Life: 10 x 10

A lot’s happened in the past week. Apologies for the saturated nature of this post, but there’s so much to tell!

Matt and I have done quite a bit of budget research on our tiny house. We’ve found that the Tumbleweed Company cost estimates assume you’re using downright luxurious building materials. For example: Tumbleweed estimates $1,100 for counter tops… we found cheap-yet-functional formica for $200.

This was all very encouraging, so we decided it was time to “come out” to Matt’s parents about our plans. We’ve been hoping to use their land and tools for building our house, and wanted to offer rent in exchange for parking through the first winter. So we invited them to dinner and I made stir-fry.

Things… did not go over so well. At first they thought we were having money problems, then they thought we were trying to reject money completely. Then they deduced that we must be afraid of success, or maybe we just miss the country scenery…? No matter how we tried to explain the appeal of the lifestyle itself, they simply didn’t believe us. They thought we should wait a couple of years and “get it out of our system” then.

The entire conversation was very frustrating. But it was also illuminating. Talking to them made me realize just how tied people are to their real-estate, and just how much I don’t want a house mortgage. The phrases “that’s just the way life is,” and “too frugal,” came up a lot, but it’s not a matter of frugality for me. It’s about striving for efficiency and ingenuity as virtues. It’s about banking on my value to society rather than inflation and interest. But then, that’s another fundamental disagreement: I don’t think the American economy will return to growth-as-usual anytime soon.

I am planning on “the new normal” (also known as “the way things are in the rest of the world”). American markets may have an upward swing in the next couple years from investors trying to recoup their losses, but things are too globally transparent for us to get away with a debt-based economy much longer. Bless Washington (Dems and Repubs alike) for trying to save us the pain, but I see no easy way out. I plan to hunker down and start paying what I can of this bill by consuming little and producing much. The generations before ours have handed down a lot of debt, but they’ve also given us one of the more progressive and imaginative countries in the world. Loans have enabled upward mobility for people who otherwise would have had little opportunity, and that has made us examine centuries-old economic and ethnic prejudices. I’m not angry about the way things are now. I’m just trying to do what I think is the next best step.

Andrew's brother standing outside the Lusby

So, that was the first half of the weekend. Thank goodness for daylight savings time, because we needed that extra hour of sleep. Sunday morning we dragged ourselves into the sunlight to meet Andrew and Angie and visit a partially-finished “Lusby Class Tumbleweed” (as Andrew put it), right in our very own southern NH!

We found its owner, Elaine, through the Tumbleweed Company blog. We were so excited to find someone local that we had to connect. She graciously allowed us to step into her Lusby-in-progress and see if we felt any horrible gut-reactions to the small space. The unanimous response? “We can so totally do this.” I know I can’t communicate how the space felt via this blog, but the overall area reminded me very much of my dorm room minus the bed.

The Lusby was very cute, with a lot of thought put into it. We all agreed we would design our own houses differently, as the second bedroom seems too space-costly for a couple. Matt and I still have our sights set on the Fencl plan. We talked to Elaine about her experiences, and she said the hardest part is finding a place to park. RV parks aren’t fans of these things (yet), and a lot of towns have ordinances against living in RVs. We’re all mulling the idea of blazing the way for a Tumbleweed Park.

Matt & Andrew check out the interior

Angie & Katy are excited!