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!) 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?) 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.
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.