What no one tells you about living in a "tiny house"

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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.

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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. The eau de onion spread to everything. It clung especially to the moist bathroom towels, and to the laundry drying in the bedroom. We were never clean again. Fresh from the shower, we immediately smelled of onions — of tiny house. For weeks, smelling like old onions became one of our micro lives’ certainties. The scent’s preferred repository, I eventually learned, was my New Age, polyester sports bra. “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.

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For generations, writers have warned about romanticizing the lives of the poor. Beware the nostalgie de la boue. Small can be a bad fit. So we daydream big. Dreams of unfashionable, politically incorrect, old American aspirations that our generation isn’t supposed to believe in anymore. Dreams of design features so vast that they sound like foreign countries. I dream of kitchen islands. I dream outside this box.

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Living in a cardboard box sucks?

Who knew?

Imagine if someone cleaned chitlins before cooking them?

The new American dream is to work hard and get a decent job, then buy a tiny house and give the rest of your income to taxes, so poor people can afford better houses than you on their section 8 rent

Having lived in a tiny home for coming up on six years... Yes and no.

Yes, things can be overwhelming at times. A few pieces of laundry carelessly cast aside upon getting home from work make the house seem completely destroyed.

Meals are had on the couch. We don't have a table.

Our island, a stainless bar, is a repository for the stuff found in my pockets. The tray meant to hold keys and wallet, overflows with the day's detritus. A pocket knife, a watch, some headphones, a hankerchief, they remove the only clear space in the kitchen.

A toaster becomes a luxury we don't need. A blender becomes the sole appliance allowed counter space.

But there are good times.

I frequently read aloud in the bathroom while the wife bathes. We giggle at the works of twain, whitman, and Larkin.

Coffee brewing in the morning pulls me from a dead sleep. The smell wafting down the hall into the bedroom.

The 140lb dog sleeps under our insanely large platform bed. He, and it, a poor fit for our tiny home.

Surround sound and a 60 inch tv can turn our tiny living room into a submersive theatre experience. Our floor an extension of the couch.

Our front door opens onto our carport, minus the cars, it's over 1000 square feet of covered area for entertaining.

Our electric bills are laughable. They may only be 100 bucks a month, but the house is kept at a cool 63. Day in day out.

In the winter, a small electric fireplace can heat the entire place to 90 of we wish. Instead we rarely use the heater. We cuddle under a comforter. We make cocoa and roast marshmallows over the stove.

When hurricanes come, it is a non concern. I built the place on a steel frame. The floors are double 1 inch plywood tied into steel with bolts with additional 2x6 bracing. The walls are 2x6 and tied into the steel bracing as well as the floors. The roof is heavy gauge steel. Everything overbuilt to the point of being laughable.

It's peaceful.

I like being able to talk to the wife in the bedroom without raising my voice.






After six years though, it is time for a change. The new house will have 18 ft ceilings in the living room. But we are making sure to keep the closeness. An upstairs balcony will overlook the living area. Large sliding doors will separate the shop from the living area. Double tub. There are certain things we love about our tiny home. There are certain things that need to go.

I want a god damned walk in pantry.

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Why the frick would you do this? 3 pounds of onions and you didn't think it would smell up the house? Caramelizing 3 fricking pounds of onions would smell up a normal house.

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For real. Get a propane burner /grill and cook that shite outside even in a normal house

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No one warns you that everything is more concentrated in a tiny house


You don't say

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Leave it to the woman to not realize the most obvious.

Duh

Three pounds of carmelized onion?

Good Lord

Yep just as gross as I imagined. I mean...have you ever sniffed a dog kennel after the dog has been locked in there a few hours? Same thing.