In a trip to England in May 2008 I went to a museum called the Black Country Museum. It is what they have a living museum where you walk around what is like a village and can go in all the different buildings and areas and learn about them. The first one I went in was a very tiny house. It had 3 rooms. Two bedrooms, and a kitchen/living room. It was representative of what a house would have been like in or around the 1800s. It was super tiny and probably would have housed a fairly large family (for todays family size standard).
The lady at the museum said that this was an example of a sustainable family. The size of the house would have required less energy to heat it in the winter, the amount of 'stuff' in the house was very minimal. Small amounts of furnature and clothing. The amount of 'stuff' that we have today results in large amounts of the earth's resources being wasted. The house also had a small vegetable garden which would have been enough to feed the family.
So I am definately not saying that we should all go back to living the way people did hundreds of years ago, but maybe we should learn from our past. We were able to survive with a LOT less than what we have today. Just the sence that everything these people was available within their community with out travelling long distances is a lesson.
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