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27July
2009

it’s getting later and later

maura @ 5:27 pm

I think it’s fair to say that I am a bit obsessed with tiny houses. I’ve been decluttering a lot, downsized from a desktop computer to a laptop, am checking more books out of the library than I buy, etc. So it makes sense that the tiny house would be right up my alley.

My daydream is that when we retire we’ll get a bit of mountainy foresty land near a stream and plop down a tiny house. Something like this one, the Harbinger, looks like a good fit for us. It’s 300 square feet plus a sleeping loft. Yes, we’d have to get rid of a bunch of stuff. But I’m ready to get rid of most of the knick-nacks (and paddywacks). By then I will have digitized all of my LPs and CDs so they can go, too. We probably won’t want to part with all of the books, but I bet if we invest in some custom-built shelves and arrange the books by size we’ll be able to get most of them in there.

What about the kitchen? Will we eat tiny food*? Some of these houses have tiny little kitchens w/hot plates + dorm fridges, but the Harbinger has enough space for a modest but real stove/oven + fridge. Yes, we’ll need to go shopping more often, but we’ll be living just outside of a cute little town and I will ride my bike** to the store every few days. Also, we’ll have a (tiny) garden where we’ll grow (tiny) fruits + veggies.

* On tiny plates! Like in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Slow-Eater-Tiny-Bite-Taker Cure.

** Gus + I got bikes! But that’s a post for another day, Pee-Wee.

You can add another bedroom onto the back, but I think that instead we should get another even tinier house as a guest room, maybe the Epu? Gus should be fine there when he comes to visit. We will probably also need a shed to hold bikes, gardening tools, push mower, cross-country skis, snowshoes + sleds. We’ll have to get a car but it can be small, too.

After I outlined all of this Jonathan said “so really it’s a tiny compound!”

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6 comments on “it’s getting later and later”

Anne (28 July 2009 at 9:14 am)

I think my room in 57th St. might qualify! I used to lie on the bed & look up. One day I realized if I could tip the room on its side, or somehow deplete gravity in certain places (wow, wouldn’t THAT be handy?!) I would have a lot more space!

p.s. What makes you think Gus is going anywhere?

Em (28 July 2009 at 2:26 pm)

Where is my dinner in pill form? Pills are tiny.

maura (29 July 2009 at 7:30 am)

I know, Gus has already declared that he will be living with us FOREVER. But he can have his own house on the tiny compound if that’s the case!

If only we’d had Ikea back then in Chicago! You could have gotten a lot more space out of that room, I’m sure of it.

I used to wish all food were in bar form, which always made me think of that scene in Empire Strikes Back when Yoda makes fun of Luke’s tasty nutrition bar and makes him come into his (tiny!) house for stew.

daniel (7 August 2009 at 6:19 pm)

You continue your inexorable transformation into moomins. And I love it!

maura (7 August 2009 at 9:52 pm)

Moomins? Why have I never heard of these Moomins before? Wikipedia tells me that they’re Finnish, and you know how much we love all things Scandinavian *and* non-Indo-European languages.

Jonathan still thinks that 300 sq ft + sleeping loft is too small. I’m going to start moving the furniture around a bit every day until we get to 300 sq ft in the living room just so we can see what it’s like. Or maybe I’ll just mark off some space with tape on the floor, tho that’s much less sneaky.

mauraweb!» archive » and then the next thing you know (11 September 2009 at 10:33 pm)

[…] thriftyness to a whole new level and refused to throw anything out. She packed it into their tiny house and it spilled out all over their yard. Finally the artist was able to convince his mother to move […]


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