Our Next Book: SMALL HOMES

Our book TINY HOMES has sold over 60,000 copies and with a recent surge of interest in the subject, is selling over 1,000 copies per month. We are getting a lot of inquiries from reporters and film makers about the subject; they want to contact people living in (or building) tiny homes.

I’ve taken to telling people I’m not the tiny homes guy, I’m the build-it-yourself guy, and that the important thing about the tiny home “movement” is not that all people should be living in tiny homes, but that the size of new homes should be getting smaller, rather than continuing to grow in size.


To wit: our next book will be SMALL HOMES and we’re starting to gather information. Size: 400-1200 sq. ft. or thereabouts (the maximum size in the Tiny Homes book was 500 sq. ft.). A small home is a lot more realistic for the majority of people than a tiny home.

We are asking people (you) to send us photos and details of small homes. Or leads to people living in or building small homes. In the near future we’ll do blog posts with this material, and down the line (1-2 years from now), we’ll publish the new book.

There will be a section on rescuing and refurbishing small homes in cities.

We’ll publish previews of all the homes on https://www.theshelterblog.com/ as we go.

Send info to smallhomes@shelterpub.com.

The photo isn’t actually a small home, but rather a spacious garage that seems an ideal shape and size for a small home. The wide dormer gives you nice 2nd story space.

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

8 Responses to Our Next Book: SMALL HOMES

  1. Onboard 100%. Heading out of Silicon Valley within a year & expect to downsize big time. When we were a family unit of four (kids now grown with families themselves), we lived comfortably in a 1200 sq ft home for 12.5 years (til kids -> teenagers). We could have stayed but a temporary dip in SV home prices in the early 90s was too good to pass up for extra space (& yes the xtra space was consumed by all 4 of us), a pool & most importantly as an investment. We're out of that home also, but even our smaller home in the East SJ foothills is excessive for two @1700 sq ft.

  2. My husband and I are looking into either a tiny home or a small home, but, he is a video photographer and I am a potter/clay artist. We want to build a studio for me and somehow have enough room for his office which takes up an entire room with all his equipment and editing stuff.
    The clay cannot get near the camera gear.
    Any suggestions on how to put this all together?

  3. I also would love to see effective small studio spaces. I haven't had a studio space in a lot of years and just recently moved into a 1400 sq ft. Townhouse and would love to see city style designs for city living

  4. I like this garage/home. I have lived in a 337-sq.-foot wooden railroad caboose for six years, and have more than enough space for myself, and can sleep 4 – 6.

  5. I am with you on your comments about not necessarily living in a tiny house but how great it would be for so many people to live in smaller houses. Certainly for their pocket books, peace of mind and our forrests. For the better part of my life my family of 6 children and husband have lived tiny or at least small, once on a boat for several years. Now they are all grown and love the memories we made. And I am turning my experience into helping others.

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