When we, the two of us, added onto our little vacation cabin to make it our full time home, we added over 2000 square feet of living space, over 1000 square feet of cellar and an attached two car garage. Actually what we added was a lot of underutilized overhead. The space has to be cleaned, maintained, heated, paid for and is taxed forever.

Recently we have visited two different friends who have purchased in recent years new homes. They are large spacious homes, with lots of wasted space and are not very interesting architecturally. They have made the same mistake we did; larger is not necessarily better.

Please think about this and comment if you have fallen into the same trap. More about this trap in a little while.

Time is our most valuable resource. Once you have consumed time, it is gone, it can’t be saved up and it can’t be recovered. As we talk about Streamlining, let’s never forget the importance and the value of time.

My concept of conservation is not doing with less, but having more while using fewer resources. How can that be?

Where does conservation fit into Streamlining? In an era of skyrocketing energy costs, why do you hear nothing about conservation? In the past this became a national goal and strangely over time did appear to drive down energy costs. Could supply and demand actually work again in our economy? Certainly they do, but why hasn’t the government encouraged energy conservation? Would your lifestyle be better if energy costs were at the level they were four or five years ago?

This is the first in a series of thoughts about Streamlining America and in response to the question I posed a couple weeks ago about streamlining vs. bigger. The choice of the term “streamlining” was made, in my mind, to reflect both improved efficiency and quality in the lifestyle and structure of America. The idea that “bigger is better” is a concept that should have run its course ~ it is more of a marketing /sales concept than a reflection of what is best for the long term. Always Question and your comments are welcome.

In any process, if you had the choice of making it bigger or streamlining it, in general, which would you choose?