Here’s an interesting fact about my home: While I love little rugs and carpets, I have exactly zero in my own house. It’s wood flooring all the way, with wood-look laminate in the kitchen because that is what we could afford at the time. Carpets are cute but with smooth wood or woodesque floors, I can sweep and swiff without having to drag a bulky vacuum up from the basement. We did have a number of throw rugs once upon a time, but with five cats and a mobile toddler, I was vac’ing every day. Not cool.

And exactly how long will that stay looking nice?

You can imagine, then, how squicked out carpets in kitchens and carpets in dining rooms make me. Built-ins are one thing, because there’s not much you can do about that until you’re ready to refloor, but to take a kitchen or dining room with a perfectly good wood floor and then put a throw rug precisely where food is doomed to fall… that just makes me scratch my head. You tell me: Is there some benefit to carpets in dining rooms and carpets in kitchens that I am missing? Saving food for later perhaps? Because I simply cannot wrap my brain around the practical reason for putting a what is essentially a crumb catcher under food prep and food consumption zones.

Every now and then I run across something like this, the story of a man living simply in a clever dwelling of only 258 square feet. How’s it possible? A transformer-like space with many of the necessities of daily living hidden away in the walls, only coming out as needed. Like the kitchen. And the bed. It’s small, but would you call it simple? That small space has been optimized for a serviceable amount of *stuff*. Oh, and style, too.

Simple living or simply living?

But what about super SIMPLE living? A bedroom, sans accessories, with a wee kitchen. The basics, without a lot of style. A home base without most of the comforts of home… I could swing living in Christian Schallert’s pad, provided I was single. But could I embrace the extremes of simple living, a la this book? I don’t really know – part of what keeps me sane is surrounding myself with beauty and fun. Not expensive beauty and fun, or new fun and old beauty (which tends to be the more expensive sort). But beauty and fun, nonetheless. How about you? Could you go small AND simple?