Life: 10 x 10

When I was introduced to the idea of Tumbleweeds I immediately dismissed them as “too small.” Matt (my significant other) and I work in high-paying fields with desirable degrees under our belts. “We ought to be able to afford a REAL house,” I thought. But after a couple months of soul-crunching and number-searching, the realities of owning a house set in and I gave it a second thought.

As we live now, my workplace is closer to our apartment, so I get home first. I usually end up cooking dinner for time reasons. I enjoy cooking, but when free time is scarce you’re painfully aware of what else you COULD be doing. I’m a pack-rat, yet clutter bothers me on a quasi-spiritual level. So as I cook, I think about all the stuff that I should be cleaning and putting away. I’ll organize my thoughts by room, devise a plan of attack, and mentally rehearse so I can put things away faster and have a little time leftover for myself before bed.

This drives ME crazy. And if I’m driving myself crazy I can only imagine how pleasant others must find me in this state. It was about this point in the thought process that I realized I have far more objections to the way I live now than I do to trying to change it.

The Easiest Part: Making the decision. It’s exhilarating and simple, like stepping onto a roller coaster. The right neurons fired and set off a chain reaction of fantastic mental planning.

The Hardest Part: The childhood dinosaur toys that have been sitting in the back of a closet for 10+ years. Giving them away feels like chopping off a limb. But it’s a dead, plastic limb that doesn’t serve any purpose. And maybe I can keep just one velociraptor.

There are also bigger reasons than my own happiness. Instead of paying $250k in interest for a $200k mortgage (do the math, it’s true!), we could do something really useful with that money. 1.4 billion people make less than $1.25/day… so why do I need a house that costs $22/day in interest alone? And what for? So I can fret about organizing my masses of stuff?

So I’ve talked myself into it. Matt has too, and he’s as excited as I am. This winter will be spent designing our new home and “practising” in our apartment: figuring out exactly how many dishes we really need, how to use BookMooch, and how to file our stacks of documents digitally. In the mean time, I’ll get to work on cleaning those dinosaur skeletons out of my closet.

-Katy

“Filling to fullness is not as good as stopping at the right moment.
Oversharpening a blade causes its edge to be lost.
Line your home with treasures and you won’t be able to defend it.
Amass possessions, establish positions, display your pride: Soon enough disaster drives you to your knees.
This is the way of heaven: do your work, then quietly step back.”
-Section 9 of the Tao Te Ching (as translated by Brian Browne Walker)

Well, actually more like 8 x 14, but these houses are 100 sq. ft. or less! That’s tiny, but there are a growing handful of people living comfortably in them, and I’d like to become one!

http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/

The above is a company building and selling tiny houses. You can get the basic idea by looking at their designs.

Here’s another site with resources and plans:

http://www.tinyhousedesign.com/

Wouldn’t it be lovely to live without a mortgage, quite possibly in a house that can move with you whenever you happen to feel the wanderlust? Esp. for someone in theater, a highly mobile profession, the idea of taking one’s house along for short stays is very appealing.

No mortgage, and so much less stuff! After all, Campbell’s Law of Storage states:

Ones possessions will expand to fill whatever storage space is available.

With a tiny house your storage space goes way down. Since there’s no room to put new stuff, you are almost guaranteed to get less of it! There needs to be a place for everything, and everything needs to be in its place… else you won’t be able to move.

Why do we need so much space inside when we can move around outside, or do the things we do inside in a lot less space? Most of my inside work is office-type stuff. I do research, I write, I read. All these things can be done in a very small space.

Living in a tiny house is inexpensive in general (no debt, low heating and lighting costs), and I imagine that the mindset of a tiny house dweller tends towards lower cost living in all areas. I look forward to being able to support myself on an actor’s limited income.