Downsizing the McMansion

Image courtesy of The Taunton Press.

Book Review
Title: "More Not So Big Solutions for Your Home"
Author: Sarah Susanka
Publisher: The Taunton Press, 2010; 160 pages; $22.95

Bigness, that staple of American values and culture, is, in the words of Heidi Klum, "Out." (Note the capital "O.") Mega, ultra, super, jumbo stuff has generally declined in popularity over this recent recession, first motivated by cost-cutting and, later, by the realization that life smells just as sweet (or even sweeter) without all the "extra" our bodies and budgets are perfectly capable of doing without.

In early 2009, the story broke that American homes were trending down in size for the first year in many. Authorities from the National Association of Home Builders, the American Institute of Architects and even groups of real estate professionals started noticing homeowners at all income levels beginning to express a preference for smaller, better built homes -- some even before the recession. And they project that the trend will continue when the recession is just a memory.

Enter Sarah Susanka, an architect and advocate of homes that are smaller, practically and efficiently designed, yet still beautiful and comfortable. With her first book a decade back, "The Not So Big House," Susanka likely felt like the lone voice of reason crying out against excessively large homes in the wilderness of rapidly multiplying McMansions that was the American new-home market at the time.

With the release of her latest title, "More Not So Big Solutions for Your Home," Susanka's masterful authority on efficient, smaller home design is in laser-beam precise alignment with the wants and needs of today's homebuyers and builders.

My keyword for "More Not So Big Solutions for Your Home" is "solutions." The challenges of creating a space for everything in close quarters, organizing a family's belongings and activities in a comfortable, space-efficient way, and still maximizing aesthetic appeal are many, and this book provides solution after solution for resolving them.

While Susanka repeatedly refers to her approach as "commonsense," I strongly disagree -- many of her strategies and ideas are quite creative and reflect a uniquely uncommon skill for manipulating spaces to suit the lives of the people who live in them. In fact, the common approach was to just supersize the space!

Susanka's practicality is evident in the widely varying knowledge sources she draws on throughout "More Not So Big Solutions for Your Home" in formulating and supporting her cases for various design elements. ...CONTINUED

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