Little Boxes

"Little Boxes" is a song written and composed by Malvina Reynolds in 1962. The song was first released by her friend, Pete Seeger, in 1963, and became his only charting single in January 1964.

Part of a series on
Living spaces
Main House (detached) • Apartment • Housing projects • Human outpost • Tenement • Condominium • Mixed-use development (live-work) • Hotel • Hostel (travellers' hotel) • Castles • Public housing • Squat • Flophouse • Green home • Shack • Slum • Shanty town
Issues Affordability • Executive housing • Environmental planning • Eviction • Fair housing • Healthiness • Homelessness • Housing discrimination • Housing inequality • Home ownership • Luxury apartments • Ownership equity • Rent • Subprime lending • Subsidized housing • Sustainable development • Vagrancy
Society and politics Housing First • Housing subsidy • Rent control • Real estate economics • Redlining • Right to housing
Other Assisted living • Cottage homes • Foster care • Group home • Halfway house • Homeless shelter • Hospital • Nursing home • Orphanage • Prison • Psychiatric hospital • Residential care • Retirement home • Residential treatment center • Retirement community • Supportive housing • Supported living  Housing portal
v t e

The song is a social satire about the development of suburbia and associated conformist middle-class attitudes. It mocks suburban tract housing as "little boxes" of different colors "all made out of ticky-tacky" and which "all look just the same". "Ticky-tacky" is a reference to the shoddy material supposedly used in the construction of the houses.[1]