Marianne Cusato was busy designing cottages for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina when requests started pouring in from developers, builders and homeowners across the country begging her to create a similarly compact dwelling for them.

"I was very focused on disaster housing and the small-house movement came to me," Cusato told WalletPop.

Though Cusato's 300- to 1,800-square-foot Katrina Cottages -- now for sale at Lowe's -- are an extreme example of the smaller-is-better mentality, the movement appears to be more than a fad, especially now that the economy has tanked.

A slew of surveys shows that homeowners are looking to slim down, hoping for less space to heat, cool and clean, and cheaper mortgage payments. A recent CNN poll found 69% of respondents felt homes had gotten too big and Kermit Baker, an American Institute of Architects economist, reported in October that while people want a home office more than ever (reflecting in part the growing number of self-employed and telecommuting workers), special-function rooms such as home theaters, exercise rooms, guest wings and three-car garages have become less popular.

Consumers are also abandoning some of the excesses that had come to define the modern home before the housing bubble burst: living rooms in addition to family rooms, big master bedrooms with big master baths, walk-in showers that are adjacent to standalone Jacuzzi tubs, pantries the size of closets and closets the size of bedrooms.

Soraida Oquendo of Shrewsbury, Mass., is among those homeowners desperately seeking to downsize. Her 4,369-square-foot home, now for sale, includes a full basement and a pool -- both amenities that seemed perfect when her two children still lived there. But now she and her husband yearn for a house that's half the size and more affordable. The economic downturn, she says, has hit their liquor store business and the family's finances.

"I'd like something only one floor...the most three bedrooms. Bathrooms? Two and a half would be fine. No big dining room. Something very simple and easy to clean," Oquendo said.

Robert Lang, director of Brookings Mountain West, an urban development research partnership between the Brookings Institution and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, sees the downsizing trend as a pendulum swing from just a few years ago. The sociologist describes the previous upsizing of housing as "the Tuscanization of wealth," in which Tuscany-style homes grew ever larger as they were layered with add-on after add-on. "There were oversized entry halls, grand staircases," he told WalletPop. "Their purpose was to demonstrate status."