Also this, yeah, as farming scales and technology enables farmers to be able to manage larger and larger swathes of land with less and less labor involved, more and more people congregate in central hubs, major cities, etc, which means more and more people are within walking distance of all the needs.

The point is, you almost definitely have way less shit on your property, than a middle or upper class family would have in the 1800s.

You probably dont have a whole ass horse stable, and separate living quarters for your stable hand, yes? And all the "stuff" that would be involved in maintaining that horse stable, and all the stuff that the stablehand would own for their own life, right?

And you likely dont have servants, and a cook, right? And all their stuff and their living quarters?

And your computer can hold an entire library worth of books on it, an entire blockbuster worth of VHS tapes in movies, etc etc?

And you probably dont have dozens and dozens of boxes of photographs in storage, right? All of that now can fit in your pocket in a single USB stick.

No matter what your trade or craft is, even ones that involve working with your hands, its extremely likely someone 200 years ago would have required like twice as much stuff to do it. Our tools have become smaller, compact, multi-use, storable, foldable, digital, etc etc.

We've gone from giant machines that took up entire rooms, to extremely powerful ones that take up a fraction of the space.

Think about something as simple as just printing off some pamphlets, do you know how much stuff was involved in that process 200 years ago?

Now, you can mass produce pamphlets with just your phone or a laptop and an inkjet printer.

I would say there certainly are a small handful of hobbies and skills that have not had much change in terms of downsizing. Weightlifting / exercise, for example, is largely functionally the same. Steel is still steel and you cant really "downsize" the fact you have a certain density, and you simply just have to live with that. People have tried to come up with countless fancy ways to downsize weightlifting but at the end of the day, a barbell is a barbell.

Sewing also hasn't changed dramatically in terms of scale either. Modern sewing machines arent that much different in size. Sure they have gotten a little bit more power in a bit smaller shape but, if you look up sewing machines from 200 years ago they, well, sorta still look the exact same not gonna lie.

But overall, most of the day to day living is just a LOT smaller and simpler. A small electric hand vacuum can do the work one handed in a few minutes that would have taken ages before. Microwaves cook food at extraordinary speeds that someone from a hundred years ago would absolutely consider borderline magic.

This thread blows my mind.

You'd prefer to just be boxed in with people all around you and concrete everywhere? That's what developers would do if they weren't required by law to give you space. Pack them into smaller spaces and get more money!

You could look into lawn alternatives. Here the rules are no weeds and vegetation can't be over 6 inches unless it is intentionally cultivated. So I have native plants in garden beds around my house that take up roughly 50% of the yard, and the "lawn" portion is mostly native groundcovers that are unlikely to reach above 6 inches. I rarely have to do anything to it since it's mostly native. We go out there maybe once a month to mow the little grass that's left (which we're phasing out as natives spread) and pull weeds.

It was a little more work up front to make beds and plant natives, but we did it the lazy way, starting out small and expanding over the years as natives grew and spread. We did temporary borders of cardboard with rocks on top to smother grass and expand out as needed.

Lawns dont have to be grass