Good news that I haven't shared publicly: I have a place to live. My old landlord, Dr. Cool (aka Dr. Fool) has a room available in his stunning Spanish style house. This is wonderful for me because not only did I really enjoy living with him before but I can have my cats with me and all my stuff is stored in his garage so it's not like I have to move it far!
The down side is that once again, I will be living in a tiny space, 10 feet by 10 feet to be precise. I have lived in a room this size or smaller for the past year.
There are some things that I really like about living in a space this small-- I love the fact that there is practically no cleaning or dusting (how I hate cleaning). I also like that it has forced me to pare down my possessions and prevents me from buying new things (I certainly think twice before buying anything now).
But it is certainly a challenge to fit everything I need to live into a 100 sq foot room. And I feel bad for my cats being cooped up, although I am going to try to let them out into the rest of the house from time to time.
It is interesting to me that both my sister and I live in what some people consider impossibly small spaces-- this year she will be living in a 300 sq ft apartment in New York city with her husband and in the winter she is expecting a baby. More than one person has told me they think she or I (or the both of us) is just plain nuts. However it is understandable that these people find this incomprehensible since most of them live in much, much larger spaces (like over 2000 sq ft for one person or over 3000 sq ft for two people). You would think the trend these days would be for people to live in smaller and smaller spaces, as the human population continues to grow and there is less and less space available on the planet, however, when I was in DC this summer there was clearly a trend among the upper class to re-model to build bigger and bigger, hence the new term McMansions.
For years I have been interested in simple living and so I have read with great interest articles on living in small spaces. Below are some of the articles I have found interesting over the years.
The first article that really sparked my interest was in SFgate last summer and features a 250 ft sq foot Pacifica house that looks quite appealing in the photos. I think what really stood out to me is that to make the space look larger, the owner did away with baseboard and molding. The idea of changing the rules like that, shirking convention on something as standard as baseboard, really excited me even as it shocked me a little. I thought the thinking that went into making a space that small work was really cool. Re-reading this article a year later, it now catches my eye that the owner added a garage the same size as the house to reduce clutter in the house (kind of cheating, huh? At least it makes pulling off the feat of living in such a small house less impressive, though the effort and planning is still remarkable.)
Then this summer, while staying with my aunt K, she pointed out an article in her local paper, The Courant, that caught her attention and that she thought might interest me, which it did. It is a story about the ambitious project of a first year student at Yale's prestigious, top-ranked School of Forestry and Environmental Studies to build her own 144 sq ft portable, sustainable house for less than $14,000. I was proud as a California resident to see that this student-builder had gotten the idea for such a small house from a California company, Tumbleweed Tiny House Co, based in Sebastopol.
A quick search on the internet turned up some other interesting articles. There was one in The Washington Post about a guy living in a 187 sq ft condo, and although there are no photos, there are lots of tips on living in small spaces. And there was another one in The Washington Post about a couple living in a 416 sq ft studio in Washington DC, and the challenges that living in such a small space places on relationship.The down side is that once again, I will be living in a tiny space, 10 feet by 10 feet to be precise. I have lived in a room this size or smaller for the past year.
There are some things that I really like about living in a space this small-- I love the fact that there is practically no cleaning or dusting (how I hate cleaning). I also like that it has forced me to pare down my possessions and prevents me from buying new things (I certainly think twice before buying anything now).
But it is certainly a challenge to fit everything I need to live into a 100 sq foot room. And I feel bad for my cats being cooped up, although I am going to try to let them out into the rest of the house from time to time.
It is interesting to me that both my sister and I live in what some people consider impossibly small spaces-- this year she will be living in a 300 sq ft apartment in New York city with her husband and in the winter she is expecting a baby. More than one person has told me they think she or I (or the both of us) is just plain nuts. However it is understandable that these people find this incomprehensible since most of them live in much, much larger spaces (like over 2000 sq ft for one person or over 3000 sq ft for two people). You would think the trend these days would be for people to live in smaller and smaller spaces, as the human population continues to grow and there is less and less space available on the planet, however, when I was in DC this summer there was clearly a trend among the upper class to re-model to build bigger and bigger, hence the new term McMansions.
For years I have been interested in simple living and so I have read with great interest articles on living in small spaces. Below are some of the articles I have found interesting over the years.
The first article that really sparked my interest was in SFgate last summer and features a 250 ft sq foot Pacifica house that looks quite appealing in the photos. I think what really stood out to me is that to make the space look larger, the owner did away with baseboard and molding. The idea of changing the rules like that, shirking convention on something as standard as baseboard, really excited me even as it shocked me a little. I thought the thinking that went into making a space that small work was really cool. Re-reading this article a year later, it now catches my eye that the owner added a garage the same size as the house to reduce clutter in the house (kind of cheating, huh? At least it makes pulling off the feat of living in such a small house less impressive, though the effort and planning is still remarkable.)
Then this summer, while staying with my aunt K, she pointed out an article in her local paper, The Courant, that caught her attention and that she thought might interest me, which it did. It is a story about the ambitious project of a first year student at Yale's prestigious, top-ranked School of Forestry and Environmental Studies to build her own 144 sq ft portable, sustainable house for less than $14,000. I was proud as a California resident to see that this student-builder had gotten the idea for such a small house from a California company, Tumbleweed Tiny House Co, based in Sebastopol.
Seeing I was really getting into my research, my aunt also dug up a link to a TV show called Small Space, Big Style in case I can find time to watch it someday. Thanks, aunt K.
It's a big subject. Everything I've written seems almost conventional when compared with EB's little brother's plan to build a cob house in NC. Now, that sounds really interesting! I hope someday to visit and see it and get a chance to talk to this idealistic, motivated young man myself. Perhaps one day I will buy a piece of property in a forest and live in my own cob house. After living in such small rooms for years, it might not even seem cramped anymore. In the meantime, I will try to post some pictures of my room and a post on some of my solutions to making the space work, as soon as I find time.
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