“Tiny House Living” by Ryan Mitchell
Jul. 20th, 2015 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroTiny houses—that is, sub-400 square foot homes often built on trailers by their occupants—are a thing. Ryan Mitchell wants to sell you on the concept.
Mitchell’s argument is twofold: One, that you will living a happier and more simple life if you pare down your material possessions and the creature comforts you don’t actually need; and two, that tiny homes are cheap and therefore a solution to debt problems. And for a certain type of person, this is true. That is, if you’re a middle-class, educated young person who has the time, resources and inclination to build a small house and an inclination to live with fewer creature comforts (typically closer to nature), then yes, this might be the life solution you’ve been searching for. It’s more customizable than a trailer or RV and generally more mobile than a prefabricated home; and once you get past the barriers to entry (cost of materials, time and skill to build, finding a place to set it, regulatory hurdles) the upkeep costs are very low.
It got me thinking: I live much of my life in a relatively small space. Would a tiny house appeal to me? The first hurdle is, of course, that I’m part of a family of three, and it’s hard enough to keep ARR from bouncing off walls in our current (~1600 square foot) home on rainy days. But also, I love to host: Dinners, parties, overnight guests. Mitchell talks several times about under-used spaces in most big homes, like guest rooms. But our guest room doubles as play space, the TV room, the library and the laundry room; we use it extensively even when we don’t have guests. I have a big eat-in kitchen rather than a formal dining room (another space he likes to call out), but I crowd ten people around the table once a week. There was definitely under-used space in the house I grew up in, but I don’t think we have it in ours—I think it’s appropriately small for our needs.
(Mitchell’s answer to entertaining is just to use outdoor space. Which relies on the weather cooperating and the host/guests’ willingness to suffer the vagaries of the outdoors. Mine isn’t up to the task. I’m much more of a city boy than a rural boy, and the “off-the-grid” tiny house lends itself much better to a place where you can buy a lot of land for cheap.)
That, and as much as the “pare down your lifestyle” thing is moderately appealing and somewhat feasible via digitalization, I like my stuff. If I had a tiny house, I’d need to also build a tiny library next door so I could keep all my books, games and comics.
So, taking all that together, the closest I think I can get to a tiny house is a tiny apartment, in a building where there’s sufficient shared indoor space for proper party hosting and where I can be a keeper of the shared library. So…basically fancy version of a college dorm where all my friends can live.
Overall: If you’re an outdoorsy, crafty young person who’s not too attached to oodles of stuff and has a lot of time but not so much money, this might be a viable way to buck the system. It’s not really a feasible choice for most of us, though.
Mitchell’s argument is twofold: One, that you will living a happier and more simple life if you pare down your material possessions and the creature comforts you don’t actually need; and two, that tiny homes are cheap and therefore a solution to debt problems. And for a certain type of person, this is true. That is, if you’re a middle-class, educated young person who has the time, resources and inclination to build a small house and an inclination to live with fewer creature comforts (typically closer to nature), then yes, this might be the life solution you’ve been searching for. It’s more customizable than a trailer or RV and generally more mobile than a prefabricated home; and once you get past the barriers to entry (cost of materials, time and skill to build, finding a place to set it, regulatory hurdles) the upkeep costs are very low.
It got me thinking: I live much of my life in a relatively small space. Would a tiny house appeal to me? The first hurdle is, of course, that I’m part of a family of three, and it’s hard enough to keep ARR from bouncing off walls in our current (~1600 square foot) home on rainy days. But also, I love to host: Dinners, parties, overnight guests. Mitchell talks several times about under-used spaces in most big homes, like guest rooms. But our guest room doubles as play space, the TV room, the library and the laundry room; we use it extensively even when we don’t have guests. I have a big eat-in kitchen rather than a formal dining room (another space he likes to call out), but I crowd ten people around the table once a week. There was definitely under-used space in the house I grew up in, but I don’t think we have it in ours—I think it’s appropriately small for our needs.
(Mitchell’s answer to entertaining is just to use outdoor space. Which relies on the weather cooperating and the host/guests’ willingness to suffer the vagaries of the outdoors. Mine isn’t up to the task. I’m much more of a city boy than a rural boy, and the “off-the-grid” tiny house lends itself much better to a place where you can buy a lot of land for cheap.)
That, and as much as the “pare down your lifestyle” thing is moderately appealing and somewhat feasible via digitalization, I like my stuff. If I had a tiny house, I’d need to also build a tiny library next door so I could keep all my books, games and comics.
So, taking all that together, the closest I think I can get to a tiny house is a tiny apartment, in a building where there’s sufficient shared indoor space for proper party hosting and where I can be a keeper of the shared library. So…basically fancy version of a college dorm where all my friends can live.
Overall: If you’re an outdoorsy, crafty young person who’s not too attached to oodles of stuff and has a lot of time but not so much money, this might be a viable way to buck the system. It’s not really a feasible choice for most of us, though.
