What do you call the bare essentials in your life?
Could you live without a swimming pool? Most likely you could find a way to survive. What about an air conditioner? How about a Waring blender, a stereo system or a television? Could you live without four coats or two sweaters? Could you survive without a microwave oven? What about board games, a deck of cards, a footstool? What about books, plants, pets or musical instruments?
From where you are sitting, look around. Then try to wrap your brain around this concept: There are thousands of people – maybe tens of thousands – who now make up the so-called “tiny house movement,” although I would personally go so far as to say this was a “tiny living revolution.” Let’s just explain the basics.
A tiny house is generally defined as a building with between 100 square feet to 300 square feet of space. Many of these homes are built on trailers, quickly suggesting that the appeal, for some, is the ability to travel and take your tiny home with you. But for many – if my casual experience as a tiny house journalist suggests – there is a necessary magical endorsement, an “aha moment!” if you will, in which a person realizes that chasing after stuff is less fulfilling than living a life rich in experiences. This means it’s OK if your home is too small to feel comfortable in day after day, because your claustrophobia should prompt you to go visit friends or take a walk on a beach. With money far less of a concern when you own your house outright (tiny house living is thrifty in the extreme), tiny house owners feel liberated from the treadmill of work, consumption and greed. When the house feels too small, one tiny homeowner explained, she tries to remember that it means her house is not too small, but she has too much stuff.
To solve that problem, just give something away. There is even a Web site that challenges people to try to live – in modern, sophisticated societies, mind you – with only 100 items or less in your possession. Three coffee cups might be one or two too many for those who accept the challenge.
This makes moving simpler, does it not? If you move into a tiny house, first you have a garage sale, then you have another, then you give the rest of your stuff away – all but a few changes of clothing, essential cookware, and maybe 75 other things.
You might want to keep a few of the heavier appliances. Don’t try moving the refrigerator, the clothes washer and dryer or the couch by yourself, suggests northamerican.com and other professional movers. You only have one back; movers know how to lift or have the proper tools to get those chores done.
It seems simple to move to a tiny house, but it is a major lifestyle switch that not everyone can pull off. There are many would-be tiny house owners who believe that a tiny house means fitting all your current possessions into one room with a loft – as if the house was a magic box or an Alice in Wonderland fantasy. But 300 square feet of space isn’t much no matter how you cut it and that baby grand piano is likely going to have to stay behind. (Talk to your movers about that, too.)
What would be interesting would be more articles online that explained the budget of tiny house homeowners. A very sturdy tiny house can be built for as little as $5,000 or less, while some of them listed online have sticker prices of $75,000 or more. Those are high-end novelty items that would appeal to a wealthy retiree who owns a gas-guzzling pickup truck and likes to drive around towing a tiny, rigged-to-the-max man cave behind him.
Other builders just like to say they “did it.” They put tens of thousands of dollars into design, material and construction, almost forgetting that the point is to ratchet down — not ratchet up — your lifestyle. Think of what Hugh Hefner or Donald Trump would come up with if they went small. Others, however, are living in solar-powered gems made of recycled material that look great and are masterpieces of ingenuity. Each to his own. I’d like a tiny house that was parked next to my favorite trout stream with a wraparound porch and a hot tub. And a cherry red Corvette. Or midnight blue. I’m not picky.
2 Comments
The tiny house movement is indeed fascinating. I doubt I would be able to successfully pull it off. But paring down stuff, that’s something I can handle, but I do need space.
@Latoya – Definitely getting rid of stuff is daunting. The tiny house movement is really popular right now, but it’s probably only realistic for a small percentage of the population. I was following a couple for a while that purchased a tiny home, but only ended up living in it for a couple of years. They now rent a larger apartment!