Because moms are gonna mom, these political pundits were chastised on C-Span by their mother, who called in to tell them not to bring their nonsense to Christmas dinner.
The following words and phrases drive me crazy—take, hot take, deep dive, long form, think piece. There is no link here. I just wanted to say this.
I also hate tiny houses. I rage against tiny privilege, the luxury of declaring, “I am tired of all this space and want to be done with it.” The fetish to rid oneself of material possessions and live in a Post-It note is beyond my comprehension. I recognize that I am the problem here. I am from the Midwest. A woman named Dee Williams counts her belongings. She keeps a tally of her stuff. She has 305 things right now. She lives in a space that is 84 square feet. She built her home herself and she is clearly living her truth, which is lovely but… No. Also, if she injures herself, how will she get into the sleeping loft? On HGTV, I saw a show called Tiny House Hunters or something like that. This couple wanted to downsize from a 750 square foot apartment which, as a country girl, just blows my mind. Turn down for what? Anyway, they looked at some options but the husband was very intent on having a composting toilet. His wife was not having it. They have plumbing in their new home.
In many homes, that may amount to the stuff found in the kitchen cupboards, or the contents of one walk-in closet. For Ms. Williams, it included all of her worldly belongings, from her bedroom suite (a mattress and a quilt) to her home entertainment equipment (a laptop) to her jewelry collection (four pieces in all: two necklaces and two pairs of earrings).
Shani O. Hilton, Buzzfeed’s executive editor, talks to Nieman Reports about building a good newsroom.
When I started at BuzzFeed, there were three black employees. That number has grown dramatically. It’s really nice to be a place where you don’t have to agree with the other black person out of solidarity. You can disagree with them publicly, and it’s fine. That’s really great. That can’t be underscored enough.
Clearly, I am not in the cheeriest mood because I also want to say that I have no interest in space tourism. There’s plenty for me to see right here on earth. Still, Mars is burping and that’s fascinating.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has announced their 2015 inductees. No sleep until John Hiatt is inducted on the beauty and power of Have a Little Faith In Me, alone. Have a little faith in me.
Arizona State University is trying to move their instructors to a 5/5 teaching load (teaching five courses per semester) without an increase in pay. The school is no stranger to making bad decisions about how they educate their students.
There are no words to adequately address the massacre in Peshawar, Pakistan but I did not want this tragedy to go unmentioned.
Tags: link roundup, the internet
The mom video! It just makes me so happy! The look on the conservative brother’s face when she mentions her autistic grandson as the reason she votes Democrat is glorious.
And the liberal brother whispering “let Mom talk” as his sibling tries to get a word in edgeways.
For those of you who are not up on your outrageous Canadian news….a group of dentistry students at Dalhousie in Halifax are under fire for creating a Facebook group where they discuss things like “Who would you hate fuck” and make chloroform jokes. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/dalhous… And the CBC has issued a statement saying they won’t release names because it may influence Dal’s investigations, their future professions, etc.
Frankly I’d be pissed the fuck off if I went to a dentist and discovered that he spent his university years making jokes about chloroforming women and “Bang until stress is relieved.” But that’s just me. CBC in its infinite wisdom is more concerned with not injuring their delicate future careers. I see.
I just heard about this on Metro Morning and holy misogyny batman. I already have pretty extreme dental phobia, now I may never go to the dentist again. I’ll get wooden pioneer teeth and rock a pinafore.
Find a woman dentist. Mine is great, she is smart and observant and sensitive to people who are anxious about dentists.
CBC may be unwilling to be sued. It’s likely less shielding dudes than shielding itself. No media outlet is naming them. They could also be protecting the female students who were mentioned in the screen caps sent to CBC.
Ugh this story is making me so mad and I made the mistake of reading some of the comments (NEVER READ THE COMMENTS, I KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE) and I don’t know what Dal is going to do but I hope they somehow do the right thing, ie expel these fucks.
This has been all over my facebook today and yesterday because I go to Dal (although I am not in Dentistry, thankfully). In case anyone is wondering here is the official statement from Dal’s president.
Edit: and having looked at my feed, I am pleased that all the people I know from Dal seem to be totally horrified by this thing. I guess I made friends with the right people!
Congrats, Nicole and family!
All hail the Kwisatz Haderach.
Woo! (I am not on the twitters, so my woo will woo here.)
That baby is going to be AWESOME.
Well done Nicole!
Welcome to the world, baby! Sagittariuseses rule.
Hooray!!!
Victory!
A+ job on new human creation, Nicole & Co.!
Congratulations, Nicole and family! May your small one grow strong & happy under your care and love!
Horrified, furious, but, alas, not surprised at Arizona State. Note that ASU markets itself as “The New American University.”
As an adjunct at a different AZ school, let me tell you how much I am not surprised. It is a very bad situation with no rights anywhere. Blurg.
I’m an alum. I love ASU with all of my heart, but the current administration is beholden to some deep, deep pockets. They have done some very good things in terms of improving the quality of education at a state school that 20 years ago was a party school punchline. But they have also brought an Almighty Dollar mindset that has fucked over a lot of students, faculty and staff. The facebook feeds of my former professors I still keep in contact with are blowing up with outrage, so I suspect there will be quite a bit of faculty pushback. I’m hoping the idea withers and dies on the vine. Go Devils.
The whole thing just makes me so full of rage. It would serve them right if every single instructor quit simultaneously, and if every single parent of a prospective freshman said “Wait, ASU clearly doesn’t give a rat’s patoot about the quality of Junior’s education, I’ll just send Junior somewhere else.” Sadly, that’s never going to happen.
Also oh my GOD Roxane I completely missed that about John Hiatt because OH MY GOD I fucking adore him and it is a travesty he is not a member of the Hall of Fame and doesn’t receive like one hundred times the accolades he does. Seeing him live six inches from the stage at an Ottawa outdoor show, at sunset, performing “Have A Little Faith In Me,” is one of the most excellent music-related memories I have. John Hiatt 4ever.
SERIOUSLY John Hiatt FOREVER.
OMG I literally did not know that anyone other than me and my dad loved John Hiatt this much.
Me and my mom!!! My mom is an infinitely bigger John Hiatt fan than I am. In fact, when one of my ex-boyfriends ghosted on me to dump me and I called her to cry about it, her advice was to get a couple of John Hiatt albums and cry it out.
Walk On is basically the best breakup album of ALL TIME. Also bragging time, I met John Hiatt backstage when I was 8 because my uncle’s an entertainment lawyer and represented him and it was basically the best thing ever. It was also the first time I ever smelled pot because he was opening for Hootie and the Blowfish and as they passed us to walk on stage we got a giant whiff of it.
I worked a show of his in 2010 and got to supervise the backstage area where he and the band were dicking around getting ready and ngl I was way more focused on watching them rather than ensuring no one else entered the “secured zone.”
“Have a Little Faith In Me” is a perfect song.
(just typed out this whole comment then realized that it was incredibly heavy, so if you’re not interested in dealing with that early in the morning, I apologize, pls skip)
The summer I was seventeen, a close friend of mine was killed by a drunk driver, and a month later, on her birthday, I went to see John Hiatt with my family at an outdoor concert. There was a light drizzle the whole time and I was so deeply depressed that whole summer, and especially that day, that I don’t really remember any of the concert. It was like I wasn’t even fully there. Except when he started to play “Have a Little Faith in Me.” Then it was like I woke up, and I saw all of these elderly couples were slow-dancing together by the stage, and it was the most perfect moment in this terrible summer. That song will always be so, so important to me for that reason.
Well your comment made me cry at my desk, in a totally good way. I had a similar experience with “Two-Headed Boy Part 2” at a Neutral Milk Hotel show after losing someone to suicide.
That song is a religious experience.
That mom video is glorious. Especially when the Republican brother tries to talk over his mom and his brother tells him to hush up.
Having been at family dinners where everyone amateurly disagrees on things, I can only imagine the hell it becomes when the family disagrees professionally. That mother is a saint.
Also, Happy Hannukah to my fellow Toasties who are celebrating! May your latkes be crisp and your donuts be jelly.
I absolutely loved it when the one guy dropped his head into his hands and was like “Oh god, it’s mom…” Such a moment of truth.
Oh man, I do not understand the tiny house craze. I nearly killed my husband when we were living in a 2-bedroom apartment, because I desperately need a room that is just mine to escape to. And it needs to be it’s own thing, not doubling as a kitchen or bedroom or entertaining space or whatever. Just my own little room.
When MrChouffe and I met, I was living in a tiny–like 400 sq ft–one-bedroom apartment. It was summer and the apartment had a deck, which expanded the living space by about half, and he moved in, and everything was groovy until the weather became too cold to use the deck and at that point I broke my lease because we were just on top of each other constantly and with the cat it was just too damn much. The living room couldn’t even fit a loveseat–we both sat on the papasan thingy at the same time and developed back problems.
Our first apartment was about 450 and it would have been okay if the space had been better used, but the place had a HUGE L-shaped kitchen and a tiny bedroom and living room and practically no storage space. If I could have magically chopped off half the kitchen and re-allocated the square footage to the other rooms it would have been much more livable.
Yeah, the 400 sq ft, 1 bedroom apartment was fine when it was just me and my cat. But another person makes it crowded real quick
Yeeeeep. My partner and I live in 425 sq. ft. right now (we’ve been in the place for two years) and I think the crowding of our stuff can definitely contribute to my anxiety. Hopefully we’ve found a new place though – fingers crossed!
The gentleman caller and I have said we are not moving in together even if he does relocate so we’re not 300 miles from each other – at least until we can afford a house big enough that we can have our own space.
I live in a one-bedroom flat and I would LOVE to have more space.
Right? I lived in a studio with my husband for three months. That was THREE MONTHS TOO LONG.
My husband and I checked out a whole lot of apartments before we found one to move into this summer. The single most important criterion was whether it would allow us to potter contentedly in separate rooms or not. The one we moved into has a bedroom baaaaaarely large enough to fit our bed into (but what more do you need, right?), but a separate living room (a/k/a sorryc’s yarn lair) and office space (a/k/a mr. sc’s place for pretending to blow things up in space).
it is bliss.
“potter contentedly”
that phrase is like a warm blanket
Pottering is an important part of my lifestyle, as are warm blankets.
My mom says the reason she and my father have been married for 30+ years is that they’ve always had separate rooms to watch TV in.
Roxane’s take on it was really surprising to me, is that how it’s presented on TV? Because all the websites I’ve looked at seem to sell it as “normal people can’t afford what passes for a normal house now, but here’s another option if you want to put the work in.” More of a chance to finally own something for those shut out of the housing market than some kind of twee “simple life” posturing.
I can see it being an option for some people, but it really is a whole lifestyle choice. Not just the isolation factor that seems to get played up (which some people prefer), but it would be hard to have kids or even certain pets in such a small space. And there’s the whole time vs money thing, which is a different balance for everyone depending on their situation.
Mostly I was trying to say that it super isn’t an option for me, and yeah the moral superiority thing that tends to come with it heightens my knee-jerk hate reaction. I do know one person for whom it works very, very well. Granted, he and I also disagree on a lot of other things, so there’s that baggage too.
That makes sense, and I see that I also missed the link to the NYT piece Roxane was referring to which also explains a lot. I can’t think of a time when the NYT profiled someone’s lifestyle that didn’t induce rage, so…
I think it’d be harder to have kids, but certainly not impossible. A friend of mine, his partner, and their three kids used to live in a old sailboat, which is basically a tiny house, because they couldn’t afford Vancouver housing prices. But, like you said, they had lots of energy and a fair amount of time, but fairly little money so it made sense for them.
Also some of the first tiny houses were called Katrina Cottages and were meant to be semi-temporary housing alternatives to trailers. Then it became a lifestyle choice and people want to put a tiny house on a giant plot of land instead and now it’s a NY Times lifestyle piece.
I’m pretty sure the current tiny house trend goes back at least to the house that the Tumbleweed dude built in 1999. And that’s ignoring tiny houses attributable to earlier trends, like this one designed in the 60s.
The Katrina Cottages definitely were related to the whole tiny house thing, but they didn’t kick it off.
Tiny houses and the whole minimalist lifestyle make me so anxious and claustrophobic. I like my stuff, and I like being able to stretch out. I don’t need a TON of space, but having more than one place to lay down and having books at hand and pictures on the walls and knickknacks to cheer the place up is so important to me.
(Also, that woman owns two pairs of earrings and two necklaces? I’m WEARING more than that right now.)
See, and it’s also partly the extreme minimalization of things like wardrobe, cooking appliances, etc. that I don’t get. If you’re going to be putting a cute little jewelry box on your one shelf or under your bed or whatever, the volume of the box doesn’t change whether you put 2 necklaces and 2 earrings in it, or 5 necklaces, 3 bracelets, and 8 pairs of earrings as well as a couple rings. I can fit that much jewelry in the little pouch I use for traveling. Same issue: if you’re going to have a drawer for silverware and cooking appliances, why only stock it with 2 spoons, a chopping knife, a spatula and a ladle and call it a day? Why can’t you have a slotted spoon and a paring knife and a potato peeler and a bigass butcher’s knife lying flat at the bottom of the drawer and and and…
There’s minimalism, and then there’s reinventing the wheel with a crappy little fork every time you try to make mashed potatoes. Potato mashers serve a useful function, dangit, and yes, you CAN find room for them in your little drawers.
I can see the appeal. A friend of mine lived in a 100 sq ft shed for a while to save money and she loved it and it looked so cozy, and I knew another couple who lived in a converted tugboat that basically was a tiny house, but I know that I am completely unsuited for it. I think you have to be hyper organized, which I am not and I need my private space. And my boyfriend could never ever do it, he has piles and piles of stuff like a poker table he hasn’t used for years and an unopened horseshoe game set that he keeps because he likes horseshoes even though our yard isn’t big enough to play it.
Yeah, I also totally get the appeal. For the past 10 years I’ve been pretty nomadic, and owning less things just makes everything less complicated. However, Mr. Floridagal is the son of hoarders and is trying to decide if he’s a hoarded-in-waiting, SO. Then there’s pets: we have 2 free range bunnies and yeah, they require things: water/food containers, supply of pet food, etc.
Our bookkeeper at work lives in a tiny house she built herself, with minimal amenities. She also lived in a yurt for a year, though, so there’s that.
(four pieces in all: two necklaces and two pairs of earrings)
Ahem, I believe that brings the tally to six pieces, Ms. Williams. Look, if you’re going to “keep a tally” of your “305” “things” that you own and make that a distinct part of your personal identity, and give interviews and go to conferences about it, then I am going to go right ahead and be a petty pedant about it.
I came down here to be petty about the exact same thing. If two earrings are one belonging, how can I trust anything else you say?
I bet she also counts all her cutlery as one belonging because it’s a set.
I bet she uses a friend’s cutlery and then doesn’t have to count it at all.
Like Thoreau.
Actually, based on the article that’s probably true. She lives in a friend’s backyard and uses their bathroom and kitchen.
:O
That is so cheating i’m so glad i didn’t go read the article before the comments because i’m not wasting my time on it now dear lord.
Or that conspicuous mention of “a mattress and quilt” but no other bedding.
I bet she’s not counting the fitted sheet that goes over her mattress, or the mattress protector if she uses one, or the topsheet if she doesn’t sleep directly under her quilt, or the pillow or the pillowcase or the extra pillowcase I’m SURE she has for laundry day.
Two necklaces and two pairs of earrings is in no way enough.
But also, yes, I too find myself really …. squicked out by the whole minimalist movement. It really is something that only the very, very privileged can do.
It reminds me of in Thud, where Vimes or someone notes that the simple life of the high-up dwarfs underground is only possible because of the hard work and complicated lives of the less important dwarfs.
The entire tiny house thing (who else watched Tiny on Netflix and then turned it off in a rage halfway through) seems to be dominated by upper-middle-class white people who are so lucky as to be able to pick up and live in a tiny house somewhere–they’re not encumbered by family concerns, they own “land” somewhere with a functioning vehicle to get them places, they live in someone’s yard and use their stove/oven/shower (hint: if your home is not big enough to support a normal function it’s probably not big enough), they’re independently wealthy or work from home or otherwise don’t have a kind of job where they’re not able to wear the same three outfits on and off every day, etc. etc.
And it’s always couched in this “Oh, I traveled the world and I saw how many people live in micro-dwellings and it made me reconsider my life, etc., we need to break away from our Western ethos of gathering too much stuff!” Well, sure, having Too Much Stuff can be a problem. Having too much house can be a problem. It can be easy to get overextended and underwater, etc. But like, at the same time….I like having books. I like having jewelry. I like having space for a queen-sized bed and I like not living on top of my husband. I like having enough space in my kitchen where I’m not knocking stuff over, and I like that my cats can exhaust themselves running around without running over ME. Those are totally valid things to like and enjoy, and I think there’s way too much focused on “Live minimally!” when living minimally can, in many circumstances, kind of suck. A family might “live minimally” with their six kids in a one-bedroom apartment because that’s all they can afford, or a family might live with eight children in one room because that’s all they have, and it’s sure living minimally, but it ain’t this “tiny house ethos” shit.
This. And can we add the “Why not give LOVE YEAR ROUND instead of MATERIALISTIC GIFTS at Christmas?” people to this shitlist? Sure, Christmas gets out of control with the materialism. That doesn’t mean giving nice gifts to people you love to celebrate a special holiday together is a bad thing.
Yeah, it’s the whole “I don’t need a DAY to show people I love them!” thing again- ok, we’ve established that the day is entirely arbitrary, that has no bearing on the tradition that exchanging loving gifts is a pleasant bonding experience, and lbr the people saying it don’t actually give gifts out of the blue at random points throughout the year.
I’m knitting my SIL a stocking that matches the ones Grandma made for the rest of the grandkids. I think that counts as both a material gift and love.
There are very few examples of people who have lived in this particular way for a very long time because it can suck like a lot. On the rare occasion that a blog or other platform talks to people that have lived in a tiny situation for any amount of time (over a winter, usually), we find out that it does suck and isn’t all that sustainable especially if that tiny space is housing more than one person. The tiny house ethos has the same shitty privilege as the “fuck it, I’ll go live in the wilderness by myself” or the “fuck working, I’ll just go travel the world” ethos and no one in those worlds talks about it.
I mean, there’s a reason we put people in tiny rooms with very little stuff as *punishment.*
Also I wonder how people in other countries living in “micro-dwellings” feel about them, and how they would feel about having a bit more space.
Ugh, the whole thing is so soaked in privilege and the proponents of this crap think they’re being so meaningful and deep. It’s like listening to a 13 year old’s poetry about how they’re the only one who has ever had their heart broken.
Yeah, this whole lauding of a very extreme response to “we felt like we had too much stuff.” Gotta go all out in your own! unique! way! rather than just giving some of your books to the library and kitchen stuff to your friends.* Same with the “quit your job to follow your dream!” stuff. Like…I don’t think most people have those kinds of dreams. It’s really okay to work on projects in your garage on weekends or save up for a vacation once in a while.
*side question, half snarky, half genuine: do any of these tiny house stories address how people gave/threw away stuff? Like, who enjoyed the windfall or had to deal with the trash heap?
Protip: Your lifestyle is not “sustainable” if it’s not sustainable over the entire life cycle. Betcha your tiny house doesn’t work for toddlers and grandmas.
Is that really such a problem if your lifestyle doesn’t include toddlers and grandmas though? There are elements of my and my husband’s lifestyle which wouldn’t be suitable for many couples with children, but since we don’t have or intend to have children, it all works out perfectly well for us.
I think what bibliophibian is saying is that sure if this is a lifestyle that works for you, fine, but don’t go claiming that it’s the solution for society… Also I’m on the side of “it’s not truly sustainable if when you die nobody else can use it.”
Indeed.
Surely when this woman dies there will be another minimalist hippie just waiting to swoop in on the tiny house. I imagine they’re like hermit crabs in that way.
Hermit crab minimalist hippies! I sure wish Futurama was still on the air….
Yeah. On one level, I get wanting to shuck off as many household chores as possible for your remaining years, especially when you think you may not have much time left on the earth — but, on the other hand, I question your bragging rights to your perfectly contained and “self-sufficient” 84-sq-ft home when you have to depend on the NEIGHBORS to CLEAN YOURSELF.
Seriously, that’s every day (or hopefully no less frequent than every other day) she’s ducking inside their house to use their shower. Maybe that would have been worth adding on another twenty feet or so when she was first designing this thing.
The direct dependence on others for things like showering… that really gets under my skin. I live in a pretty small apartment with two other people, so we store the vacuum cleaner in a corner (we have no closets). Would my life/residence be more beautiful and minimalist if I did not own the vacuum? Yes, and I’d also have to hire someone to get grit and crumbs and pine needles out of the carpet, which I can’t afford. So.
Exactly. Also, the other point someone made about family, and the tradition in some cultures (including in America) for even a three-generation family to live together. If someone loses his job or gets sick, you can’t offer them a bed/couch/any real space at all for any length of time. Congrats on stripping your space down to the things that are your own personal bare necessities and won’t let you help any of your loved ones.
I live in a tiny studio apartment and this is the worst part of it. I can never host or offer what I have to other people. I mean, I’ve had good friends who needed a place to crash sleep *in my bed* with me, which is cool, but I can’t host my parents, and I can’t even host parties, because there is nowhere to sit but the bed, and at some point in adulthood that gets weird.
Yes, tiny personal space works best in conjunction with functioning public and community spaces. Even a front porch can be a nice place to have parties, but apartment buildings full of isolated little studio apts don’t have those.
Hear, hear. For all that I loved my tiny studio, the only reason it worked for me was because I was overseas and with very few friends to invite over. As it is now, I live in a shared 2-bedroom that I think is too small to host people in and can’t wait to move to a larger place big enough for a couch I can sleep on.
I think it’s the “self-sufficiency” narrative that bothers me most, because it is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what’s actually going on in most of these situations — like, this could be a really good story about interdependence and communal living! “My friends own this land, and they invited me and some other friends and family to live on it with them, and we all have our own small private cabins but we share kitchens, bathrooms, and the outdoor space.” That’s awesome! But it sure isn’t self-sufficiency! (And, related to what you said downthread, it depends on at least one person living a very non-minimalist life, so that they have the space to offer to their “minimalist”-living friends.)
Exactly! It’s one thing to say that living a minimalist life is awesome, and it’s another to say that but still rely on non-minimalist friends for necessities. it’s why the whole co-housing thing is really neat. You still have relatively small homes, but there’s also a large common space for the entire community to use and maintain so you can keep up your personally-small living.
Now, if we could just get back to a community bathhouse model…
In my experience this is manifesting itself in cities as micro-apartments and blank white studios. The (usually) smug folks that inhabit them are so proud of only owning one $2000 Barcelona chair it grosses me out. I’ve heard those “minimalists” say that if they crave more space they just go on vacation somewhere – (1) whoa, privilege (2) air travel is so much more environmentally destructive than owning a ton of clothes or whatever they think poor people do wrong.
I used to have a job where I was living out of Best Westerns in Random City, USA like 200 days a year, and for the first few months I got really suckered by the idea that a good traveler packs light. So I would take a carry-on with like four shirts and two pants and some tiny shampoo and spend the next week absolutely miserable. I ended up buying the giant suitcase to end all suitcases and traveled with multiple bottles of nail polish and piles of scarves and way more underwear than I ever needed. You know what? It felt great. The abstract notions of ingenuity and self-sufficiency were not in any way enriching my life, but I did get a lot of enjoyment from the nail polish.
I used to travel a TON for work, and one of the things that made it bearable was bringing my own coffee, grinder, and occasionally coffee maker with me. Silly and way more stuff to wrangle? Sure. But it made all those weeks away from home just a little easier.
yeahhh, packing light is great and all, until you spill hot chocolate on your ONE pair of jeans and you still have four days of adventuring out in public ahead of you. Cut to me scrubbing the jeans with a free toothbrush (thank you, sensible Spanish hotel) and wedging the wet crotch part of the pants on the outside part of an open 15th floor window. Minimalism has its merits, but so does redundancy.
Haven’t seen Tiny House, but I guess I just don’t see how living in a small space is something that only the financially privileged can do in the US. I’ve known three people who either live in tiny houses or want to, and none of them are wealthy, or selling large houses to do it. It’s simply the most feasible form of home ownership. They can’t afford a two bedroom home anywhere. They can maybe someday save up enough to buy some undeveloped land.
Yes, agreed. Most of the narratives I’m familiar with (from blogs and design media) are about the desire to reduce overall costs of living and minimize or prevent debt loads.
I just gave ALL THE UPVOTES in this thread.
Edit because I was having a rough day. Ugh.
I found a white noise generator that can produce the sound of a cat purring! It’s made my cubicle 200% cozier.
I love this!
Thank you forever and ever!
mynoise.net is THE BEST for anxious/distracted/irritated people in need of soothing (such as myself). I’m listening to a mix of Cave Water and Orchestron right now!
bless you
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
Holy shit this is so much better than the (already excellent) one I use now. Now to see if it makes my cat freak out.
Although my cat also snores, so that’s even better.
I am here for Desus Nice aka Young Chipotle.
Oh wow, I have always been irritated by the Tiny House people too and never given thought to why and THAT IS IT. It’s totally related to this other thing I’ve been thinking about lately, which is the pervasive idea that people are Bad for wanting to enjoy their lives, that things like nice coffee and yoga and television are silly bourgeois desires and the only way to be a Good Person is to give everything up. It’s part of how capitalism pits us against each other instead of the actual people committing misdeeds– it gives us a false choice between ethical consumption and a pleasant life. And stressed and guilty people who feel bad all the time about the things they enjoy are not going to be people with enough energy to fight oppression.
Yes, definitely. And it’s … a lot of those same people who are like “you are silly and bourgeois for enjoying this thing” are the same ones who turn around and are like “but if you don’t brew your ethically-sourced organic coffee in this $8,000 machine, you are not getting the most out of it and probably you have bad taste you cretin.”
Yeah I think about this a lot too! It also connects to how we hate on other people for the things they like, especially girls. The whole “basic bitches” thing, the way boy bands get made fun of, etc. If girls like it, then it must be terrible, right!!??
There are lots of narratives out there about the tiny house thing, and I totally get how it can be irritating. But for some people, a smaller and cheaper life means they don’t have to work so hard at jobs they hate and they enjoy THAT more than they enjoy a big house. And that seems pretty legit. Plus if you’re not working 60 hours a week to pay your huge mortgage and buy lots of stuff, you probably are going to have more energy for fighting oppression.
Hating on these people because they make you feel judged is all just part of the cycle. Have your yoga and your nice coffee if you want it! But I don’t think we should hate on people who have chosen, among other things, to work less both and and out of the house as their set of luxuries. It’s equally as divisive and unhelpful.
I guess I’ve just never encountered a Tiny House person who wasn’t being smug about it, oblivious to their privilege and/or coopting the experience of people living in poverty. It’s not at all the act of living in a tiny house that bothers me, or the making decisions that allow you to enjoy your life more. And as a lot of people in this thread have pointed out, Tiny Houses are not actually all that good a solution to our environmental problems, so people presenting it as if it is is always going to bother me. This has made me think about why I love so many people who are homesteaders or farmers, and it’s because they (the people I know and love, at least, I’m well aware there are plenty of smug douchebags in this category), are making choices that make them feel good personally and make them feel like they are doing some good, without presenting it as a solution that makes them better than everyone else. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are Tiny-housers that fit that description, but I have yet to encounter any of them.
I would offer myself as an example but I’m not *actually* a tiny houser, I just wish I was. And I’d probably only go down to about 500 sq ft before not being able to handle the tiny space anymore – I’m a pacer, so I need room to walk, not just sit or lie down. But it would be entirely about personal comfort with a small space for me. People who try to turn minimalism into a moral imperative are doucherugs.
Haha I’ve ONLY met smug douchey independently wealthy homesteaders and farmers, except for one farmer I know who actually makes a living at it and does not live on his farm.
I think you and I can agree that smug douchey people are not good.
Yes, as Elaine’s cab driver said on Seinfeld, “smugness is not a good quality”.
FWIW, I don’t really identify as a “tiny houser”, but I do like living in small spaces with not a lot of stuff and I dream of someday owning one of those little houses on wheels. The attraction for me is the efficient use of space, possible mobility (I move a lot, so having a stable home even if it’s in a new location is definitely appealing), having an external reason to keep my stuff-creep managed, and the simple ease of cleaning. But I understand that my decisions are completely a personal preference, and not something to be pushed on other people.
A coworker of mine lives in a tiny house she built after her divorce. She uses the money she saves (on mortgage/rent, running water, etc) to fly to Australia to visit her sexy, sexy girlfriend. She’s never talked about the environmental impact, minimalism, etc; she just enjoys living as frugally and sparsely as she can (the tiny house is an upgrade from living in a tent over the summer). And also saving money for plane fare to Australia.
And then there are project like this one:
http://occupymadisoninc.com/
A cop in a county near mine shot and killed his ex (and shot her teenage daughter) the day she was given an order of protection against him for harassment. He had already been arrested for harassing and stalking another woman. All of this is sadly unsurprising, but buried in the article was this:
“Colwyn Police Chief Bryan Hills previously told the Delaware County Daily Times that he thought the most recent stalking allegations were overblown. ‘Looking at the circumstances, I think a lot of this is bulls—,’ Hills told the newspaper in April.”
God.
I can sympathize with Williams’ “growing sense that her life was being consumed by household chores.” That’s why minimalism is appealing to me – in theory because in practice I love my belongings and want to keep them always – it would be inherently neater because there’s only so much of a mess you can make when you don’t have a lot of stuff in the first place. My husband and I are slobs and can barely keep a 700 sq foot apartment in decent condition. (Also, I grew up in small apartments, and then my parents bought a duplex which was more of the same, and now back to apartments. I’ve never lived in a house where I could go up the stairs and the upstairs was also my own living space – that blows my mind.)
But it’s really important to acknowledge that minimalism is a form of privilege. I can give away all my clothes and books because I can also afford to replace them if I decide I made a terrible mistake.
On a related note, I saw this virtual apartment tour recently and I can’t for the live of me figure it out. The place is under 200 square feet but they have 2 bedrooms, a living room and a pretty big bathroom? How does that work?
We moved to an actual, grown-up house six months ago (we have an upstairs AND an attic!) and while the cleaning is a chore, especially the cleaning of two toilets, and our house is a mess half the time, you know what’s nice? Having two toilets! Also, the fact that my brother can live with us half the time without it being a huge inconvenience! And having space for all my books! And being able to get some alone time even if I’m not actually home alone!
Basically, space = good, and being able to casually opt-out of that is definitely a form of privilege.
If you have more than one person in a house, and especially if at least one of them has IBS or the like, having two bathrooms is non-negotiable.
In our case, it’s more that the boy tends to take books with him to the loo, and occasionally the book is really interesting, and then I wake up at 2 in the morning wondering where the hell he went.
Yup. There are definitely certain things that I want, but the upside of not being able to afford them is that I don’t have to clean them or find a place to put them. Also doing handsies and kneesies on the floors, Jolie style, is a lot easier in a smaller home.
I’m calling bullshit on that virtual tour square footage — that place is at least 600 square feet. Maybe they’re doing the conversion from square meters wrong, or just don’t know how to measure, or possibly, their apartment is a TARDIS…
You’re right, they must have done the conversion wrong. Someone asked them in the comments if it’s really 200 square feet or “under 650” like the top of the post says and the apartment-dweller replied, It’s because the “approximate square footage” is a drop-down choice and the smallest they have is “under 650ft”! So I put the metric in a separate box (60 meters) and then mentioned in a text section how much it is in feet (200)… I wanted to be clear that my flat was well-under 650ft, sorry to cause confusion!
But I just googled it and 60 square meters is about 645 square feet.
You’d think someone would have caught it, though.
Hey, that 5 square feet totally qualifies as “well under,” now.
High-fiving myself for accurate square footage estimation! (but also kind of bummed that TARDIS technology doesn’t exist for houses; really could use that for some more closet space in my wee city apartment)
Yeah, that sounds like they calculated 60 square meters * 3.3 feet in a meter = ~200 “square feet” (actual unit resulting from that calculation: feet-meters or something like that). Should be 60 * 3.3 * 3.3 = ~650 actual square feet.
Yeah. 1 meter ~3.3 feet, but 1 square meter ~ 10 square feet.
This conversion got me once. Tricsky maths.
Yup. Something ain’t right there. At the beginning it says under 650 sq feet, and later under 200? Not buying it–it’s 600 at a minimum. (I tend to find Offbeat Home and Apartment Therapy the worst for “just dump all your possessions!”-type moralizing, as well.)
Same. I do like their idea to always have a fresh bouquet of flowers in the house, though. They advocate buying them from the grocery store (!) but my roommates grow roses and just a single rose every week or so in a glass jar really makes the kitchen feel nicer. Too bad it’s winter now and there’s no florescence anywhere to be had out of doors.
I love tiny houses! I lived in smaller apartments and small homes as a kid and so that’s just what I’m used to, I’m sure if I grew up in big houses I would prefer that too. I do think the cataloging of her stuff is a little odd, it seems like it would take a lot of time (I also really hate how there is a wierd moral tone to this stuff a lot of the time) but I do like the fact that living in a small place (I live in a studio apartment now) means that my apartment doesn’t look empty even though I don’t have a lot of stuff. I don’t think I could live in a tiny house though, they are usually on large plots of land and I’m so used to living in apartments I think I would get lonely.
I have this theory that living spaces are so personal that people have really strong reactions to a living space they aren’t comfortable with that leads to a lot of the strange moralizing that tiny house people do. If you are used to small spaces living somewhere bigger can feel lonely and stressful. Or maybe you can’t afford a bigger place so you try to rationalize your decision by saying it’s better. On the flip side, I’ve definitely had people who grew up in giant homes pass judgement on people who live in a small space or can’t afford a bigger space and I think it’s partly because they put themselves in that situation and know they would feel cramped and suffocated there and so it bleeds out through odd judgements. This doesn’t totally apply to the tiny house phenomenon though because I feel like part of that is an offshoot of that minimalist thing that rich people do. It was just some thoughts I had though.
Ooh I just got to the point in the article where she goes into her Aunts house to shower. That reminds me a lot of those articles about guys who go out into the woods to forage and be free from materialism and then end up sleeping on their friends couches and using their netflix. I mean, I’m sure her Aunt is cool with it but I don’t know if that counts as a tiny house, more like a guest bedroom that happens to be outside?
And you’ll get further along in the article where her aunt died, and now she depends on the neighbors’ generosity with their shower to keep clean. Isn’t it AWESOME. 🙂 So self-sufficient!
“There’s a kitchen counter with a propane one-burner, but no oven or refrigerator. There are lights, but they run on solar power. There’s a sink and a toilet, but no running water (which means composting and no shower).”
Yes totally! The commune set-up seems to benefit everyone involved very nicely, so I can see why she has no need for fresh food storage or hygiene facilities, but from the concept of tiny house living, it kind of seems like, as you said, a tiny guest room situation. Relying on other people’s materialism to fulfill your basic needs kind of undermines your own personal minimalism crusade.
I feel like I’d be more understanding of like…a tiny house compound. If there were 50 tiny houses nestled together and in the middle there was some sort of community bathroom and kitchen situation that everyone pitched in for. I wouldn’t last 5 minutes in a living set up like that but I can see how for some people it could work. But intentionally getting rid of necessities (like food storage) so that other people can provide them for you takes the eliminating stress thing too far. If anything, you would want kitchen and bathroom areas to be bigger, and then something like a living room to be smaller because you don’t store survival essentials like food and water in the living room.
Also, whenever I see tiny houses they are always in the middle of nowhere. Does the cost of paying for a car and gas to get to work (presumably somwhere an hour or two away) cancel out the savings of no mortgage?
so that other people can provide them for you
I think they call that “outsourcing, which always results in efficiencies, amirite?
Or maybe this is the new “sharing economy” I keep hearing so much about (as opposed to the old sharing economy, which involved actual sharing)?
Some co-housing places are kind of like that, I think, though the houses are generally not quite this tiny.
Yeah, if I lived in a place where we could easily buy a townhome or something, I’d be all over that. I like the feeling of other people living their lives on the other side of the walls. (I realize I can say this because none of my neighbors are learning to play the bagpipe or having loud screaming matches or something.) I also think that higher-density living is more sustainable over the long term than “I will live in my shed in the middle of nowhere…and drive half an hour to get to the grocery store!” Shared walls = less energy needed for heating and cooling. Amenities in the neighborhood = less driving for residents. I’m all there.
I definitely side-eye people who claim that their minimalist, live-in-the-woods-style homes are greener or more sustainable than city life. Maybe for you personally right now, but if more than a few thousand people tried to do it? We’d ruin the planet with carbon emissions from all of the driving around trying to get places that are 30 miles away and there would be no true wilderness anymore because people would invade all of it to build their whimsical homes and the supply network would be an enormous, inefficient nightmare.
High-density city dwelling that makes the most use of space and shared resources like transportation, energy, and hub-centered supply distribution is the way to go.
Yeah, I also like living in smaller spaces. I grew up in a standard suburban Midwestern house but have been living in small city apartments for about 10 years and am in no hurry to go back to the house situation. I don’t want to fill more space with stuff, which is probably a reaction to my mother and grandmother both being total pack rats. Also houses sort of creep me out now, with all the different rooms and empty space outside the walls…
This certainly doesn’t mean I want to build my own tiny house out of sustainable whatever and go around borrowing other people’s showers, though. And I still find the moralizing about it pretty fucking terrible!
A good friend of mine got divorced not too long ago and make the mistake of watching that tiny living documentary around the same time and got REALLY JAZZED about this whole “live in a matchbox” thing. I let him go on for a few weeks and then I was like bro, you are six foot two, you weigh 290 pounds, and you have three dogs over 50 pounds each that you like to let in the house. Basically the 800 sq foot bungalow you live in IS your version of tiny living. EMBRACE IT.
Also I have lived in a tiny house (and a tiny trailer!) due to like, poverty. I guess we were accidentally practicing minimalism by being unable to afford things, yay. Guess what, it sucked! For me, at least. You are constantly on top of the other people sharing the space (assuming you share it with other people). You absolutely cannot shit talk about your mother to your sister when the living room is basically 2 inches from your bedroom, she will hear you and she will come at you like a spider monkey. Fights over music being too loud occur constantly (Protip: ALL music is too loud when you live in a tiny house or trailer. Even if you have a Walkman, somehow??) We had one place so small with heat so shitty that we had to CLIMB OVER a lit kerosene heater to get to the hallway. The bathroom was so tiny, you had to shit with the door open. I slept in a winter coat and jeans cause I didn’t have pajamas. My mom shared a bunk bed with my youngest sister. At one point, all three of my sisters and I shared a toothbrush. MINIMALISM! I will never understand this fascinating new trend of living this way on fucking purpose, but ok. You do you, I guess.
I do live in a smallish (like 800sq foot, actually) apartment by myself because I also think some people get really obsessed with having massive square footage that they do not need and will have trouble paying to heat and cool. I’m just going to kind to hang out in the middle of the two extremes.
“I guess we were accidentally practicing minimalism by being unable to afford things, yay.”
Yupppp.
No, no, you’re not doing minimalism right unless all your 250 possessions were hand carved by Brooklyn or European artisans, made of only “natural materials,”* and cost 4-digit sums of money. Also the only acceptable color schemes are white, ivory, black, grey, and old-growth walnut.
*the obsession with the natural/toxin free stuff irks me deeply. Plastics make it possible people!
Shit. I was doing it all wrong. My carefully curated jewelry selection was all from Claire’s and the laundromat vending machine. I AM A FAIL. *rends clothing*
The colors, though. y u hate colors, minimalists???
Yeah, I get really mad at the “lifehacks” that provide all these mind-blowing tips for making cute stuff out of leftover crap, or saving $10 on your birthday cake by making it yourself, or what-the-fuck-ever. No, fuck you guys, some of us learned to do that by being poor and having no other way to get nice things, go away and come back when you’ve actually earned your thrift and creativity.
And 800 sf is pretty small, really.
This post is the Link Roundup equivalent of this .gif:
AND I LOVE IT. To hell with tiny houses. To hell with hot takes. To hell with space tourism in particular, how about we stop filling the oceans with garbage and then, MAYBE we can talk about visiting space.
You’re looking at it the wrong way! Once we start filling the merciless vacuum of space with our garbage, we can finally stop dumping it into the oceans.
You’re right! Why aren’t we just building a new planet out of garbage? A trash planet where we can put all our trash!
If we dump all our trash into the sun, we can hasten the coming solar apocalypse.
As with so many things in life, this is already a Futurama episode. (It’s a good one. It’s got the Smelloscope!)
Decluttering feels amazing. You can immediately access everything you want without having to root through things and inadvertantly going through a memory black hole because all of your belongings are packed together and the sweater you want to wear today is next to your favourite sweaters from 2007.
I dont even think it is wasteful as that stuff was probably used and if not then donating it to charity means that someone else can have it and at a low cost so it is good all round.
I feel exactly the same about tiny houses. I actually sort of like them as a thought experiment (HOW FIT), especially since I’ve always liked looking at house plans, but they are insufferable ESPECIALLY when it’s one of those teeny weeny little cabins and it’s out in the middle of nowhere. The tiny apartments, at least, make some kind of sense.
The tiny apartments are my /favorite/. The amazing engineering and design that goes into them! But oh man oh man does it make the whole “tiny living is for the stupidly rich” thing a necessity. Someone has to pay for the designers and the builders and all of that, after all.
I know, right?? I would really, really enjoy designing one. But, that would depend on some things: first, having the spare time and money to draw up plans, money for materials, somewhere to put it….all luxuries I don’t have right now. Maybe someday.
I have a feeling that people who love tiny houses didn’t grow up with siblings. I grew up in a small townhouse with a brother & sister. Being alone was the most glorious luxury. It’s nice to have space to take up. And having stuff doesn’t necessarily equate with having space. Although space helps.
Nah. I grew up an only child and I hate ’em, too. Because I DO know how glorious it is to be alone and have space and would not give that up without a big-ass fight. This is especially true since, I spent two years in a dorm. It was not ah-maz-ing, y’know? Moved into a big old apartment with a roommate as soon as the college allowed. Tiny houses? I am wise enough to know that I’m too old for that shit.
My mom and aunt (2nd and 4th of 7) *still* have the “Yay! I opened this one door in my childhood home and there were all these extra rooms behind it!” dreams that spring from feeling overcrowded.
ALSO FUCK SPACE TOURISM. Space is cool but I might not even go if the Earth was dying. Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars convinced me that I would spend an entire trip to space barfing.
See also: space toilets.
UGH the unacknowledged privilege of the tiny house/decluttering movement. THANK YOU ROXANE! I will read all the words anyone wants to write on this subject. I can’t stand these people.
This is how class works in America:
Living in a trailer is shameful; building a tiny house! out of reclaimed whatsits! is praiseworthy and heroic
Not having a lot of stuff is shameful; accumulating cheap stuff is shameful; spending your time “curating” your possessions so you have just one pair of pants but they cost $400 is praiseworthy and interesting and worthy of profiles in lifestyle publications
And just for funsies–stripping is shameful; burlesque is empowering
So true – and I don’t think it’s just the US, either.
Also: wearing hand-me downs: shameful; buying fancy clothes: decadent; “vintage”-shopping: so sophisticated.
Unless they’re your mom’s hand-me-downs, in which case they are vintage and therefore sophisticated.
Obligatory:
edit: aaaah sorry this image is so huge I didn’t know it would be that big and I don’t know how to fix it
You should be able to put width=”50%” height=”50%” or whatever in the img tag I think? But maybe that gets eaten up by the comment provider thingy…
This is a terrific comment and I regret that I have only one upvote for it.
Also, explainer. When did that become a real word? I think I missed it and, as a result, refuse to believe it is a real word.
I think it started as a journalism term describing a particular type of article.
Tragically, “explainer” was once my job title. (Everyone who has ever looked at my resume has been like, wtf? change this immediately)
I think you need to…explain that.
Yeah, something about that just rubs me the wrong way? Like I totally get that if you found out you only have maybe a few years left to live and you’re scared about leaving a mortgage behind or you don’t have the energy to clean it can lead to some…extreme decisions. Which is fine! And I figured maybe the Aunt was humoring her or they were just very close. But now that she’s moved onto the neighbors like…I just have a hard time not seeing that as kind of rude of her, especially since this is presumably a daily thing. It may have been easier to just rent a home that happens to be small (rather than a tiny house) so that the mortgage is low (or an apartment if she’s worried about stuff like lawn upkeep) but then have your own toilet and shower. Especially the part about how you have to build your own tiny home, that seems to defeat the purpose of saving time and energy.
Exactly! She DESIGNED AND BUILT the place NOT TO HAVE A SHOWER, with the expectation that she can just use other people’s. That’s just RUDE.
Now I’m picturing an article like this singing the praises of someone moving to a standard one-bedroom apartment. “She’s outfitted her new sleeping space in true minimalist style with just a full-size bed, a particleboard dresser, and a rug for those cold mornings. ‘I just find it so much more fulfilling!’ she says of her morning routine, in which she walks across just seven feet of beige carpet to the conveniently located bathroom under super-efficient CFL lighting. Freed from the constant obligations of upkeep and maintenance, she embraces her new lifestyle of ‘that stuff is the landlord’s responsibility.'”
My mind is boggling at this tiny house thing. How is your stuff still not running your life if you’re constantly counting and scheming about it like a reverse-Scrooge McDuck? If you’re “insulted” that your brother brings his backpack with him when he visits? Like, is he staying the night? Where is he supposed to put his toothbrush and change of underwear?
A true minimalist would just wash out their underwear in the sink and borrow their host’s toothbrush.
A true minimalist wouldn’t need a toothbrush because they would only eat very small amounts of organic produce they grew themselves, and then use a single twig as a toothpick.
A true minimalist wouldn’t need to eat because they recognized the inherent environmental impact involved in creating, cooking, and excreting food. Now they exist on a higher plane of understanding and no longer need to eat and therefore never need to brush their teeth.
I absolutely love you guys, this is hands-down the best comment section on the interwebs.
You joke, but…
He told Colors magazine in 2003 that he periodically breaks his fasting with a cheeseburger and a cola, explaining that when he’s surrounded by junk culture and junk food, consuming them adds balance
Genius.
a true minimalist would weave their undergarments from abandoned spider webs each morning
A true minimalist would just go naked. And not eat.
A true minimalist probably wouldn’t get invited to stay over very often.
Whenever I see those tiny houses I think, “But where would all my books go?” Can’t live without all my books.
I surprised one of my friends a while back when she opened a drawer in my dresser and SURPRISE! Every drawer in my dresser is full of books with their spines up, because I have no space for a bookshelf. My clothes all live in the closet.
I will make a tiny house out of my books. Granted, it will be built in my living room. But I will do this! There will be popcorn and cocoa and a quilt, too.
My heart is so happy about the Ferguson activists getting married (even though I’m not heavy into marriage equality.) http://www.buzzfeed.com/skarlan/two-women-who-met…
Is it terrible that my first thought was “Good god it’s too soon, you just met!” Though it is sweet and all, too.
If it’s terrible, I’m terrible too. “Ahhh! You just met!” Although they’re both incredibly beautiful and it seems so sweet so perhaps I need to step back on that.
I was just thinking, a lot of people got married real fast during WWII (and during the Voldemort times in Harry Potter, equally important) because it felt like the world was ending and it was a time to declare and celebrate love real fast. I can imagine it might feel a lot like that when you live in Ferguson right now. So maybe we both should chill on the mom-advice.
during the Voldemort times
I might rush into things during Voldemort times as well.
I’ve known people in my life who’ve rushed into things and I may privately judge them a bit based on their actual circumstances, but I try to mitigate it and definitely restrict myself from giving unsolicited advice. And for people I’ve never met, I ain’t gonna judge.
Yeah, I have those reactions too but I always try to temper them. Because I also have them about people marrying the first person they ever date, but my mom and dad started dating when she was 14 and he was 17 and they are still together and can’t bear to spend more than 2 days apart, so it can happen.
True. I guess to me it’s always like “OK cool I’m so glad you’re gonna be together forever! But if you’re gonna be together forever, why exactly do you have to get MARRIED right now? What exactly is the rush?”
Although, that said, I know a lot of people got married real quick during WWII because it felt like the world was ending, and for people living in Ferguson right now things might feel real similar to that.
::nods:: My partner and I met when we were 18 in our second month in college. We’re still together now (we are now in our uhhh mid to late 30s), but have only been married for 2 years 🙂
I’m going to start murmuring “Congratulations, though I’m not heavy into marriage equality” whenever straight people get married.
I love that! Though I may be misreading it – perhaps you live in a live where it same-sex marriage still isn’t legal? Part of my lack of investment in marriage equality movements is that it’s so often from this wealthy white cis place where marriage is the end-all-be-all and there’s a lack of intersectionality. But another part, I have to admit, is that I live in a place where it’s been legal for over a decade so I have the privilege of focusing my attention in other areas.
The women the article is actually about are young black women, who are getting married in Missouri, where same sex marriage has been legal for a hot second in certain parts of the state, and is going through the appeals process in others (I am not a lawyer).
Right, so that is some context for people whose instinct is to judge for the swiftness – when you’ve been legally restricted from doing something that you should be able to do, you’re pretty eager once you’re finally allowed. It’s such a sweet story!
Yeah, that was a weird and unnecessary aside.
And here we have Christians failing to understand the first thing they are being asked to do:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/12/…
I honestly despair of my call sometimes. What can I do in the face of this? I often contemplate leaving the church, but then who will speak against this shit?
I know the feeling all too well. Don’t give up.
There are more of us out there like you, more than it seems.
Thank you.
I guess remind yourself that it’s not as though we are worse than all the people who have come before us? We’re still terrible, but we may become better with guidance and grace.
xo
Another Disappointed Christian
I love reading about tiny houses, in spite of the unexaminedly privileged mindset of many of the people who build them, for two reasons:
1. I cannot get rid of junk I thought I wanted when I was a teenager and admire people who can.
2. Building the smallest, most efficient, yet still comfortable and livable house possible is/was my favorite personal challenge when playing The Sims and it tickles me to see people doing it in real life.
The key word is “livable”! It’s cool that the lady profiled in the NYT has a life that works for her and the friends whose land she lives on, but if she’s using their oven and their shower(?!) then they’re not her neighbors; they’re her landlords. That said, I do love the exterior photos of the house because it totally looks like something I would build in The Sims, especially from the angles at which the solar panel looks like an easel.
This was totally how I played the sims! Once the people are actually IN the house it’s boring.
Making my Sims little cottages was my favourite thing! I also enjoy seeing how people have made very small spaces work for them, like when you visit Ikea and they have fake apartments of differing sizes to show how to make the most of the space; I love walking around those!
Muji in Japan also makes pre-fab houses and seeing how they make them efficient in a very small city space is really interesting!
Last link, and apologies for linking to AT, because I think they are quite key in the privileged ‘minimalisation’ movement, but this flat is crazy in its efficient use of space: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/silvanas-innovati…
Wooooow, I love that flip-top kitchen setup! And that you don’t have to climb a ladder to get to the bed! That’s such a sticking point for me, that so many have the loft beds with ladders or footholds only. That and the ubiquitous knotty pine interiors. (I love this one largely because it has neither: http://minimhomes.com/ )
I always visit the model apartments when I go to Ikea and fantasize about how I’d modify them to fit my style and current belongings. Privileged or not, normalizing the concept of living in smaller spaces at all income levels is important in a world that is rapidly becoming too small to contain all of us, especially as it also becomes more acceptable to stay single or not have children.
I would be falling off that platform/dresser thing on a regular basis. (I’m a faller.)
For those interested, the Washington City Paper has an article about the implosion of a tiny house community in the Stronghold neighborhood of DC.
It’s DC so is living in a tiny space really that novel? Those people have YARDS!
Also one of them is worried that it’s turning into “a Jerry Springer show in a trailer park.” Dude you literally live in a trailer and you are clearly an exhibitionist about your lifestyle. Just because you have money…
Spite houses, on the other hand, are the best thing EVER.
Cosigned.
Did you also read that Cracked article today? Because that was the first I’d heard of a spite house and it was GREAT.
No but I’m about to go find it, thanks!
Thank you for saying that about the tiny house movement thingy. It needed to be said. I viscerally abhor the whole concept. Tiny privilege indeed.
UGH YES. I like tiny houses, because they are miniature and I love all things small-in-scale (I can’t help it). And I’ll admit, I often say that I am a minimalist at heart, but that is because I don’t like EXTRA stuff. I don’t want 3 crock pots or a closet full of clothes I never wear, so I pare down and organize and clean. But I enjoy the ever living heck out of the stuff I do have. And I don’t think that’s bad at all!! We are all allowed to spoil ourselves on things if we want to, and we are all allowed to to have a pleasant life, regardless of how much or how little stuff we have. It’s all such a bullshit argument and UGH. Sorry.
ETA – this was in response to paddlepickle above…
Last night my mom texted me about Tiny House Hunters on “HDTV” as she calls it. I didn’t know what she was talking about so I asked her to clarify whether it was House Hunters for little houses or little people. Her response was “tiny houses with weird hippy weird people”.
I hadn’t heard of this news in the wake of the Montco shootings, but What the Actual FUCK.
Edit: this was a response to Faintly_Macabre
5/5 teaching load? Wow. This is why I support faculty unions. It’s also why I’m seriously considering, as I submit yet another round of job applications, whether a career in academia is actually a good idea.
Reading this comment on the tiny house story made me want to LOL in a big way:
“I’m typing away on my 38 foot trawler docked in a marina not too far from Ms. Williams’s little house. Even though I have a 2558 SF “land-based” dwelling, I’m never happier than when aboard my vessel where every inch matters, what’s brought on board is important, and all the frills we think we need matter not at all. Simplify your life and you’ll be happier.”
Yes, just buy a trawler to go with your 2k sq. ft. house and you’ll be happy! That’s all it takes! IT’S SO EASY TO HAVE A TON OF MONEY!!
my grandmother’s favorite phrase was “richer or poorer it’s good to have money.”
dear “tiny house” people:
the word you’re looking for is “sustainable apartment.”
i s2g, i live in NYC and the size of these tiny houses is about the same as an apartment, and then i become not at all impressed with your ability to ‘downsize.’ that’s just called life for a lot of us. and we don’t get the option to install compost potties.
I love the Toast, obviously, and I think Nick has done a good job making this site work, but I was not impressed with his response to concerns from writers about the copyright issues with submitting to the Toast. http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/12/17/dear-the-to…
Oof, yeah, that is Not Good – I don’t know anything about rights/contracts/this business in general but even I can tell that’s shady. It seems like it would be simple enough to adopt Scalzi’s solution: “The good news here is that this is a relatively simple fix. The Toast and The Butter can easily change the language of their contract to avoid attempting to claim copyright and moral rights (the latter of which, as I understand it, it may not actually even be possible for them to take in some jurisdictions), and instead work out a license commensurate to what $50 is actually worth, which (in my not entirely uninformed opinion, having been on online editor) would be first publication, a window of exclusivity and the right to non-exclusive archiving on their site. They could also reserve non-exclusive print rights (or compilations, etc) contingent on additional payment. That seems reasonable to me.” I really hope Nick, Nicole, Mallory and Roxane give this some serious consideration and adopt a solution that is fairer to the contributors.
Oof.
I hope they address this officially. That was a very unprofessional tweet.
That is fucked up.
Seriously. WTF. The whole thing seems totally out of character for the site. I really hope they clarify asap.
That’ll teach me to read the fine print though, I’ll say that.
This is a major bummer. Would definitely like to see this addressed directly and officially.
Quite disappointed in this and Nick’s reaction.
Soooo late to the party but I totally second your thoughts; really, really disappointed.
Nick has a really good response here, http://community.scratchmag.net/copyright-clauses… at the bottom. It gets at why this was done and how in effect it wasn’t as bad as it looks (Matt and Jaya’s book being a good example of how they don’t screw writers over with the copyright). Also, a real apology about the tweets.
Would we call that a real apology? The “kittens” thing was really condescending.
I am still less than impressed.
Talk back to a man when he’s tired, and you’ll find out how he really feels. This will usually be disappointing.
I would call that apology… tepid.
I agree with the principle of the tiny house movement, but the privilege is ridiculous and unacknowledged. People who can pay $30k cash to live without a house payment are already rich. If your house doesn’t meet all the functions of life then it’s not a house. It’s a folly. As others have mentioned, trailers are tiny houses, but they’re not cute, so unacceptable. On the other hand, I’ve known couples (plural) who moved out of a 3 bedroom, 2 bath 1800 sq ft house because they were expecting their FIRST baby and needed the extra space. Like so much else in life moderation in acquiring stuff is to be admired, the extremes are absurd.
their future professions, etc
WHY SHOULD ANYONE GIVE A GOOD GODDAMN ABOUT HOW THIS HURTS THEIR FUTURE PROFESSIONS. THEY USED THEIR OWN WORDS TO SAY HURTFUL, NASTY, SEXIST THINGS AND THEY SHOULD HAVE TO PAY THE PRICE FOR THAT.
AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.
And the funniest part of an article like that is that her life would be way easier and less stressful if she just moved into a regular one bedroom with an affordable rent. She wouldn’t have to shower at her neighbors, she wouldn’t have to build her own home, she could have food and maybe a little pantry with canned things…I feel like tiny houses are such a project that you need to make them your whole life which doesn’t make sense for someone who wants a lot of freedom.
Yup. Maybe I’m not sufficiently ~mindful~ but I kinda enjoy not having to think about my apartment very much.
#notalltinyhousers but whatever hate away
Thank you, I needed to see this.
You’re welcome. Anytime.
YES, thank you.
I mean, 100x on the unacknowledged privilege thing, but jeeze
The other thing is that Tiny Houses are only really sustainable for 1 person each, 2 if they have no boundaries at all. There’s no room to raise a family in there without making everyone’s life into a total shitbath. At best, the net benefit of this housing movement will be to move a bunch of rich weirdos out of the city and maybe(?) cause a slight drop in housing prices
I don’t know, I think all this tiny house hate is a bit unfair, and that there are a couple of other things going on here. For one, we’re conflating hate/irritation of a certain type of (admittedly annoying) person with hate of the idea.
I think the tiny house thing takes that idea to an extreme, but I don’t get why we’d hate someone for trying to make it work. I feel like a lot of these comments are coming from people who take this as a personal judgement of how they are living and are reacting defensively. As someone else so astutely pointed out, living spaces are a very personal thing.
It’s not that I don’t think the criticisms about race and class privilege aren’t valid, I do. I’m usually the one making that critique. But just because some of these people can be annoying doesn’t make them wrong. The bottom line is, our way of living is not sustainable. The things we embraced in the 90s, mini mansions, giant SUVs, endless urban sprawl are bad for the planet. We should be striving to find ways to consume less and make a smaller footprint.
I know I’m kind of rambling, but I’m just kind a disappointed in this discussion (or lack there of).
I don’t think anyone disagrees what we should be looking for ways to make a smaller footprint overall, but I think the extreme this takes it to is actively unhelpful– telling people ‘we need to reduce our carbon footprint so you need to live in a tiny miserable house with no shower’ is going to shut people off entirely. And the hate doesn’t come from people trying to make it work– knock yourself out, live in whatever size house you want!– but in the sense of moral superiority they all seem to have when they are really making a very privileged choice, and in the way they fetishize the living conditions of people in poverty. These people aren’t wrong to live in small houses, but they ARE wrong to imply that the only way society can be sustainable is if we do what they do, and the media is wrong to spend so much time congratulating them for it. There’s a lot of room between tiny houses and mini-mansions.
mmhm, my issue is with the praise heaped on people (by the media or by their own selves) who are living in tiny houses/apartments, as if no one ever thought of living in a small space before and it is such a noble choice to make. It’s just such a perfect example of “when rich people do it it’s chic and eco-friendly” + “let’s ignore all the privilege & other people’s work it takes to do this” + “sustainability = a different kind of consumerism” + “extreme is the only way to do things” all in one.
I bet most tiny-house dwellers would be cool to grab a beer with and chat about how they make it work.
All of this that paddlepickle and Emily said.
Not to mention that buying materials and constructing a new house on someone else’s land or some other land somewhere is like, the exact opposite of sustainability. Smart growth, urban redevelopment, affordable multi-family housing, transit-oriented development — these are all actual sustainable solutions to housing issues.
That’s not to say you can’t do rural living in sustainable ways! That is totally a possibility and we will always need farms and grazing land so it’s worth thinking about things like organic/less pesticide farming, renewable energy sources, and better transportation options. But that’s a set of different concerns than I think is being addressed by the tiny house people.
I posted replies to both comments and neither appeared. I’m not sure if I’ve done something and am being moderated, or if there’s a technical glitch…
Ugh, it’s probably IntenseDebate. It may have posted as its own comment at the bottom…
Yeah, I haven’t been posting here for long, so I had no idea if I’d violated some sort of discussion rule or something!
They might just have been delayed because you haven’t signed up for IntenseDebate. Unless something has changed since I got an account, comments from people without accounts have to be approved by a moderator, which sometimes takes a little while.
Yeah, I know a couple of people who have constructed tiny houses and they used recycled/re-purposed materials, and built on empty lots that had previously just been covered with weeds. In other words, urban redevelopment. That being said, is there anyone extolling the benefits of tiny house living saying that none of these issues matter? I think that’s my main problem. People are approaching this as though someone said that tiny house living is the only way to live sustainably and that’s just not at all what this, or anything I’ve ever read on tiny houses says.
I mostly agree (although, again, nowhere does it say this is the “only” way to do things), but you could say that about any lifestyle trends media coverage, particularly from the NYT. I just don’t see how that justifies saying “I hate tiny houses.” It’s a critique of the coverage, not the idea.
Well and part of that is the tone of The Toast, though.
That seems to be the way a lot of people on here are characterizing this woman and the tiny house movement, and I think it’s really unfair (and inaccurate). At no point does she say that people “need” to live in tiny houses. In fact, she repeatedly says that this is something that works for her at this point in her life. Also, nowhere does she say that the only way society can be sustainable is if people live in tiny houses. Going beyond just this one individual, the tiny house ethos has been pretty explicit about stating that this lifestyle is not for everyone. They are simply positing that this is one way–but certainly not the only way–to live a more sustainable lifestyle.
I don’t think people are advocating going with the McMansion concept either. But tiny houses, as presented by their most fervent enthusiasts, are not actually any more sustainable than conventional housing. If you are dependent on another conventional house or business for your cooking & cleaning & waste disposal then you are pretending to yourself that you are not consuming as many resources as a conventional home.
In the Washington Post article one thing that really struck me was that one of the tiny home builders wanted to have a portajohn as (apparently) their permanent latrine. Portajohns are not any more sustainable than a conventional sewer system! And nearly any follow up on tiny homes, or any article that goes deeper than ‘oh, how cool to simplify your life’, waste disposal is a huge problem. Composting latrines require a lot of upkeep to keep them safe and non-smelly, and they are not simpler than a sewage system. Different, probably better long term for the environment, but not simpler.
As someone who has lived around or in communal living situations at various times (and I most definitely live alone in a small, but not tiny, house for Reasons), sewage is seriously, seriously one of the big reasons that off the grid communal living situations deteriorate, both physically and socially. From the ‘it’s all natural’ dudes who think a community of people can just poop in the woods indefinitely, to the people who are all for ‘community’, except when it involves doing the composting toilet protocols, sewage becomes the Giant Poop Elephant in the room. Many communal living situations are able to work out the problems with all the issues that the tiny homes people gloss over, but they are not any less a problem than the issues of sewage and waste disposal in conventional housing.
So, from my perspective, if for no other reason (and there seem to be many other reasons) the deliberate ignoring of one of the larger problems of densely populated housing in whatever setting–sewage, I do not like, perhaps one could even say hate, the tiny house movement.
(in case this gets lost in the comment list, this is in response to Jen’s comment about tiny house hate)
Yeah, I said this above but lots of the things that take time and money in building process that people rail against are things like building code that makes sure a fireman can come get you in and emergency, etc. I know myself it’s a hassle because I work with that kind of code for a living, but man, you cannot count how many people have NOT died thanks to all that “useless red tape”. Do these tiny houses have good safe materials? Do they have the right number of exits with enough space to get through them? Is the system for heating checked so that it wont burn them down, or suffocate them? Etc.
Infrastructure is one of the most amazing things we have built. Lots of infrastructure needs a huge overhaul- so we can bank renewable energy in the grid, produce food locally, compost, retain greywater on site, etc etc, but opt out doesn’t address those systemic issues at all.
This is a really interesting comment, thanks. I’m still not sure if I follow why communal living, which is what she’s describing, would not be more sustainable (are there actual figures that bear this out?). If you have multiple people living on a property and sharing the kitchen and other facilities, why wouldn’t you be using less resources than if you lived in two separate houses that are next door to one another? She also talks about how she benefited from the increased social interaction that came about as a result of that. I can certainly see how this would not be for everyone, but why wouldn’t we want people to do this? Why are we so angry at the people who are trying to make these arrangements work?
Yeah, I’m with you. Like, there are lots of really annoying and problematic narratives about it (and NONE I’ve seen more so than this NYT story good lord no shower and you were inspired by abject poverty in Guatemala gfy), but also I think the hate is a bit unfair.
I am interested in the tiny house movement, not because I want to live in 84 square feet, but because it’s an interesting corrective to a dominant social narrative left over from the 90’s: MORE. And that MORE is something our earth cannot sustain, and very obviously neither can our economic system. So, don’t we need a corrective? And this is not the only corrective, and will not solve anything, but I think that it’s good that people are talking about it.
I think it’s not only about eco-conciousness, it’s also about financial health, and balanced living. And yes, yes, yes, I will start by admitting that this is for the privileged, who get to choose between lots of debt and less debt, and lots of work and less work. But the choices those people make are also important. One of the couples in the Tiny House documentary was super clear about that: to them, the “eco” benefits were nice but not the motivating factor. For them, it was about not having a crippling mortgage and lifestyle creep.
To me, embracing a lifestyle that is ok with less may be a way out of some difficult life choices ahead of me. For instance, I live in a city (that I adore) where the very cheapest free-standing house sold recently for well over $700 k, and it was tiny, and on a very busy street. Finding a 2 bedroom condo here for less than $350 k is really rare. I love this city. I make pretty good money, but have a lot of student debt. Rents are really high, too. I want to have kids, and soon, and I kind of have to because I am a woman and eventually I will age out of the possibility. I currently live, at 30, with a serious relationship and busy professional job, with roommates. Because that’s the only thing I can afford. What is ahead of me, here? If small living is sexy, if it’s desirable, then accepting that lifestyle will not only feel like a relief, but a win.
And look, I’m a rich white lady, I know that. I KNOW THAT. But I still get to have life concerns.
You say this all so eloquently – I agree with you so much. Because of my many privileges I am able to opt out of a lot of materialistic rat-races and still be accepted and successful in my professional and social life. I wonder if there was a critical mass of people leveraging their dominate social positions to disrupt the “more bigger newer” lifestyle discourse would pressures to conform to that lessen across society?
I guess what I’m not seeing is why “buy a tiny house on a piece of rural land” is the solution to lack of affordable housing and/or student debt. I can’t imagine it would be cheaper up front in any way, and probably not long-term as you would have to figure in commuting, driving to buy groceries, and driving to all the other little things that humans need, like doctors and friends.
ETA: like someone else said elsewhere, if you have enough money to buy land and a tiny house, you are not poor and could probably afford a tiny apartment somewhere which would be way more sustainable and equally financially savvy.
Yep, yep. And if the eco stuff is important to you, there’s eco-villages and cohousing experiments that are all pretty awesome.
Maybe we’re talking at cross-purposes a bit here. The tiny houses that I’m mostly talking about are not rural.
And while some of the tiny house people are definitely all about HOUSES, and are living some kind of frontier/American individualism/etc dream, I think I’m supportive of or interested in or whatever the movement because the people I’ve heard talking about it are like “it’s about figuring out how to make do with less and being happy about it. Seeing it as a privilege or a joy rather than just a lack.”
So yeah, a small apartment could totally do it.
Or building a very small house on a very small piece of land in the city – a piece of land other people might just see as wasted place
Or living in a space that you might think of as a space for one, but living there with more than one.
I feel like there’s two overlapping groups of people? Like, there’s the insufferable asshats who think they invented living in a tiny space without much stuff, and then there’s people who are trying to figure out how figure out what they need vs what and how to live within their means without getting swept up in the ridiculous American consumption machine.
A LOT of the tiny houses I’ve seen are rural though, which gets my anti-sprawl hackles up.
Ok, but you understand that rural areas don’t tend to have a lot of studio apartments, right? The cheapest apartment for sale currently in my area is $285,000, while I could buy a lot in town for $90,000 and a lot out of town for $50,000 and stick a small trailer or build a little house on it for a hell of a lot less than $200,000, or buy a trailer in a park for $85,000. I could rent a 1 bedroom apartment for $800 a month or a tiny carriage house for $300 a month. Land is cheap in rural areas, that’s why people live in shacks and trailers on property. Rural areas aren’t just cities with less people, they have a whole different economic structure.
I’m still just not seeing the argument for “tiny house on giant plot of land” as preferable either financially or ecologically to “studio apartment in city with public transportation nearby.”
Edit — and I’d sure like it if we could all continue to be civil about this. I don’t find your attitude very useful to the discussion at hand.
Not to mention — if EVERYONE goes with “buy a big plot of land and put a tiny house on it” then eventually we’re back where we started.
I’m sorry if my attitude is coming off as uncivil. That’s not my intention at all.
Comparing living in a small apartment in a city might be more economically advantageous in a theoretical sense, and probably is more ecologically sustainable, but just as telling the urban poor to “just buy a big plot of land and put a little house on it!” is unhelpful, I also find “just quit your job, leave your family and social safety net and move to a big expensive city to live in a little apartment!” to be likewise unhelpful. A lot of people in rural areas live in small, unconventional spaces sometimes on property. Quite often, they don’t have a lot of money. I know some of those people, so I do admit I find it a bit upsetting to see them being judged for being insufficiently sustainable or being careless with their money when I think they are doing the best that they can and aren’t hurting anyone, where as people who have the capital to buy a larger house with a yard don’t get the same judgement.
I feel like we’re butting up against this same misunderstanding I’m seeing elsewhere in the comments. When most of us are talking about “those tiny house assholes,” we are NOT talking about people living with very little out of necessity. We ARE judging people who move OUT of the city and into their carefully curated poverty who then start blogs and give NYT interviews and ‘splain to us how we all need to do this to save the world. Their ecological claims are bogus, their financial claims are suspect, and their appropriation of the lifestyles of the poor for shits and giggles is offensive.
Fair enough, the NYT-type tiny housers bug the crap out of me, too (although pretty much everyone in the NYT lifestyle articles bug the crap out of me). And I agree, the ecological argument is usually pretty suspect and seems more built on aesthetics than actual facts (try telling one of those people that dishwashers are shown to use less water and electricity than handwashing! They act like you spit on their baby). I do think the type of people who live in tiny/small houses is pretty varied and the people who are the problem are the type of people who’d get interviewed or go on a documentary while the non-assholes wouldn’t because really, living in a small house is not newsworthy unless you add some bullshit sanctimony on top of it.
“living in a small house is not newsworthy unless you add some bullshit sanctimony on top of it.”
I believe this sums up this discussion quite well 😀
That makes sense for people looking for housing where their roots are or where they have a job, or if saving money is a major priority for them for one reason or another. But the reasons that tiny house people live in rural places tend to be things like a desire to Escape Civilization (and zoning laws) and be Really Connected To The Earth (when they aren’t working from home via the internet).
Also, in places where land is fairly cheap, existing homes tend to also be fairly cheap; in your buy-a-lot-outside-town example, if it cost more than $35k to get a trailer or build a house, then you’d have spent more than you would buying the existing trailer in a park. And even if you built a house for nothing, you could still get the existing trailer for less than the in-town lot, and the trailer park is probably in or near town.
Yes, this, thank you.
I’m also not really understanding the small house hate. There are some super smug tiny housers, but I’ve known lots of people who have opted for renting a small cottage/cabin/shed over living in a big house with lots of roommates and I don’t see why that’s so offensive. My boyfriend and I live in a trailer in a trailer park because it’s pretty cheap, even though we could buy a bigger place and yeah it’s not a “tiny house” but it’s still downsizing to save money because we can and I don’t see why that’s so offensive to people. I also know people living in garden sheds, barns, and small boats because it’s cheap. Yes, it’s privileged to be able to buy a trailer or a road bike to get from your barn to your work, rather than live in a bigger house with more roommates in town, but I don’t see this kind of vitriol shown to people who buy regular houses or own cars.
Part of the conflict seems to be based on the fact that “tiny houses” are regarded as a cute lifestyle trend, while “trailers” are still looked down on as being part of the lifestyle of “trashy” poor people who don’t care about the environment or their fellow human beings. So people are reacting to the tiny house trend-ers within the context of “but just so we’re clear, you’re all defining your tiny houses as somehow better than trailers, right?”
Studio apartments are far more sustainable.
Eeeep. That is a gross response for sure, and the copyright things seems like a massive overreach for $50.
(Reply to kilks401 up top)
yeah, work for hire for $50… is not standard nor good.
The Tiny House craze drives me insane. Here’s your solution, homeless people! Go buy a piece of land and build a house on it! A little tiny house! There, aren’t you grateful to have your problems solved? I am completely with you on this one, Roxanne, it’s an indulgence of privilege, not in any way a solution to any housing problem at all, and to think otherwise is to be completely oblivious.
Here is a delightful blog from a group that is deconstructing and salvaging an abandoned block in Baltimore. Really fascinating, fun writing. http://baltimorebrickbybrick.com/
In grad school I read a really interesting paper on the psychological difference between demolition and deconstruction. Seems like a really cool project!
I don’t totally hate tiny houses. Probably because I’m getting older. I see the practical side of it. I would like to live in a house with minimal possibilities of falling downstairs or tripping over things and breaking a hip. Also, my family had to empty a big 50 yr old house last year after a death and it was not fun. I do not want to leave a lot of crap for my kid to take care of when I die.
Related: Can we have more crone stories? 🙂
But I agree about the privilege thing.
Oh thank goodness we’re talking about tiny houses because I watched Tiny on netflix and I seriously think the main guy’s girlfriend broke up with him halfway through bc he’s like “Ah yes I am living my dream of living in a shed in a field” and it cuts to her being like “It’s my dream to live…in New York.” Yeah, she’s outta there.
Also does it make it better than the only reason I’m considering building a tiny house is because a friend and I are tossing around the idea of making a tiny house misandrist collective? We’re not particularly smug nor do we identify as minimalists, we just want to live in houses so small that no men could step inside them.
I support this vision of Tiny-Housedom fully.
yep that would be awesome count me and Mr. Floridagal in.
I hear you on the attitudes expressed by some people re: minimalism. But I am currently facing imminent homelessness, after moving from a 400 sq ft mobile home (much larger than I needed, but also unsafe) to a 12 x 13 ft room. Tiny houses as a “lifestyle” are one thing, but they’re proving to be a saving grace for people who simply can’t get in anywhere else. I’d fucking kill for one right about now, after being turned down for shitty studios because I don’t make $2400 a month, and currently looking at a 9 x 12 room for more than I’m currently paying because it’s literally the only option available. Sorry, I know people have to vent and a lot of tiny housers are pretentious shits, but please don’t paint us all with one brush. I’ve been homeless and lost everything, then lost it all again trying to move somewhere nicer. I’m not fucking buying it all back a third time. This really made me sad.
Heather, I am sorry to hear that you are going through that. I want to say, I think that for me the frustration I feel with tiny house love is about how it completely overlooks the sort of issues you face. I know that affordability is part of why people go with their own solutions, but no matter how many tiny houses get built, not one of them challenges the status quo regarding housing affordability, which is what we all need.
“Living in very little space because of necessity” is like practically the opposite of the “tiny housers.”
I appreciate these comments and acknowledge that most of the ire here is directed at a lifestyle, but the actual homes are being tossed out with all that vitriol, and they *can* and *do* impact housing rates. Communities that have built tiny villages as housing for the homeless spend very little compared to what they save in medical & law enforcement expenses. They can act as transitional housing or a long-term solution. They’re easy to heat and cool & keep expenses down in that way. And several can fit, with reasonable space between, on a small parcel of land. Right now I’m way out behind actual homeless people in terms of being able to get a spot on a 4-6 year waiting list for an affordable apartment (hahahahaha, yes it is funny), and the homeless include people who can prove earnings of 2X the rent, unlike me. But none of us are going anywhere because there are no places available. Literally. No vacancies. These would at least be places, even if you do have to sleep and have sex standing up in them and keep your groceries on the roof.
I watch Tiny and I was ABSOLUTELY ENRAGED by it. I think there’s a part where the guy who they follow is saying, “i want to build my tiny house to enjoy living all. alone and sustainably in nature”, and then he reflects that if everyone did that it would be completely unsustainable, and then he just shrugs and is like, “OH WELL, whomp whomp. I got mines bitches.”
Its such a ridiculous approach- most of the time it’s about this idea of creating a tiny little purity nest with only enough room for you. What about family and friends and hosting and being part of a group? I have only 740 sq feet in my apartment building, and because its a 4 story building we’re all living nice and sustainably in it. I take the subway to work, I have worm composter on my patio. And I have an 18 piece dinnerware set for when I want to throw a big fucking meal for my friends.
And DO NOT start me up on the micro apartment trend. Let me tell you the ruling class absolutely loves the idea of elitist pricks arguing that the zoning codes which set minimum square footage and basic standards for what constitutes an acceptable living space isn’t flexible enough, so we should be able to get smaller and crappier spaces to make more affordable apartments. THEY LOVE THAT. Because then, its not that all human have a right to housing and adequate space and we have to focus on why the rents are too high or wages are stagnant, and we don’t ahve enough family sized units in the city, no the solution is on individuals to get jazzed about paying for hot designer micro studios, and to somehow brag on the fact that they got swindled. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE HAD TO DIE IN SHIT HOLES TO CREATE THAT ZONING CODE ABOUT MINIMUM SQ FOOTAGE?! Good, lets just erode decades of activism for “pinterest minimalism”….
mutter mutter mutter
That’s such a good point. Like, do you know how many people lived in abject squalor in horrid tenements (and still DO) before they instituted things like zoning laws and building codes?
Man, you know, I recognize that it is a kind of privilege to be able to get rid of stuff, a lot of people need stuff really bad and can’t get it, either without going into debt, or just can’t get it at all.
Still, though, it’s pretty much an unalloyed good to make a serious commitment to divesting yourself of stuff you don’t need. I mean, I know, my wife grew up without a lot of money, so I understand that she buys a lot of clothes and keeps literally everything because it helps to assuage the childhood fear that she experienced of never being able to have anything in the first place. And I am not trying to tell anyone what is right for them, I don’t mean that, buy whichever clothes you want or whatever stuff you want, keep all the stuff if you want to. But the problem is always going to be that your desire for more stuff — which is a completely legitimate need when you haven’t got any — never goes away, even once you do have all the stuff you need, it’s going to just keep hassling you no matter what your station in life is.
Contrarywise, though, even though I am really happy with this commitment I made to getting rid of everything I can, it’s a huge problem at Christmas.
I live in Portland. A couple of my friends live in tiny houses and a bunch more are thinking about it. And from my POV: why not just live in a studio apartment? Or if you’re so desperate to live even smaller and more portably, why not an RV? Oh, because RV’s don’t have nearly the hip cachet? Give me a fucking break. Ugh.
I already live in a small enough space (a small one bedroom apartment with my boyfriend) and we’re looking forward to affording a bigger space. He has art supplies, I have multiple bicycles and a lot of clothes, we both have books, and we love our stuff, thanks.
Fellow Portlandian here. What I can’t figure out is how you make it work with the cost of land. Vacant land within the UGB costs as much as the house. And most mobile home parks are in locations that hipsters wouldn’t deign to visit.
My friends with tiny houses usually rent space (or have another agreement) to keep it in someone’s yard. Some of the older houses in town are on bigger lots. I wonder how they get around code, but I suppose if no one complains they just ignore it.
My first thought every time I read one of those tiny house articles is that the owners must not have any hobbies! I understand not wanting to clean, but what do you do in one of those spaces? No place for books or other hobbies? I’m a quilter and a baker, so I admit to having a lot of stuff in my small apartment. I understand the need to purge stuff from your life, I try to own only as many clothes as I wear on a regular basis and only keep books that make me happy (to be honest that is most) but don’t understand how existing in a small house is living.
I could fill up a tiny house with my yarn and fabric alone.
Yes! The very best thing about buying our townhouse was getting a garage for projects. Finally, we can use our indoor table for eating!
It is shocking how many men I have dated who don’t own or read books (just podcasts and audio books) and who have no hobby stuff (it’s all online gaming and outside gym memberships)! To me, this also speaks of the kind of financial privilege that can afford to rely on expensive computer equipment and expensive gym memberships. And I’m like, my used books are low-tech and DRM-free, dude, go away and let me read my book. I don’t date those guys anymore.
I think the thing is there’s another way to go. Its not to build your own solution for only yourself. This is a societal failing, and the real way we get to solving the crisis of expensive housing is collective action, and the people who are bragging on their small houses are getting all this attention for only having created a solution that doesn’t address underlying problems, and only for themselves.
Its like the crisis parents face. If someone figures out a solution that lets them opt out of the nightmare of how to afford childcare and parental leave and healthcare for their kids, and we had all these articles about how this woman does an end run around all of that, good for her, but the rest of us still need solutions, and she’s not part of that, because she solved it for herself.
So the silo-ism, the personal consumer decision to go minimal isn’t going to solve our larger issues. The larger issues require overhauling how we design apartments and housing in the US, how we think about communal spaces, how we safeguard affordable housing for the vulnerable, how we produce well made goods that aren’t intended to be thrown away, how we recycle and compost, how we think about who we are. They’re things like co-housing and rent control and, shared lawns and citywide overhauls to zoning, waste management, etc. All unglamorous, time consuming, inch by inch activism. And to me, the solutions are about communal choices. All the tiny house stuff I’ve seen privileges the lone visionary or visionaries. What about a grandma who lives with her kids and their kids? What about 3 friends and 2 dogs? They can’t do this tiny thing, they need spaces that hold community too.
We cross-posted and you are much more eloquent than I am.
You are not wrong.
But I will say this: “overhauling how we design apartments and housing in the US” does require visionaries. It requires people at the forefront saying “there is another way, and it can be great and beautiful”. I think those people are the beginning of a larger-scale change, and I think my city exemplifies that.
In the Tiny documentary, the guy who runs the Tiny house blog admits he no longer lives in a “tiny house”, because he has a wife and kids and a dog. They live in more space, because they are a family and need more space. But they live in like 500 or 600 square feet, not a huge mansion. And he was like “look, the movement is not about everyone living in less than 100 square feet, it’s about people thinking critically about how much space they really need, and maybe living in less space then they previously assumed was necessary”.
I live in a city where small housing is absolutely part of the policy response to a housing crisis, caused by a bunch of factors. The city has changed zoning to allow people in regular sized houses on lots to build laneway homes, usually between 300 and 600 square feet. There are also new “small house” developments springing up, which are proving really popular. And of course, the city and the developers have to think about communal spaces, parks, waste management etc. And there are totally some visionaries who helped get the city on board, before smaller spaces were really a huge part of the policy conversations. I can think of a business owner who makes gorgeous pre-fab laneway houses, and who showed us how it can be done. And now there are lots of businesses doing it. But that guy was at the fore-front.
In order to HAVE that activism and those policy changes, people need to be asked to think about the issues. And the tiny house people have been really successful in getting people to think about those issues, and to show small spaces as something that is maybe desireable and not just a hallmark of failure or of want. The glamour is important. And you know what, it’s ok for someone to be like “I have built a very small and very beautiful home for myself, and I love it and it works for me for now” and to tell people about it, and that person does not also have to have developed a comprehensive social housing policy at the same time. There’s room for all kinds. And at the end of the day, we are most responsible for our own individual choices and have the most power over our own lives.
Of course families will need bigger spaces. Of course disabled people can’t live in walk-ups. That doesn’t mean that smaller spaces and walk ups aren’t good choices for people.
Thanks for this comment! It makes a lot of sense to me both as a critique of how these things are covered and discussed in the media, and of the tiny house as one (but not the only) solution to addressing some issues of housing and sustainability. There’s no denying that these trend pieces are often myopic and anecdotal. It has a “it’s new to you” (white people) sentiment that is ridiculously tone-deaf. Because we live in a racist, classicist society, something like a “tiny house,” which has admittedly narrow applicability, gets a disproportionate amount of attention relative to its actual usefulness. Boo on that.
That being said, I don’t think the woman in this article is bragging about her small house at all. She doesn’t say it’s for everyone; she’s very specific about this being a solution for her at this particular time. I didn’t get the impression that she was particularly wealthy either; just that she’s a childless mid-career woman who sold her house and built a little one. I think that’s pretty typical of people who are opting for tiny houses. People who are middle-aged to older (with the increased income), childless or empty nesters, who are looking to downsize. In this case, she formed a communal space of sorts with her friends (and people on here attacked her for that).
Alternatively, you have young professional types who have relatively few responsibilities and also feel strongly about environmental issues. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Everyone has different housing needs so why would we expect that every solution would work for everyone? No one is presenting this as a solution to the underlying structural issues; this is an affordable and sustainable solution for some people and that’s ok.
You’re right. A personal consumer decision to try to minimize one’s environmental impact doesn’t solve our larger issues. Does that mean we shouldn’t bother? Isn’t choosing to recycle and compost a personal consumer decision? I completely agree with you on the idea that there’s no glamorous silver bullet solution to our environmental woes. I just don’t follow why that means people shouldn’t try to make an effort on both an individual and a collective level. I think I’m rambling again, so I’ll stop.
This is so great!! I’ve been playing this for about an hour now, and I am so totally zen right now. I am at peace with the mountain of work I have to do, even. Purring is remarkable.
ETA: this is in reply to winterbymorning’s post about a cat purring noise generator. Purr purr purr…
I am fascinated by community bathhouses, but in a way that I think comes from never having used one as my main way to get clean. Has anyone here ever lived that way? And/or are there any histories out there that focus on communal utilities like this, because this nerd would read that shit cover to cover.
I don’t know of any histories of communal utilities, but Katherine Ashenburg’s “The Dirt on Clean” is really fantastic and worth a read and covers bathhouses!
Thanks so much to everyone who expanded the critique about tiny houses from “boooo” to, um, more than that. It’s a sticking point with me, because I’ve been reading about them forever, trying to build a container home (hard when you don’t drive and have no friends! I’ll just throw this railroad car on my back and run it out to my nonexistent plot of land, whee!), trying, trying, trying to find a place where I can live, work, surrender the rights of that work into eternity and any bonus years that come after for $50 and at the end of the day be able to afford a goddamned cup of coffee. Some homeless camps have been converted into a small community of tiny houses, and the expense to build them (parts and labor) is so much less than the legal and medical costs for people sleeping outdoors, pooping outdoors, etc., it’s really inspiring to see. I don’t want to poop outdoors, is basically my point. Some people are rich and oblivious to the less wealthy, and that certainly reinforces a viewpoint steeped in privilege, but I think it’s disingenuous to tag everyone in a diverse movement that way, and speaks to another level of privilege, e.g., you can slam them because you’ve got a home you’re happy with. Yay for you, sincerely. But don’t come down so hard on the thing that most represents hope to me right now.
This isn’t actually a solution to anything, but I just wanted to let you know that my grandmother grew up in a boxcar. The whole town was made of boxcars, because that was how the railroad fulfilled its promise to provide housing for its workers. Grandma’s house was really nice, since it was a refrigerator car, and therefore better insulated than the rest.
My plan was to buy a storage container and trick it out, but former employers used a caboose for an office when the space in their store got too crowded, and someone near where I used to live had a little boxcar guest house that I walked by one day. They have a lot of things going for them, but it takes a village, or at least not just me trying to learn wiring and plumbing on my own, to make it so.
Hey, don’t any of you remember when hybrid cars were new and everyone thought that early adopters were all smug, judgey assholes because of that One Guy they knew who harangued everyone about it (and/or whatever at the time was the hybrid car equivalent to fawning features in the New York Times’ Style section)? And hybrids were never going to work for everyone or solve everything or be universally adopted or made mandatory. Oy.
My plan was to buy a storage container and trick it out, but former employers used a caboose for an office when the space in their store got too crowded, and someone near where I used to live had a little boxcar guest house that I walked by one day. They have a lot of things going for them, but it takes a village, or at least not just me trying to learn wiring and plumbing on my own, to make it so.
I thought you were surely linking to http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/garden/24cottag… , but no, there are two tiny places filled with all the white lace.