge meals that we get in restaurants that we cannot finish and are garbaged, or are unhealthy if we do manage to cram them down. Hardly a day passes where we are not coaxed to come in for more.

Downsizing our cars finally appears to be in our future but strong corporate marketing continues to dictate otherwise.

Now the scaling down of the consumer's most costly purchase, a home, may be in line for a sizable reduction in size and cost. Yet with so many making money in this business and with the encouragement to possess a 'Luxury Home You Deserve' change will be very difficult.

The 2008 US financial and housing crisis and environmental considerations have many thinking smaller. It's about time; in many areas homes have dramatically doubled or tripled in size in several decades.

There is so much to be said for reversing the grander is better trend in home ownership, as it has been a strain on society and nature. But will the corporations allow it?

Can this long trend to oversized homes be stopped and reversed?

The consumer motive: acquiring status; impressing friends, neighbors and anyone else who might be impressed or look on with envy.

The basic purpose: an ongoing need to increase business profits and using strong advertising to accomplish the task.

A difficult problem: which corporations will relinquish sales and profits for the good of citizens and mother nature?

While a larger house might display status and success, real or borrowed, there is a heavy cost in resources, both natural and personal. Besides the higher original financial cost there are greater expenditures on taxes, heating, maintenance and repair. Big houses cost!

Overly consuming citizens really need to reconsider their purposes and increase their interest in the environment, the world as a whole, and their own well being. And government needs to do the job that governments are supposed to do.

So now and again lets review what is important in life, like stress free living with simple but fun, relaxed lifestyles. A conservative simple home containing a contented loving family sounds good.

Smaller Homes for Sustainable
Living a simpler, more earth-friendly life begins with the kind of home you wake up in every morning. If contributing to a sustainable future is important to you, one single change in your lifestyle can make the biggest difference of all: living in a smaller house. Just as any motorcycle is more energy-efficient than any car, small is beautiful when it comes to houses too.

The Benefits of Small Home Living

There is a plethora of purely personal advantages to living in a smaller home:

• There is less to clean, less to maintain.
• Small homes are inherently energy-efficient.
• Smaller homes are cheaper to buy and cheaper to build.

Housing is almost always the largest expense most people will ever face. Imagine living comfortably in your small house with your small or even non-existent mortgage, and the idea of small being beautiful takes on new meaning:

If you are building new, your upfront costs will be far less.
Because you won’t have large expanses to cover, you’ll be able to use finer materials and employ superior craftsmanship for your home: quality over quantity.
With limited space, you’ll be less apt to accumulate unneeded objects and useless clutter.
In a nicely designed small house, everything is cozy and convenient, helping life to run more smoothly. With the savings in time and money, you can devote more of your leisure to your social life and hobbies.

Source: From an earlier article in Green Living Ideas website published by Important Media. This is a decentralized, niche blog network, dedicated to covering those issues which are important to our collective and individual well-being, from humanity’s survival to human happiness.

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Buying a Home: Tips and Traps

Information and cautions on purchasing a new home.
Marketing, inspecting, walk-through and deficiencies.

For starters watch for deceptive advertising. They can nab you right at the start with words that may not mean what they seem to mean. Be cautious, and suspicious, as you would be in considering the purchase of any advertised expensive product for sale in today's marketplace. Your new home purchase is such a big investment and the process requires careful scrutiny. Before signing that contract, and before signing off your acceptance of this expensive product, do your homework.

Using a qualified building inspector is recommended for home purchases and should be your selection. An inspector selected by the agent may be biased towards a quick approval overlooking serious faults. However even if a professional is to be hired it would be very advantageous to do one or more self-inspections beforehand to check out details that someone experienced, perhaps in a hurry, might overlook. When you are asked to sign off your acceptance during the walk through, know that what needs fixing or replacing is done, and that it will not be done at your cost later.

The builder, contractor and agent are in the transaction to make money. Any clever or sly tricks they use to complete the sale might be disappointing or very costly to you. Business today is very competitive and too often conducted shrewdly for the benefit of making more money.

Before sale.
Slick ads and fast talk can give the wrong impression about the quality and value of the home that you are considering, resulting in serious regrets later. Glitzy eye pleasing brochures are designed to appeal and to sell these costly products. As with most promotions it is likely to contain some exaggerations, some of which may be serious and costly to the purchaser. There can be very carefully worded promises so as to fit the legal definition of truth. They might seem more like outright lies after the new owner moves in.

"Luxury Condo - You Deserve the Best." And maybe you do but this is not a promise to deliver.

"Minutes from the Beach" could be 55 minutes, or more. That handsome couple standing on the beach might have had some very heavy traffic to deal with and difficulty parking.

"Top Brand Name Appliances" may turn out to be just that, but they can be the very bottom of the popular manufacturer's product line.

Low strata fees for a new condo might sound attractively low for sales appeal and will require raising at the first general meeting.

Ask family, friends and others you trust for advice based on their experiences. Read all you can on buying a home, such an important transaction. Gather as much information about both the seller and the home. Don't rush, you would only be doing them a favor.

Read and understand any contract or legal document you are asked to sign, including and especially the fine print! Get a copy ahead of time and review it with others, professionals or experienced preferred.

Nearing that special moment - the Walk Through and occupancy.
The quality and completeness of the new home covers a very wide range of objects and workmanship and is where the greatest disappointments may lie. The walk-through is when the buyer tours the premises with the contractor or seller and is asked to approve the home. Deficiencies are noted and the buyer signs acceptance subject to these items being corrected. Many people aren't prepared for this and the process does not take much time. The short 30 minute walk-through can easily result in missing very costly discoveries until after occupancy. It may then be too late or difficult to correct, and at your cost.

If safe and permitted make several critical tours of your future home to become familiar with the work and to be prepared for the walk through.
Take along a pad, pen and checklist to note concerns and questions to ask.
Have a knowledgeable friend tag along to help find those deficiencies.
Carefully look for flaws, inferior work or product, and omissions.

Photos can come in handy for work that will be covered up.

For example pictures of all walls with the wiring and plumbing completed, but before drywall application, can be very useful. You may later wish to drill holes, attach objects or resolve a structural problem.

It is a permanent record of what lies hidden.

Self-inspections are easier for condos and finished home interiors as prospective owners will have a better idea of what they want and should expect.

A house exterior, driveway and yard are another matter but should be approached in a similar manner.


For the home interior the one page printable Interior Walkthrough Checklist should be helpful as a general guide. It may not be complete or suitable to your particular needs but should provide some suggestions about things to check that you normally might not think about. It is not meant to replace a professional inspection.

Check it out - The Interior Walkthrough Checklist - Print it out

Grampa Ken - Author of 32 Keys About Life and social issues blogger at Social-Fix.
This Creative Commons article is free to copy with the hyperlinked byline intact

Simple Living Neighborhoods

A better family life environment.

What can be done to stop the frantic unfriendly, unfamily social storm that so many of our lives are centered in? Too much work, too many wants and stresses, and too little peace, pleasure and family time. The persuasions to live this way seem to dominate as pressures to acquire more are thrust at us daily. More people would live simpler and happier lives if others were doing so, if they would not stick out from the crowd. But it is difficult to resist purchases, for example, when families nearby are buying the latest branded products.

The social family neighborhood.
From an existing location imagine an emerging neighborhood that develops containing families with similar, uncomplicated, sensible lifestyles. With enough interest a small interactive group of like minded residents is formed. Interests would be such as outdoor evening and weekend play, pot-lucks, multi-family projects, TV guidelines, etc. Keeping up with or ahead of others would not be an issue here. As an internet group ideas could be freely exchanged and a set of suggested guidelines established.

Successfully started such a community would expand in size. By example, where you now see a landscaped and tidy neighborhood adjacent to a totally unkept neighborhood of the same era and original home values. New buyers are attracted to either neighborhood based values as well as on similar interests such as the landscaping and house appearance.

So imagine: Well kept home for sale. 'This is a simple living, family oriented social neighborhood.'

With a bit of research it turns out that there are a variety of well established communities with just those similar, sensible family lifestyles. However these appear to be pre-designed rather than evolving occurrences in spotty areas.

An intentional community is a planned residential community designed to have a much higher degree of teamwork than other communities. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision and are often part of the alternative society. They also share responsibilities and resources. Intentional communities include cohousing communities, residential land trusts, ecovillages, communes, survivalist retreats, kibbutzim, ashrams and housing cooperatives.

Types of communities
Some communities are secular; others have a spiritual basis. One common practice, particularly in spiritual communities, is eating communal meals. Commonly there is a focus on egalitarian values. Other themes are voluntary simplicity, interpersonal growth and self-reliance. Some communities provide services to disadvantaged populations, for example, war refugees, the homeless, or people with developmental disabilities. Some communities operate learning or health centers.
Read more at Wikipedia . . .

The Intentional Communities Website came online in 1994 and has information and resources needed to find, create, maintain and support intentional communities of all kinds. There is a wiki and a magazine.

Cohousing communities are old-fashioned neighborhoods created with a little ingenuity. They bring together the value of private homes with the benefits of more sustainable living. That means common facilities and good connections with neighbors. All in all, they stand as innovative answers to today's environmental and social problems
More on Cohousing "Building a better society, one neighborhood at a time." Articles, resources, and news.

The Community Page of Planetfriendly has a comprehensive introduction, overview and directory of links to a wide variety of ideas and projects that help create stronger, healthier community. They review a number of alternative and experimental forms of community, including ecovillages, cohousing, intentional community, cooperatives, related topics and links.

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Select Home Energy Saving Tips

The notion is becoming very popular as the new President of the United States brings energy to the top of his agenda. Saving energy is extremely important to save the environment and to ensure a sound economic future.

And it gets personal - it can save a lot of money.

Confused with pages of tips scattered all over the web, mostly with short outlines with a few good ideas? Looking for a more comprehensive and detailed list of energy saving ideas?

There are some websites with great lists of suggestions on how to save energy, resources and your hard earned money. Here are a few good sources with nice specifics for saving energy at home.

Natural Resources Canada has a great list with explanations.
Tips on Saving Energy in Your Home includes Caulking, Lighting, Plumbing, Ceiling fans, Landscaping, Weather stripping, Storm doors, Appliances, and Miscellaneous. A good place to start!

Another great source is
The Co-op America Quarterly Summer 2008: Efficiency First
Level 1: Simple Things You Can Do Today. Save up to 33 percent of your energy use!
Level 2: A Little More Time, A Lot More Savings. Save up to 56 percent of your energy use!
Level 3: Bigger Changes, Better Paybacks. Save up to 66 percent of your energy use!

MasterYourCard's 101 Ways to Go Green and Save Money also has a long list of green ways to save in and outside the home.

We must all get involved for a better world, and save ourselves a lot of money while we're at it. This is just too important not to learn and do.