Living small: Tiny houses get big-, small-screen love

Last weekend, during one of those typical "What should we watch on Netflix?" evenings at our house, my husband and I impulsively clicked on Tiny: A Story About Living Small. The documentary follows a Colorado man, Christopher Smith, who decides to build a 133-square-foot home.

While I'd heard about the "tiny house movement," I didn't know too much about the growing community of folks who live in extremely small spaces. (Also, here in New York, tiny living is pretty par for the course.)

To my delight, Tiny was insightful and entertaining from start to finish. (Its tiny, 62-minute runtime also is enticing.) It wasn't until the end credits that I realized Smith and his girlfriend/co-builder, Merete Mueller, directed the film while they were building the house. Their impressive achievements deserve to be seen.

Tiny includes interviews with single people, couples and families who, for one reason or another, decided to pare their lives down to the essentials. Tiny houses are so trendy right now there's a new TV series devoted to them as well, Tiny House Nation.

If you enjoy the Tiny doc as much as I did, you may dig this FYI Network reality show about tiny-home dwellers. Hosts John Weisbarth and Zack Giffin also help tiny wannabes construct creative spaces smaller than 500 square feet.

As you can see in this clip, many of the homes are very environmentally friendly. The clean, modern designs make some of them true works of art:

Tiny: A Story About Living Small is now available on Netflix, iTunes and DVD. Tiny House Nation airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on FYI Network. While I dream of living in a slightly bigger space than what I'm in now, I'll admit it's inspiring to see others getting so much happiness out of such little square footage.