- I f’ing love the idea of downsizing and living a “simple life,” but seriously, where do you put your shit? You still have some clothing and shoes and towels and all that jazz, right? Or do you just wear overalls now? Overalls and Birkenstocks and one towel that you share with your entire family. Where do you wash that towel, hmm? Do you have a tiny river that runs behind your tiny house? I bet you do. I bet your whole Goddamn property is whimsical.
Staying at the (empty) house of friends-of-friends. They have a copy of "the not so big house."
According to Redfin this place is 2900 sqft, and the master bedroom is legitimately larger than my living room.
Buying a big house only means that you fill it with useless junk and pay a lot more to heat and cool the place. When I bought this place the first realtor did everything she could to get me to consider a 3K sqft mini-mansion when I was looking for 1K sqft and a basement.
My house gains about 2% a year, but then again I did not lose 1/2 my home's value in the crash either. The big houses? They sit on the market for months, meanwhile homes in my 'working class' neighborhood in the sticks sell in 60 days because people can afford to live here.
I'd love to break down and buy 40 or so acres, put a tiny house on the lot and build an observatory on a hill in the dark corner of the lot. Use the house as almost a mobile home, a place to crash after a night of astronomy. Some of these tiny houses cost more than my place, so I'd probably build my own in that event.
Friend of mine has a predilection for lofts. He used to have 3 roommates and 4500 square feet - half a floor of a factory in the fashion district. Skateboarding to the bathroom was a thing. There was this rug, and on it a couch, and surrounding it for about 40 feet in any direction was nothing. He's now got 1800 sqft on top of a former Masonic lodge; he's got a rug, and a couch, and a kitchen, and the rest of it you could park four cars with room to spare (if you could get them through the door, which you can't). So I totally get the appeal of vast swaths of empty.
It happens to be woman-bane, though. The fair sex, in my experience, has little attraction to aircraft hangars. So yeah. A livable living space with enough accessory buildings to cover my hobbies and needs would be fine. Left to my own devices I'd have a shop shaped like an Ohmu and it'd be rad.
- It happens to be woman-bane, though. The fair sex, in my experience, has little attraction to aircraft hangars.
Can concur. I've lived in shitty places that were not much more than a roof, four walls, no leaks and decent neighbors all of whom understood we were living in a shit building. Know who lives in places like that? Single men saving to do some life goal, recently divorced guys making child support payments, immigrants who need a cheap place to live and not draw attention to themselves and maybe 1-2 women with nowhere else to go. And this is not the place with the vermin I've described elsewhere here, this place was on the border of "take a bullet monthly" and "not quite middle class but the schools don't suck." Those of you familiar with SoCal, and know where the Costa Mesa Freeway and the 405 come together can still see some of the places I used to live in a million years ago.
There is something to be said for simplification like that... in a place like I just described you don't own many things because there is a real concern it will all be stolen as soon as you leave.
The useless junk expands to fill all available space. True of houses and hard drives.
A friend of mine and I just built a tiny house for him and his wife. They both make great money, and were renting, and realized the next step was to buy a home... but they just didn't want to. They wanted to travel more, simplify, and move out of the big city.
So, inspired by my efforts to build my own tiny house a few years ago, they decided to build their own.
And, four weeks later, they live in it, on a piece of property that is rural and has great views of Mount Rainier, and they take the commuter train into the city for work.
They are pretty blissed out about the whole thing.
And the best part for them, hands down?
Getting rid of their stuff.
They had to literally touch every single thing they own and decide whether or not to keep it.
And ya know what? None of that shit in the 4-bedroom house with a garage was worth keeping. The few mementos they built into the house - a piece of stained glass here, etc - and the rest of the stuff they gave away to friends, had a garage sale, and donated to Goodwill.
Now, when they come to visit and Susanne needs a lap blanket, we hand her the one we got from her. So she smiles, tells us a memory of the blanket, and gets warm underneath it. But she no longer needs it in her house. She can "visit it" when she comes to our house!
It's pretty cool, man.
They are the SIXTH couple I know who have built their own tiny house and live happily in it. (One of the key tricks is to make sure you have a fantastic deck.)
- Getting rid of their stuff.
They had to literally touch every single thing they own and decide whether or not to keep it.
And here's where I part ways with the tiny house movement:
If your life fits in a fuckin' trailer, you have no life.
Back in college a girlfriend and I added it up - between the two of us we'd had 13 addresses in 12 months. You can absolutely pack light when you do shit like that. The stuff you don't need does not get dragged around. Accumulation is something your debts do, not your possessions.
When I moved my wife down to Los Angeles we had to crack her out of 9 years of stability. That meant getting rid of "stuff" - stuff like the dining room table, the couch in the study, the mother-in-law tongue grown from her great grandmother's (actually, we kept that). But I mean, even scanning her five years of medical school notes down to PDF (all 11 linear feet of them) we still had a fucking moving van worth of stuff.
Set aside the fact that she's got a medical degree's worth of books. Set aside the fact that all her winemaking supplies take up a couple closets ('cuz we got rid of all that). Set aside the fact that even if you do a tiny amount of knitting you've probably got a garbage bag worth of yarn. Never mind me - the fucking mouse I use to talk to Pro Tools is bigger than a twin bed. For some reason, "furniture" is "stuff" to the Tiny House Movement as if you should feel guilty for having a place for your friends to sit. As if it's bourgeois to have enough pots and pans to cook spaghetti for four people. As if owning more than four glasses is somehow materialist.
THAT is what I hate about the tiny house movement - you aren't getting rid of the stuff that's essential to you, you're getting rid of the stuff that's essential to other people interfacing with your life. You aren't purging your wants and needs, you're externalizing them:
- Now, when they come to visit and Susanne needs a lap blanket, we hand her the one we got from her. So she smiles, tells us a memory of the blanket, and gets warm underneath it. But she no longer needs it in her house. She can "visit it" when she comes to our house!
How 'bout when you come to visit them? Oh, right. The awkward conversation about sleeping on the "porch." Been there, done that, got the bug bites.
'cuz that's the thing. Nobody builds a "tiny house" in the city. They all fuck off to the Back of Beyond where you couldn't find a fuckin' bed'n'breakfast if you tried and then post about how they sure wish you all could get together more often. That's the subtext of the tiny house movement - "don't visit me, I'll visit you." 'cuz the thing is, if you're moving out to the sticks, you're spending less money anyway. And it's not like you can't throw up a 1000sqft structure for a titch more than a 500sqft structure. And hey - maybe you legitimately have no need for anything hobby- or entertaining-related in your entire goddamn life and you're cool with nobody ever coming out to hang out with you. More power to ya.
But you live in a van by the river.
This is pretty much my issue with the tiny house thing as well since it preaches few belongings as a long term plan. I had a great time when I could fit everything I owned into a duffle bag with only half of a room to fill with stuff for 6 months. Eventually though I started missing my hobbies and some of those hobbies need a ton of space. Then there's the fact that I went back to school and needed a desk. My half a room literally fit a twin bed and a dresser with space left for a 24. There's no way that's long term.
- That's the subtext of the tiny house movement - "don't visit me, I'll visit you."
In my experience it has been the opposite. My tiny house friends now live where I wished I was living, so now I go visit them.
They also are generally happier with where they are living, because it has been so intentional. Every part of their life has been considered, and they are living in the midst of exactly what they want. There is no cruft or dross. So they tend to be way more "at home" in their tiny space than they ever were in their 2200 sq ft house.
Other friends have stayed in town by setting up in the back yard of a house, so they are still in the regular circle of friends and activities they have always been a part of.
And, most importantly, living in a tiny house doesn't mean you don't have a shed, or an office, or a workshop, or even another tiny house for guests. It just means you don't have to live in the middle of all that shit anymore. A place for everything and everything in its place.
(This may be the biggest part of the tiny house movement that non-tiny house people don't get: The tiny house CAN move, but it doesn't. It is a BITCH to move for many reasons, same as any "mobile home". The ultimate idea is not portability, it's living a more considered life. This is the exact same model that sailors have been espousing the benefits of for the last 3 centuries. It's not new thinking, just a new implementation of an old idea.)
The subtext of this discussion is infuriating, though - if you live in more than 400sqft you have "croft or dross" and your life is UN"intentional." Yet:
- living in a tiny house doesn't mean you don't have a shed, or an office, or a workshop, or even another tiny house for guests. It just means you don't have to live in the middle of all that shit anymore. A place for everything and everything in its place.
That's like a zen koan of poor space planning: you have no room in your life for the shit you need in your life so your life has outriggers. I don't have a shed and an office and a workshop. I have a NORMAL HOUSE. "A place for everything and everything in its place." And when people come to see me there's a couch they can crash on and rooms I can inflate air mattresses in and a dishwasher to clean up our guacamole and margaritas without me needing to wash and dry dishes before I can fold out the bookshelf. And this:
- Other friends have stayed in town by setting up in the back yard of a house, so they are still in the regular circle of friends and activities they have always been a part of.
That's not independence, that's grad-level couch surfing. That's a Griswold Family Christmas. Externalization of your lifestyle writ large. Sure - maybe your friends love having your septic system in their back yard. But I'm the kind of guy that feels uncomfortable asking, so maybe that's my problem: there's this facade of independence across the tiny house movement and it's pure bullshit. You get by with a little help from your friends and without your friends, you live in a shack.
Once more with feeling: I have nothing against living in the sticks. I have nothing against doing more with less. I have nothing against asceticism or minimalism. I have everything against the notion that there is somehow virtue in cramming all your shit into an artificially-constrained envelope so that you can smugly pretend that yours is a more considered life.
I lived in a 6x7 space on top of a bathroom in a quanset hut for a summer. I showered at the docks. I lived off of McDonald's and Otter Pops. I had nothing that wouldn't fit into a Suzuki Fucking Samurai. The difference is I didn't pretend my shit didn't stink. There is no more merit in
living in too little room than there is in living in too much. The difference is, with too much space you can probably find room to entertain. With too little? Well, we'll meet you there.
It's funny how quickly people revert to this kind of dichotomous thinking when it comes to tiny houses.
I never said you can't live an examined and intentional life in 10,000 sq ft in the Hollywood Hills. But, that's what you responded to.
And that happens a LOT with tiny houses. Every single person I ever helped build a tiny house also blogged about it... for about three weeks. Almost every tiny house blog ends about three or four weeks into the build, and it's the rare blog indeed that continues all the way to completion.
Because the hate that gets spewed your direction is just endless. Every single decision you make - "I went with a single tub sink, instead of dual tubs" - immediately gets endless flak from every person on the internet with a dual-tub sink, because they decide to interpret your decision as a repudiation of their choice to have a dual-tub sink!
Have a woodshop because you don't want exhaust fumes and wood dust and chips in your house? Now you are an asshole because your woodshop isn't attached to your primary living quarters.
Have a shed for your lawn mower because you don't want the house to smell like gas? Yup. Yer an asshole for having a shed.
Put your tiny house on someone else's property? Now you are a "grad-level couch surfer" instead of someone making efficient use of the space in the yard that used to just be an El Camino on blocks overrun with blackberry bushes. (Added benefit to building on a friend's property: You both actually LIKE your neighbors now!)
- I have everything against the notion that there is somehow virtue in cramming all your shit into an artificially-constrained envelope so that you can smugly pretend that yours is a more considered life.
Wow. Kinda touched a nerve there, huh? Too bad I didn't say any of that.
I said these people thought about everything they owned, and decided they didn't need most of it. So they got rid of it.
Other people may not make the same choices.
But, once again, at the mention of a "tiny house", someone has gotten all up in arms about the slings and arrows they imagine were being thrown at them and their way of life. But those are self-inflicted wounds... there's just no room to store slings and arrows in a tiny house. :-)
(Love ya man, but I had to call you out on this one. Yeah, there are self-righteous pricks in the tiny house movement who want to be holier-than-thou, but what DIY movement doesn't have such people?)
But the pricks are running the asylum.
And the movement, whether you like it or not, is a minimalist movement.
And the judgement, whether you like it or not, is that more stuff is bad and less stuff is good and somehow, simply having space is opulent. Go ahead. Google image search "opulent." You'll see a whole bunch of overly-detailed empty space.
The blogs?
See, nobody else who moves blogs about it. If I move from a normal house to a normal house, it's called moving. But if I move from a big house to a tiny house, to somebody it's a spiritual awakening. And reality TV ain't reality but it rhymes, man, and you don't have to watch ten minutes of those tedious tiny house shows to see someone or other talk about how they feel guilty living in 800sqft so obviously, a composting toilet is what they need to achieve enlightenment.
You're not an asshole for having a shed. You're an asshole for not including your outbuildings in your square footage purely so that your square footage is something to brag about.
The earth-sheltered crew is just as judgmental. So are the domers. Or they were, until people started pointing out that the phrase "geodesic dome" is often preceded by "abandoned." Tiny houses are just the flavor of the month. Look. No less than Frank Lloyd Wright argued against closets. He figured anything you had to hide away was something you didn't need. But he was wrong, too.
You know, I read this exchange, and I agree with both of you. What I mean by that is that the square footage of one's house is a meaningless metric for determining much about a person's quality of life, but that I also believe having a lot of (rarely used) possessions tends to take something away from the possessor if they truly serve no purpose.
A tiny house is an arbitrary constraint which is in no way needed to live an intentional life. On the other hand, as a pretty disorganized person, I could certainly use a dose of intentionality applied to my surroundings. And you know what would help with that, is a reason to throw a lot of stuff out. I don't need a tiny house to do this, I can do it for its own sake. But the act of thinking through and ordering your life is valuable in itself, I think. Also refining and simplifying your life is valuable, because it forces you to think about priorities. But once again, while perhaps a useful tool for some, a tiny house is not necessary for any of this. I think stick with trying GTD for now.
I agree with both of us, too. The crux of the disagreement as far as I'm concerned is the causality implied in having no space, and the morality assigned to that causality. That causality and morality isn't universal amongst the tiny house movement, but I've seen it enough to stereotype first and ask questions later.
- And it's not like you can't throw up a 1000sqft structure for a titch more than a 500sqft structure
Oh, all right, you made me look. The tiny house thing had completely escaped my notice before this post. But 400 square feet in Who Cares, NM: $153, 500. For comparison, 5,500 square feet on 4 acres in Who Cares, AL: $145,000. The hundred year old house probably needs some expensive work, but on the other hand it is not a shoe box.
I love the idea of tiny houses and once upon a time it would have been my dream house, but there is no way my current life could fit into that. Our current house is about 700 square feet that we can actually use for living and it is only just enough; or problem is that we need to be moving house soon, and the only options we have open to us are new builds that are even smaller than this Victorian built house.
Then again, if I could convince the family we don't need half the rubbish we have, I would totally love to live in a tiny house.
There is something comforting about owning a small home. I think we would be perfectly happy in a one or two bedroom row house, ranch, or cape cod. People say they're hard to resell, but mirroring what @francopopli@ has said, the one or two bedrooms seem to sell very quickly after they come on the market. Besides, if I were to be honest with myswlf, the size of the home doesn't matter. It's the emotional value you get out of it, the dinners after work, the friends you invite over, the evenings in the backyard. A barbecue with friends is a barbecue with friends, whether your house has one bedroom or four.
There's also the peaceful sense of having a home that is not going to bankrupt you if the market takes a dive.
I agree about friends and family as well. Any friends or family willing to squeeze into a smallish space together are most often the one's that are best for spending time with anyway.
One of my favorite spaces in the world is my grandmother's 1000 sq ft bungalow. During the holidays, filled with twenty or more of my aunts, uncles, cousins, my brother's, his wife and daughter, there's really no other place my wife, kids and I would rather be.
All the talk of tiny houses makes me realize that the spaces in which we exist are the medium for our relationships. A good balance may be 80% relationships and 20% spaces.
Is Hubski a "tiny house" of the internet? Not lavishly distracting or pretentious, but functionally efficient in supporting interesting and beneficial exchanges of ideas and experiences.
I'm planning to build a tiny cottage in the not-too-distant future. But that will be all about the place, and the temporary nature of our visiting it.
I lived in a three bedroom with 7 people. It was a fairly pleasant way to exist.
It’s funny when you think of the overlap between tiny houses and mobile homes. Shipping container or trailer home?
That said, I want to build a tiny cottage whereas I could probably buy a camper of equal size for the same price. Rustic cuteness, and custom floor plans are important factors.