Land is a scarce resource. We develop consumption-based land footprints (CBLF) for urban and rural US residents to evaluate new levers for reducing land-demand by combining: 1) direct land-use for human settlements including housing, 2) indirect land-use associated with personal consumptions, e.g., food and clothing. Results show that an average urban resident’s indirect land-use (199,176 ft2/capita) is ~23 times the direct land-use (8519 ft2/capita), for a total urban CBLF of 207,695 ft2/capita. Rural residents have a slightly higher (~6%) indirect land-use and ~10 times larger direct land-use compared to urban. As in both cases, indirect land-use is much larger than direct, a strategic mix of individual actions including halving food waste (-4.7%), one-day weekly plant-based diet (-3.3%), reducing clothing consumption (-2.8%), and others, can together reduce CBLF by -12.8%. Meanwhile, housing and locational choices across the urban-rural continuum evaluated for the median-density Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSP MSA) yield CBLF reductions from -1.9% (from single- to multi-family housing) to -10.6% (from rural to the urban core). The analysis demonstrates that consumer behavior changes could rival housing/locational choices in order to reduce personal CBLF. Our method of combining input-output analysis with parcel data could be applied in different regions to provide customized land conservation information.