My whole adventure in sustainability began with an article on tiny houses. Pictured first was one of the earliest and smallest of the tiny houses built by Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Given that I might not have been here today writing this blog, if it had not been for that article, it seems appropriate that I should touch on the subject of tiny houses. In fact, it seems like I should have touched on it a lot sooner.
For those of you who are curious, that article lead me to do a search on tiny houses and then I found "We the Tiny House People" a documentary about tiny homes and sustainable living. From there it just snowballed. About the same time I read "Midnights with the Mystic" by Cheryl Simone and Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. Somehow the synergy of these two experiences close together launched me into my research on sustainability and permaculture. But I digress. On to the tiny houses!
As we face a world that has less and less to offer in the way of resources to more and more people, we are all going to have to reevaluate the line between wants and needs. One of the major areas of discrepancy between want and need is in our choices of shelter. Here in the US, most of us live in homes that are far larger than what we need. And these homes contain far more stuff than can strictly (or perhaps even loosely) be described as needs. When we begin to really look at the energy that we put into purchasing and maintaining our homes we start to see that many of us have become wage slaves in order to maintain a standard of living that is far above what is necessary or sustainable. In so doing we have also shackled ourselves to a way of living that is neither ecologically friendly nor truly fulfilling for we have traded a life rich in experience for one that is full of crap (you thought I was going to say rich in stuff didn't you? Well, I'm just calling it like it is folks).
I have personally embarked on a path toward what I call right-sizing. For many folks, particularly here in the US this will likely involve some down-sizing. While it is not just about the size of the home, (there is also: the amount and type of clothing we wear, the amount and type of food we eat, the number of hours we work and the distance we commute, just for starters) the size of the home is greatly impacted and does greatly impact many of the other aspects of our lives. With this in mind I thought it appropriate to share with you several links to resources on tiny houses and tiny living. I hope you will find them as inspirational and motivational as I have.
