illustr8r sent this in. And before I read the article I took my guess as to what they were going to say about owning a tiny house (a tiny house/apartment is technically any dwelling under 500 sf.)
My guess was…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. the smells.
I nailed it. But there were other tribulations listed.
The most striking feature of our small lives is the unavoidable, domineering presence of the plastic laundry hamper originally bought from Target in 2007. Embarrassing, ordinary objects like the hamper are empowered in small spaces; they become tyrants. In a larger home, this perfectly functional item might recede quietly into a closet or laundry room.
Life in our tiny home is characterized above all by shabbiness. Like the apartment’s pervasive, undomesticateable dust bunnies, the threadbare feeling grows and grows simply because it already exists.
No one warns you that everything is more concentrated in a tiny house, that the natural life cycle of objects accelerates.
Our things are aging faster than they did in their previous homes. We sit on our lone couch more hours a day than in any previous dwelling. The cushions are fading, the springs sagging, the corners fraying. Our rug is balding along our daily paths, starkly revealing repetitive routines: back and forth to the coffee machine, to the couch, to the sink, to the couch. The denudations look like cow paths cut through sage brush — invasive affronts on the landscape. Everything in our tiny house is worked over more, used harder.
Here, even smells take up space. We once made a meal that called for caramelizing three pounds of onions. For hours the onions melted in their pan. Technically they were taking up less and less space, but somehow they intruded more. In a tiny house, the smell of slowly sweated onions is an inescapable, cloyingly rich aroma; a scent to drive men — and women — mad.
“It smells like onion,” my husband had certified weeks later. “That doesn’t seem like a good thing to wear.” I said, “I can’t not wear it.” And that was true. I did wear it, but the bra’s coolly advertised moisture-wicking technology seemed designed to activate the old onions. I carried the smell with me deep into the city. You can never really leave a tiny house; it goes with you everywhere.
Get a camper. At least you can move it.
On the plus side, the onion smell probably makes a good bug repellent – possibly even an everything repellent…
Imagine a family of seven living in a 20 ft long travel trailer for weeks at a time at the beach with no AC. I’m amazed we didn’t kill each other. My Dad’s idea of a vacation was either surf fishing or bay fishing all day…every day…
There is nothing about tiny houses that interests me, nothing.
Better have a big fan in the WC.
You can’t sneak a fart in that place…
How about crawling down the ladder from the bedroom loft during an active bladder night.
And many of these have composting toilets. Rock, paper, scissors – who gets to deal with that this week?!
“…the smell coming out of the back seat was terrible.”
“I know that smell.”
I made forts bigger than those when I was a kid. It didn’t have internet though…
My home is 580 Sq’ and round. I have started cooking on the grill, outside, to minimize cooking odors and eye irritation. The upside to small homes is you keep your buying impulses to a minimum.
Somebody that lived in a tiny house for awhile told me the dilemma. There are only two rooms. Inside and outside.
There was a reason my ancestors moved out of their homestead claim shacks
“Tiny Cell Living” is how I Envision it !
I like looking at pics of these places, partly because I like checking out decor, but somehow these teeny apartments fascinate me: How in the world do you smash a life into 500 square feet?
One of the images that stays most in my mind is one in which the bed was so close to the stove that she could have used the bed as a chair and stovetop as a table, and I wondered about the jumping oil, etc. I mean you have a backsplash and a hood behind and over the stovetop, respectively, but oil and food particles leap in all directions. Onto a kitchen floor, no big deal, people clean their floors. But onto a bed? How do people live like that?
I personally like the concept of a smaller efficient home. I beleive the tiny homes are limited to 500 square feet because they build them on trailer frames with wheels. No building permit. I think there’s a market for something with a foundation in the 800 to 1000 square foot range with the same innovations
I love my studio! However, I use a lot of Febreze, Lysol Spray and incense. I do cook, but nothing fancy like caramelized onions–most everything is a ‘one pot’ meal. I do get really bored cleaning the same damned small bathroom, the new but damned dark brown carpet that shows every f’ing light-colored speck, the sh*tty, old asphalt tile in the crappy little kitchen…oh, oh…did I start going off again? So sorry.
I love my studio…bc I’m the only one here and can do as I wish–and THAT’s the only good thing!!!
Who are they trying to kid? Crawling down the ladder from the bedroom loft is a field sobriety test. Living like that will give plenty of opportunity for it, too.
You Really Don’t want to Fart in there, for that Reason alone it’s Too Small ! Gauranteed to Give you that 100 foot Stare in a 10 Foot Room !
I helped my brother-in-law move into a 500 sf apartment with his new wife. On our way home I said to my wife that her brother and his wife would be divorced within the year – they can’t get away from each other for even a little bit of personal time. She thought it kind of horrible I would say such a thing. They were actually divorcing within eight months.
Damn, my parents NEVER stayed anywhere long enough for us kids to measure the actual square footage of our living quarters.
I’m not kidding…..My best guess is we went to as many as 14 different schools before I actually graduated.
I have a potential “tiny house”. It is a custom 140 sf shed I got for my birthday a few years ago – with the intention of making it into a “she shed”. So far I have flunked. All that I have had done is have the ceiling insulated and sheetrocked and the dumb azz screwed up the sheetrock, so I have to pull down half of it and get it done right. But that was a “relative hire”, so I get what I got. I have lots of ideas that veer off from the dumb crap I see on the tiny house shows. We live in a 950sf house now – sooo….I know that I can’t LIVE in a much smaller place, but I can have a “fort” in one, LOL.
I once lived in a 360 square foot studio (took it because I wanted the building and knew I would move up to a spacious 900′). The biggest areas were the bathroom and kitchen, both small(er) but doable. The hardest part was a queen size bed and an oriental carpet I had to leave partly rolled up for six months so it would fit. For one person, it was okay, but wouldn’t work for any length of time.
A friend of mine split her year between a 50′ sailboat and her parent’s house while they spent fall/winter in AZ. I knew the week she moved back to the boat because all her suits smelled of diesel fuel.
I with you Brad. I am looking to build a small retirement cottage <1000sq ft ( not including screened in porch) for the summer months up north. Two small bedrooms and a living room-kitchen should work. Less space to clean and furnish and lower taxes.
This I know: tiny places are a lot harder to clean and keep clean because there’s so much stuff crammed in everywhere — even if you edit your belongings.
I think I would love a ‘tiny house’. I currently live with my son (he rescued me from AZ when I was ill) but I would LOVE someplace like that, just for me.
I currently live in Oregon, and the possibilities for beautiful views are endless. In a house such as that, my farts and smells would be my own. I would not want a partner of any kind, just visitors.
I’ve threatened my son that I would park my ‘tiny home’ in our current carport, (neither of us has a car) and be a bitchy, obnoxious neighbor. (Not really, I love my son, he supported me for two years while I’ve been sick.) He asked me what would change? My child is as obnoxious and sarcastic as I am. I was raised that way, so was he. No snotflakes in MY family. LOL
Anonymous
Exactly, especially if it’s constructed from logs.
I can see a tiny house on an awesome parcel of land that is a vacation getaway-but not full time living. I did the teeny studio apartment thing in my young career days and the house I grew up in was 950 sq ft.. I much appreciate having some space to roam.
Submariners live in small spaces and smell each other’s socks and skivvies all the time. Pretty soon, they all smell alike – and then they don’t smell it any more. But you end up living in your mind a lot.
These are not apartments, they are kennels for people.
It’s where you put the people in Randy Newman’s Short People song. Libtards saving the planet only.
I could live in a 500 sq ft house…as long as it has a 4000 sq ft shop.
Cannot live in such a confined space. Kids are gone and it’s just the two of us in the house we bought in 1994. Not going to give it up for anything. Family and kids visiting need room to stay. That’s what family is all about.
I want to live in Trump Tower , All of them.
I hope he builds one in Idaho or Montana , soon.
wtf is it w/ the desire to squeeze your life into the littlest space possible?
you can fit the world’s population into the state of Texas & give everyone, EVERYONE!!!!, 1,000 square feet to live in
that leaves a lot of frickin’ free space …. SPREAD OUT!
Done with that small shit. I was on submarines for over sixteen years. I’ve lived SMALL.
The next town over from me, built 6 of these death traps on a lot where a single family home once stood. They better hope all those neighbors get along, ’cause that’s too dang close!
Don’t all libs smell like corn chips and feet anyway?
This tiny house movement was started by the Agenda 21, now Agenda 2030.They want people to live small and live in the same neighborhood they work in and to not drive and to not use as much energy, etc.
My town is still pushing some of this controlling agenda.
Some people do like living in small space but this whole “movement” thing is straight from the pit of the UN.
We bought a house once, and turned it into a rental, but it was originally a basement house before two more floors were built on top of it. Downstairs, the toilet was right next to the stove. Talk about being on the pot while stirring the pot. I wonder if everything tasted like shit.
Anyone thats ever been on a submarine would’ve nailed that question.
I once owned a 600SF house. I was single with no pets. It had a basement for storage and the laundry. The space was adequate for 1. Later, I moved to a 750SF apartment. It felt like the open range.
Not precisely on point, but I remember delivering milk with my Father in the Long Island suburbs when I was a kid (~10-18 yo). Most deliveries were to single family dwellings but one memorable place was in the Eastern European side of town and the apartment building always smelled of boiled cabbage! Depending on my mood, the odor (remember, I was a transient to the building, only there for moments) could be repugnant or it could smell wonderful. Nevertheless, even as a kid I wondered what it would be like to have that as a background sensory stimulation. BTW: the one building I delivered to in the Western European/Italian section was replete with the constant odor of garlic which was not terribly common to me and ALWAYS smelled pretty good with the other food odors. My Ma was German/Czech and my Dad was an S.C. market (vegetables) farm boy of mid-18th century English origin. We ate lots of root vegetables as a staple.
The tiny house is the future of Amerika once the progressives get their way. Except we will be living in tiny houses made of cardboard and tin.
I read about a Russian guy (during the Soviet era), who, after 30 years working as an Engineer, was allotted a 900 sq. ft. apartment in Moscow and ONLY had to share the bathroom with ONE other family!
Dude was sitting on top of the world – till he came to America and discovered that a 900 sq.ft. apartment was a closet.
So, I ask myself, why are we (willingly) degenerating to Soviet-style standards of living? What is the attraction of living cheek-to-jowl, smelling our dinners and farts from 3 days ago? I don’t get it.
izlamo delenda est …
So, basically, in a tiny home, your entire life is a “Dutch Oven”.
@ MissinMI, from your description, that sounds like a set up for a prison camp.
None of this article was true from my point of view. I live in a tiny house and I do not have any of these issues and the vast majority who do live in one would not agree with this person. Personally, you do need to have a positive mindset to begin with and I’m thinking this person didn’t have that in the beginning. Everyone one I know who has gone the route of a less expensive, wasteful way of life, loves living tiny. As the old saying goes…Less is More. I don’t spend as much on utilities or upkeep. I have no issues, what so ever, with cooking or any other smells and I enjoy my life much more than I ever did in a large home where there was nothing but wasted space. I bet people who live in large places really only use the bedroom(only to sleep), bathroom, kitchen, and tv space. The rest of the place is only wasted space that has to be heated, cooled, cleaned. Oh, and cleaning, I don’t spend an entire day doing that. Takes me 30 minutes, at max, to have a totally clean house, leaving the remainder of my day to do what I want. There are far more positive things about tiny living then negative.