Downsizing - who needs a mansion anyway?

I'm not a big fan of water, but I love the work that goes into designing boat interiors because of how efficiently a space can be used. Along the same lines, I've always loved floorplans and seeing how spaces are used -- especially small ones. I don't mean the "under 2000 sq. ft." homes that some of these Home / Interior magazines think of when they say "small". I mean truly tiny.

The Tumbleweed Tiny House Company has mastered the utilization of small spaces, ranging in size from 40 sq. ft. up to a 'whopping' 500 sq. ft. All of the houses are designed by Jay Shafer, who actually lives in a 100 sq foot home that he designed himself. Below are a couple of examples of some of these tiny houses.

The Eepoo house is ~100 sq. ft (and it's portable).



The Greg is smaller at 60 sq. ft., but has an upper sleeping loft.




You can buy full drawing sets of the Tumbleweed houses ($850US) so you can build your own, or you can even buy ready-made models starting from ~$30k. In so many ways I'd love to be so minimalistic that we could live in such a small space. Realistically though, the tiny houses probably aren't meant for family living :)