One of my favorite blogs, ApartmentTherapy, is running a Small Cool Apartment contest. Readers with small apartments that they've decorated send in pictures and everyone else gets to vote on their favorites. Though I love good decorating, I don't usually have the time or resources to hunting out nifty lamps and fun furniture at flea markets. I like our furniture, but it's pretty plain and functional. (Our zillions of books add a lot of color.) But I really enjoy the "Small Cool" entries because I, too, live in a small apartment and always need a little inspiration for keeping it from turning into a nightmare of stacks and clutter. We love living in small apartments, actually.

By New York standards, we're not doing badly - we have a 500 square foot studio, and because we have closets, and because the bathroom and kitchen are in separate rooms, it's considered quite roomy. But I realize this isn't normal, especially since the American Dream appears to be owning your own home.

So let me cheekily present my praise for tiny living:

1. Less to clean. I'm a very clean person, but even if the place is a wreck, it can be spic-and-span inside a couple of hours.

2. No mowing or lawnwork. I realized recently that housework is how we seemed to spend most of our Saturdays growing up. Now, we spend Saturdays exploring our neighborhood, going to a movie, or having friends over for dinner parties.

3. Less stuff. We can't own that much. Which means we can't buy much, and we save money. Plus, it keeps us from being in the materialistic "acquiring" mode. (Except when it comes to books.) Bonus: we can't get ugly hand-me-down furniture, and we were able to avoid most superfluous wedding gifts.

4. Entertaining is great fun in small spaces. Everyone is in the same room, which means nobody is left out.

5. Strong relationships. We spend all our time, essentially, in the same room. Yes, it's a little inconvenient at times (like this weekend, when Tom got home from work at 9:00 am, and I spent the day staying quiet and working on the couch in one corner of the apartment while he slept on the bed in the other corner). But if we have an argument, it's impossible to storm into another room and slam the door, or even to just walk away. There's nowhere to go, and that forces us to work things out. I can't say how important this has been in the first year and a half of our marriage. I recommend tiny living!

By the way, that picture is a fantastically low-res image of our windows, which look out onto east Brooklyn. Aren't they great?

(For a culture writer, I don't write much about culture here, at least in the arts & entertainment sense. No worry, I shall. Spring is slow for writers in New York who don't go to all the film festivals . . . )