{"id":21816,"date":"2015-07-15T01:28:29","date_gmt":"2015-07-15T08:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=21816"},"modified":"2015-07-15T01:28:29","modified_gmt":"2015-07-15T08:28:29","slug":"living-small-living-simple-hype-vs-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/15\/living-small-living-simple-hype-vs-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Living small, living simple: hype vs reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I linked to (yet another) article about small houses. Which led Joel to link back to me<\/a> and also to a very funny blog<\/a> about people who actually live in the things. Which reminded me of tidy-up celebrity Marie Kondo<\/a> (because you have<\/i> to be mega-tidy to survive small-house living).<\/p>\n

Which reminds me that, now that I’m living in normal-sized houses again, it’s time for another perspective in tiny-house living.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First, my credentials: Between 2000 and 2010, I lived first in a tiny yurt (200-some round feet), then in a tiny cabin (409-square-foot exterior footprint, about 350 of useable living space), and finally in a borrowed fifth-wheel trailer (190-ish square feet).<\/p>\n

My 2005 Backwoods Home<\/i> article “The Art of Living in Small Spaces”<\/a> is probably the most clicked-on non-political piece I’ve ever written.<\/p>\n

My Cabin Sweet Cabin was adapted from a plan from the Cherokee Cabin Company<\/a>, which was into DIY cabin building long before Jay Shafer founded Tumbleweed Tiny Houses and half a dozen tiny-house gurus followed him into the land of Greens-with-money.<\/p>\n

I still have in my files a different Cherokee plan that I dream of building someday. I’ve been fascinated by small living spaces since, well, forever. I remain fascinated.<\/p>\n

And I’ll probably never live in such a small space again.<\/p>\n

Because tools. Because preps. Because life.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Tiny and tidy. Not the same. But they go together. You can go tidy without going tiny, of course. But if you go tiny, you must<\/i> go tidy or at the end of your first week you’re already a Collyer brother<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Every tiny yuppie abode you see in a magazine is not only neat as the proverbial pin but contains very few possessions, very cleverly organized.<\/p>\n

I said in my article way back when that the key to living in small spaces was great storage & that’s still the truth. It’s one reason why the current crop of small yuppie dwellings are so absurdly expensive. Cabinets, drawers, and clever bits of furniture (or stairways or whatever) built to hide other objects are pricey.<\/p>\n

I had inadequate storage in Cabin Sweet Cabin and it showed. Come home from the post office, toss a handful of mail on the kitchen counter — and the whole place is suddenly a pig sty. And my place was huge compared to a lot of the dwellings being built and photographed so proudly now now. I’d love<\/i> to see photos of those lovely little magazine houses when they haven’t just been given the Architectural Digest<\/i> photo treatment.<\/p>\n

The other reason so many tiny houses are so insanely pricey is that they’ve become cool. They’re status symbols for the anti-status symbol crowd. But that’s another question.<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

So there’s this huge need for tidiness, in and outside of the tiny-house movement. Along comes Marie Kondo from Japan, making millions bless her heart by instructing people not only to clean up and organize, but to get rid of every household object they own that doesn’t “spark joy” in them. When you touch something you own, if you don’t “feel your body go upward,” you thank it for its service (seriously) and junk it. One of Kondo’s sayings is, “Keep only<\/i> those things that speak to your heart.”<\/p>\n

Now again, I admire Japanese simplicity in architecture and household design. One reason I like Akira Kurosawa historical films so much is that I love to see all those nobles sitting around in all those artistically empty spaces. Nothing but floor mats, maybe a low table, and a single artistic flower arrangement.<\/p>\n

I would love to have a bedroom that looked like this “Kondoed” one:<\/p>\n

\"KondoedBedroom_071415\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But c’mon, people. We’re dealing with reality here. Where are the Kleenex boxes, the alarm clocks, the bottles of ibuprofen, the glasses of water, the heaps of books, the midnight snack foods? Where are the bedside pistol or shotgun, the dog’s blankie and toys, the fuzzy slippers, and the laid-out clothes for tomorrow?<\/p>\n

Yeah. In the picture, they’re in the drawers or in the absolutely gigantic closet that’s hidden behind the elegant and pricy shoji screen. Or they’ve been moved to some other room that’s heaped floor-to-ceiling with junk. In reality? Who has time to go hiding all their “necessaries”?<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

And Ms Kondo? More power to you. Surely many people will be inspired by your aesthetic advice. But even though my chop saw doesn’t “spark joy” in me when I touch it, I’m keepin’ it. (And I keep it in my house because I haven’t got a garage or workshop.) It may shock you to learn that those garage-sale space heaters in the spare room don’t “speak to my heart.” But they’re useful<\/i>. Does my “body go upward” when I scan those industrial metal shelves of canned refries and homemade chutney? Not even a millimeter. I get not a single thrill from my drawer full of screwdrivers, tapes, and various bits of wire, nails, and pliers. But you’ll have to pardon me for not “thanking them for their service” then hauling them to the thrift store so that next time something needs to be screwed in, pried out, or taped up I can just sit instead and admire my new simplicity.<\/p>\n

And you tiny-house latecomers, you’ll find out soon enough that all that household space you think you don’t need can be quite useful for holding stuff you do<\/i>. Enjoy your adventure. Your experiment is a noble one. Now be prepared to be humbled by practicalities.<\/p>\n

What both the tiny-house movement and its conjoined twin, the tidy-house movement ignore is usefulness<\/a>. And the fact that some of us are neither overwhelmed by nor ashamed of the fact that we actually have stuff<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Oh yes, stuff famously has a way of getting out of control. Happens to us all. Happens to me. And indeed when you go from large to small living spaces, a vast and needed de-cluttering project awaits you. There are plenty of books<\/a> to help, including Kondo’s, and including the less airy and supremely sensible Get Organized, Stay Organized<\/i><\/a> by Christine Shuck, a sometime-reader of this blog.<\/p>\n

But when you go spending $50,000 on something the size of a small travel-trailer and thinking you’re doing Great Work for the environment … when you judge the worth of your possessions by whether or not they make your heart sing … you’re living in some dreamland of intellectual and financial privilege. You are not only having<\/i> first-world problems; you may be<\/i> a first-world problem.<\/p>\n

It’s unfortunate that the whole tiny-house and simple-living movements have become infested with this high-falutin’ smugness and impracticality. There’s much that’s good in living small and living without a need to constantly consume, consume, consume, accumulate, accumulate, accumulate. But Backwoods Home<\/i> represents the very unglamorous reality, while the people who boast of their tiny and tidy yuppie abodes have some serious life lessons ahead of them.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

NOTE: I haven’t read Kondo’s book, though I’ll probably go put a hold on it at the library now. So I’m not being anti-Kondo. I presume she’s sensible enough to make some provision for the possession of plumber’s snakes and freezers full of vegetables. I’m being anti-yuppie-hype. Some people just need to get down off their perches and recognize that the real world exists — and they’re not living in it.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I linked to (yet another) article about small houses. Which led Joel to link back to me and also to a very funny blog about people who actually live in the things. Which reminded me of tidy-up celebrity Marie Kondo (because you have to be mega-tidy to survive small-house living). Which reminds me that, now that I’m living in normal-sized houses again, it’s time for another perspective in tiny-house living.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,18,26,28,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-aesthetics","category-mind-and-spirit","category-practical-freedom","category-privacy-and-self-ownership","category-rural-and-small-town-living","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}