Could you live in this house?
It may look like it is the size of a garden shed (and note that it is actually up on wheels, so you can pull it as a trailer), but it has everything you might need.
"More people are looking at tiny homes as full-time residences," says Jay Shafer, owner of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, based in Sebastopol, California. "The way we live our lives has changed." Since 2000 the architect has been building homes as small as 70 square feet, many with green-certified lumber and gravity-fed plumbing. Just last year he toiled away on his designs solo; today he needs five full-time employees to help meet demand.Shafer lives in the 96-square-foot Epu home, with a sleeping loft, a desktop that transforms into a dining room table, and a heating furnace the size of a stoplight. Photovoltaic panels provide what little power is needed, and framing members are spaced 24 inches apart instead of the standard 16 inches, to save trees. "Recycling can only go so far," Shafer says. "If you don't use anything in the first place, you're much better off." His newest model, Weebee, ticks in at 110 square feet and costs $46,000 fully built.
Let's take a tour:
His newest model has a slightly different floor plan, but is still only 110 sq ft.
The main problem for most of us is that we simply have too much stuff in order to fit it all into a space of this size. But a lot of the stuff is really because we have been faithful consumers - going out and constantly buying stuff, and all that stuff needs a place, and that leads to a larger house.
Right now I am headed in the reverse direction. Try and get rid of as much stuff as possible. De-clutter, sell, give away, throw away. And most importantly stop buying all of that new stuff. I wouldn't be able to fit into something quite this small for a while - it is more the concept that I find fascinating...