Why a Tiny House?

The second of two main questions that Sam and I are asked when people hear about our plans is "Why a Tiny House?" (For a discussion of the first question, see my previous post Homesteads and Tiny Houses: Why Now?) With people who haven't already heard of the Tiny House Movement, the questions mostly center around why on Earth we would choose to lie in a space so small. With people who have hears of Tiny Housers, the questions become more personal. Sam and I are hardly the Earthy-crunchy granola filled minimalists that are perceived to be the stereotypical Tiny House people. So, when people who know both us and the Tiny House movement hear about our plans to build a Tiny House, the question is less about the physical space restriction and more a question of whether or not the Tiny House community is a good fit for us.

It's true, Sam and I come to the Tiny House movement with a slightly different motivation and plan than most Tiny House People. Most Tiny House People are attracted to the idea of Tiny Houses because it allows them to embrace minimalism, lead a more authentic lifestyle (although what that means varies depending on who you ask), have increased flexibility, and live debt-free: or some combination thereof. For these people, their Tiny Houses are an end-goal: they are permanent homes which support a very specific lifestyle. For us, a Tiny House is more of a stepping stone to get us into a larger space faster than otherwise possible.

The thing is, we've lived in a city for the past 5 years, and we're done with that now. We want to live on a our own homestead and we want to live there as soon as possible. We also really want to build our own home. Sam has an incredible vision of the aesthetics that I absolutely love, and I'm entirely taken with the notion of having a ecologically sustainable Passivhaus, which is cool in summer and warm in winter without need any energy input for heating or cooling the structure. Achieving this house will take planning, time, and money: three things that we won't have enough of for quite a while. But we still want to live on our homestead as soon as possible, and a Tiny House is a way for us to accomplish that. For us, it's not really so much about getting rid of all of our stuff and committing to a life in 120 square feet. In fact, one of our first priorities after building the Tiny House will be to construct a large barn that we can use to store our things and expand our living space to accommodate our hobbies.

Does this somehow make our Tiny House endeavor less authentic (There's that word again. I think some real thought needs to be put into what we mean when we use "authentic" to describe an experience or a lifestyle. It's generally thrown about to mean that some ways of living or doing things are inherently more worthy or valuable than others, but I don't think that most of the people bandying it about have really stopped to examine what they mean when they say they quest for authenticity in their actions... but that's a whole different post right there- let's get back on topic) than a true Tiny House Person's? I imagine that there are some people who would say "yes", but I'm inclined to disagree. Early on in my Tiny House research I watched a YouTube video which really stuck with me. In it, Jay Shafer, the founder of the Modern American Tiny House Movement, was asked: What makes a Tiny House? Rather than giving a maximum size or any other specific building element, Jay replied that a Tiny House was a home which minimized wasted space. This really stuck with me.

For Jay, minimizing wasted space meant living in 120 square feet. For us, it means living in closer to 60 acres. Just because a home, or a homestead, has lots of space doesn't make it wasted. It's my hope that our homestead will be space that is used well, used sustainably, and used responsibly, and a Tiny House is a step in that process. If that's not in keeping with the Tiny House Movement, I'm not sure what is.