What's the deal with tiny homes?

The concept of “micro-living” is gaining traction with Millennials. In the spirit of education, I watched the 2016 film Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things. The film describes how the quintessential “American Dream” has become increasingly more difficult to achieve. It now includes bigger and better material items like giant flat-screen TVs, the latest SUV models, smartphones and home appliances — and of course, a space to put it all.

In fact, the size of the average American home has nearly doubled since the 1970s. Using heat-mapping technology, the film’s producers tracked homes over several years and found that most people don’t use all of the space available to them. Some rooms were only entered once every few months. The documentary posits that cutting out unnecessary space from our homes could help us cut out other unnecessary material items from our lives, too.