Could You Live in a Tiny House?

Recently, I have read a lot of material about the "Tiny House Movement." Basically, people either build or buy tiny houses--usually movable on a trailer of some kind--to reduce their bills as well as their footprint on the planet. Most are quite small, less than 700 square feet and people can get mighty creative with their tiny spaces! There is usually a loft with a ladder or perhaps some stairs with storage underneath, a tiny kitchen, and most, but not all, have a bathroom with a composting toilet. I've even seen a tiny house with a hot tub attached! These little cabins can be heated and cooled cheaply and families find themselves in very close quarters; which makes for lots of family time!
I have often wondered why someone would want to move into such a small space and give up the creature comforts that a larger home can afford. The truth is that those reasons vary as much as the people who build tiny houses. While reducing costs and impact on the planet seem to be common reasons, a sense of adventure and being able to take your home all over the country with you seem to be pretty popular reasons, too. Another reason is a sense of accomplishment. How many of us in today's world can say that we built our own home with our own hands?

In The Big Tiny: a Build-It-Myself Memoir, author Dee Williams tells the story of how she went from a money-pit of a house with a mortgage to building her own tiny house that she can park in her friends back yard. Dee's life changed in a moment when she had a near death experience at a local grocery store. She was only forty-two at the time and the doctors diagnosed her with a heart condition. Her major health scare made her take stock of her life and how she wanted to live it. She was reminded that life is short and time is precious, and she wanted to spend hers with the people and things she truly loved.
Even though she had painstakingly restored a sprawling house in the Pacific Northwest, Dee realized that the mortgage payments, constant repairs, top notch appliances, and extra rooms could not compare with the financial freedom and the ultimate luxury of time that you get when you downsize. She decided to build her own house from the ground up. Building this eighty-four-square-foot house own her own was just the beginning of her new life. Dee can now list everything she owns on a single sheet of paper, her monthly upkeep is about eight dollars, and it only takes her ten minutes to clean the entire house. She now has the time to spend with her friends and family, she has the freedom to take off on an adventure at a moment's notice, or she can simply drink a beer and watch the sunset on her tiny front porch.

This book is more memoir and less how-to when it comes to tiny house-building. The library only has the Large Print version of this book and there are only a very few black-and-white photographs, but they give you a good idea of how small Dee Williams lives. If, however, you enjoy books about how life-changing moments send people down new paths, then this is certainly a book you would enjoy.
If you would like to find out about building your own tiny house, there are several blogs that do a good job: thesmallhousecatalog.com, www.tinyhousedesign.com, and tinyhouseblog.com. The library also has small house plans as well as books on building houses, plumbing, wiring, and other DIY projects that may inspire you to build your own tiny house.