Living Small

Until last night, I had never heard of the "tiny house revolution". Perhaps "revolution" is too strong a word, but apparently there are thousands of people all over the country -- and in other countries too, I'm sure -- who have decided to toss aside most of their possessions and build themselves tiny houses. In the documentary I watched, Tiny, a man and his girlfriend built a tiny house with their own hands -- and no construction experience -- and put it on a flatbed to carry out to a remote piece of land in Colorado. The documentary was filled with interviews of other tiny house owners -- that is, owners of tiny houses. All of the owners were not necessarily tiny themselves. Many of these houses were under a hundred square feet! And they weren't vacation homes or camping cabins; these were year 'round homes. Most of them were on wheels, many had lofts, and I think they all had porches. Even with outdoor living space, can you imagine yourself and all of your possessions in an area under a hundred square feet? I can't, but I have been trying to.

In case you're wondering why the tiny houses are on wheels, local governments (nearly everywhere) have minimum requirements for the size of a house. I didn't know that. So these homes have to be on wheels to be considered temporary shelters, which of course they really aren't. All of the homeowners interviewed (which shouldn't be construed to mean all tiny house owners) were so happy. They had all lived before in large homes, acquiring debt and working hard to pay it down. For some, their decision to "go tiny" was about pursuing happiness; for others it was about leaving a smaller footprint. Each interviewee talked about how liberating it was to scale down, in every way, not only in house size.

As someone who has struggled with an over-accumulation of stuff -- my own, on a smaller scale and more recently my mother's, on a ridiculous scale -- I can see how paring down would indeed be liberating. I find the tiny house idea fascinating, but I'm pretty sure I don't want one. It's one thing to scale back possessions and simplify life; it's quite another to move into a space that's smaller than my kitchen.