Tiny Houses

I read Jay Shafer's book yesterday. When I first saw it, I was immediately disappointed. It was about as thick as the manual that came with the last video game I bought. After thinking about it, I laughed. What did I expect? It's a book about 100 square foot houses. Did I expect it to be huge?

The size turned out to be one of the best things about it. It took me about an hour to read the whole thing, but I feel like I got more out of it than the vast majority of books I've ever read, regardless of length. The entire time I was reading, I felt engaged with what he was saying. He made some extremely compelling arguments in a very concise way. He didn't come off as a crazy, Greenpeace style environmentalist. He made living in a house the size of my bedroom closet sound completely reasonable.

Many of the things he said make such obvious sense that it's difficult to understand how the conventional wisdom went off course from where it used to be. People spend so much of their money on a house, and stuff to fill the house, and then a bigger house to fit all the extra stuff they've bought. And money is time. You could take some of that money, and put it towards travel, investments, or perhaps you could just work fewer hours and enjoy your time.

I'm not going to sell my house to move into a tiny house anytime soon, but I really
identified with some of his statements. He dislikes suburbs, and I understand why now. I think I'll look for a different type of house next time, and will definitely want one closer to work. Even if it costs more, or is smaller. Life is too short to spend 10% of your waking hours fighting traffic to get to and from work.