17 May 2014

In the Beginning

When I was very young, I loved crawling under the table and pretending it was my kingdom. A little older, and I built my fair share of blanket forts for various games of the imagination. Fast-forward again to when I was a teenager, and I helped my family build a shed in our back yard, at which point I remember wondering why I couldn't just drag my mattress and a few other things out there and make it my own. Today I live in a smallish apartment but it still somehow feels far more cozy when we break out the blankets and make a little movie night fort.

So I like small, cozy spaces to begin with. Add in concern for "living simply so others may simply live", a dash of engineering critical to design and organize a small space, a pinch of DIY attitude, (and apparently a penchant for cooking metaphor) and you have a compelling group of reasons to, as they say, "downsize".

It was a surprise, then (though a welcome one) to find out about individuals like Macy Miller, communities like Boneyard Studios, and companies like Tumbleweed are all already tackling the challenges inherent in downsizing to a more appropriate living space. The community surrounding tiny houses is, admittedly, a niche little gathering, but it's growing. It's also a community I'd be honored to be a part of.

I've been working hard on a tiny house design of my own for a while. At first very vague sketches of floor plans and lists of ideas, but more recently moving on to some to-scale drawings with Sketchup (which I cannot recommend enough, but that's a separate post!). I'm plenty aware that the chronicle of a tiny house build has been done to death, having been a lurker on countless such blogs over the past several years. Still, whether it ends up being just for myself, or some day ends up useful to someone, I'll be recording progress of my Tiny House design and build here. Stay tuned for more!

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