Shrinking the American dream house

Whenever architect Sarah Susanka would visit a potential client's home, they would invite her into the formal living room. "We would stand until they would determine that I am a nice person and then they would say, 'Let's go visit in the kitchen, it is more comfortable there,'" she says. "It happened every single time. I don't think I ever sat in someone's formal living area. The joke is we build formal living areas for the people we would rather not have in our houses."

Today, however, many people would not hesitate to ask her to plop down at their kitchen tables. Susanka, is the author of the best selling "Not So Big House" series of books on how people can have a richer experience inhabiting their homes and lives. She found many people were not happy with the standard homes being produced. They all had traditional elements -- living rooms, dining rooms, family rooms, kitchens and so forth. But they didn't seem to match the reality of modern living.

And part of that reality is a recovering economy. As people look to buy a new home -- or if their economic situation instead leads them to consider remodeling -- the new trend is to scale back in size and eliminate the expensive wasted space in homes.

"I had to take my clients through a thought process to help them see they were not looking for a quantity of home, but a quality of home," Susanka says.

QUANTITY IS QUEEN

The American way has been quantity is queen. And as the years have gone by, the size of homes has increased.

Around the 1960s people started adding on family rooms to their homes -- usually adjunct to the kitchen. Susanka says adding extractor fans and dishwashers in kitchens transformed them from smelly utility spaces into living spaces. The family room and kitchen became the places where people spent their time -- the place where they really lived. Less and less time was spent in formal spaces.

Yet home builders kept building the rarely used dining rooms and living rooms -- many with furniture encased in clear plastic covers. "We have this notion about formal dining," Susanka says. "Then we have the reality of how we live."

NEIGHBORHOOD DOG