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By Laura M. LaVoie
Fellow tiny house blogger Andrew Odom declared this week Tiny House Appreciation week. (Conveniently it falls during one of my other favorite appreciation weeks: Asheville Beer Week – but that is a little off topic.) I admire how Andrew has taken the tiny house movement by the horns. He points out how tiny house advocates are rarely one dimensional.
“Well, if you are like me, you are not just interested in tiny houses but also in homesteading, in technology, and in food sourcing.”
This resonated with me quite a bit. The Tiny House Movement is what led me here but the complete change of lifestyle is what keeps me excited every day. Now that we have moved into our tiny home we are making a lot of changes that could only happen by living small. Here are just a few.
- The way we eat. Since we live entirely off the grid we have decided to trade a traditional refrigerator for a small sterling engine cooler. Because of this we have to shop more often and eat fresh food faster. This has led us to supporting local agriculture through the farmers markets and participating in a CSA. Now we spend more time cooking and enjoying our meals
I encourage you to read the rest of this post below:
- The way we exercise. We chose to build our tiny house about 200 vertical feet up a mountain. This presented challenges for building, but it also means we climb that mountain at least once a day now that we live here. We store many things in our barn so we go down the mountain and back up the mountain a couple times a day. When I lived in the city and worked in an office, I didn’t exercise at all so this constant climbing is really good for me.
- The way we work. I took a big leap to be able to move to our tiny house. I quit my job of 8 years to pursue writing full time. This has been my dream for as long as I can remember and moving to the tiny house has made that possible. All of my work now is location independent and conceivably I could work from anywhere in the world. I am very content working in the woods. I have a beautiful view from my window.
- The way we save and spend money. None of this would be possible without the drastic change in our cost of living. Moving to the tiny house means we don’t have a mortgage, rent, electricity costs, or any of the other payments that go with living conventionally. Our costs haven’t been reduced to zero, but the reduction was significant.
I would consider myself an advocate for the tiny house movement. But even if tiny living isn’t for everyone, profoundly changing the way we live can be an incredibly liberating experience.
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Alex
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Congrats on the lifestyle change. One question about the photo of dinner. What are the two white saucer like dishes in the center of the table for? Are they lids to containers?
Maybe those are separate dipping stations for sauces 🙂
You have hit on something that is so near to my heart. The foundation of tiny house living is something that can become a foundation for life in general regardless of house size, income size, location, etc. I have often told people that the root of our desire to live in a tiny house is a mental, spiritual, and philosophical freedom. It is one of low overhead, minimal government reliance, consumer freedom, and community.
I especially like that you point out how much y’all enjoy both the cooking and eating of your meals. May none of us ever have to suffer through the “1 hour to cook, 4 minutes to eat” meals again!
Thanks Drew!!
Thank you for sharing, I just adored what you hjave written. Case in point, I read — April 27, 2012
100 Years of Staying Put
By BENJAMIN WEISER and NOAH ROSENBERG
”Ms. Jacobs recalled, Living was very modest,” she said, adding that they kept the building at No. 502 as a rental property; its rear cottage became a favorite landing spot for writers like Judith Thurman, the essayist, and later, the novelist Donna Tartt, who lived there for about a decade, until 2004. “It was a perfect retreat,” Ms. Tartt said, “like a tree house or a doll’s house you’d dream of living in as a child, with its own secret garden.” “It was also very quiet, and I could work there in perfect seclusion, reading and writing.”
Thanks for sharing as always!
Your reply made my day here in sunny, warm south central Arkansas, Alex. All the best to you and yours and of course, your dedication to this worthy cause. You are valued.
Have a nice, healthy, and safe summer of 2012! I have been outside in the woods, walking, and not near the computer as much this summer here in Arkansas.
http://www.americanempirethedocumentary.com, I will be watching this weekend at a friend’s home. Hope you and your viewers will get a chance to see this very important movie this year.
Barefootin’, sipping real spring water in rural Arkansas
The switch of attitude is what draws me to tiny house living. However, at my age (my sixties) I am not sure that the Tiny House will every be right for me; I can dream!! I can still downsize and live more simply no matter where I am. I love reading all the comments and articles. Very inspiring.