{"id":29249,"date":"2019-06-21T22:23:19","date_gmt":"2019-06-22T03:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=29249"},"modified":"2019-06-21T22:23:19","modified_gmt":"2019-06-22T03:23:19","slug":"briefly-smaller-well-designed-home-beats-a-monstrous-mcmansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=29249","title":{"rendered":"Briefly: Smaller, well-designed home beats a monstrous McMansion"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Does a bigger house make people happier? Based on housing trends, you would assume so. The average size of U.S. houses keeps going up and up and up. I know plenty of people \u2014 individuals and couples \u2014 who own houses that are several thousand square feet or larger. Many of them are filled with empty rooms, but at least the houses look impressive to the neighbors, right? A new study shows that a bigger house does not<\/a> necessarily make people happier, but it also shows that people tend to become unhappy when someone else builds a bigger house near them, presumably because this makes them feel less successful. Personally, I would rather have a house of reasonable size that\u2019s well-designed and built using quality craftsmanship, as opposed to the cookie-cutter design and shameful construction quality of most houses today. I would far prefer this 1,650-square-foot home<\/a>\u00a0(above) than a 4,000-square-foot monstrosity of a McMansion<\/a>. Years ago, I discovered Kelly Davis, the architect who designed the house above and talked with him about building a house for me one day. He was based in Minneapolis, but could work anywhere in the country. A huge house won\u2019t make you happy, but a house that\u2019s just right for you just might. And I would prefer to have it on the middle of a piece of property where I can\u2019t seen the neighbors and they can\u2019t see me. Comparing yourself to the neighbors doesn\u2019t lead to anywhere good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does a bigger house make people happier? Based on housing trends, you would assume so. The average size of U.S. houses keeps going up and up and up. I know plenty of people \u2014 individuals and couples \u2014 who own houses that are several thousand square feet or larger. Many of them are filled with Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[556],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-briefly","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-7BL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29251,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29249\/revisions\/29251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}