Susanka designs houses for living: comfortable, compact, uncrowded space for, often, multiple functions. Contrast her inviting, manageable houses with the vulgar, wasteful, show-off monuments to consumption containing specialized rooms that are rarely used (often because they are icy, sterile, forbidding). Taunton's usual splendid photography is evident in some 200 color plates. Floor plans show how traffic and life will flow.

In the latest groundbreaking step in the Not So Big revolution, Sarah Susanka and Marc Vassallo demonstrate how carefully chosen tweaks and simple additions can make a home seem much larger and more inviting. They avoid high-end architectural solutions, focusing instead on how Not So Big ideas can dramatically improve even the most modest home.

Ideas to empower homeowners to transform their shelters into real homes.

Have you ever found yourself asking, "Is this all there is to life?" Or wondering if this bigger life you have created is actually a better life? And how it all got so out of control? In her previous book, The Not So Big House, architect Susanka showed us a new way to inhabit our houses. Now, she takes her philosophy to another dimension by showing us a new way to inhabit our lives. Most of us have lives that are as cluttered with unwanted obligations...

Lushly photographed and illustrated with vivid drawings, Outside the Not So Big House explores how to build pathways and journeys in your gardens; how to make the most of your site; how to use details to bring it all together. Twenty homes from across the country aptly illustrate these easy-to-grasp design ideas.