The Tiny Life

Tonight show 6pm Eastern

Tonight we will be talking about cooling tiny houses.  I don’t know about where you live, but in Charlotte, NC this week it has been hot!  we have topped 90 degrees a few days, I want my spring.  So I figure it would be a good topic to cover as we get into the summer season.

There has been discussion swirling around using Tiny Houses for meeting the needs of homeless populations. I found this great Tiny House that can also address these needs.

Homeless Chateau is fabricated from standard 4 x 8 and 4 x 4-foot sheets of plywood, OSB and construction signs, and can be knocked down, transported flat, and erected quickly and easily with just a screwdriver. Once assembled, the structure can be moved around the host space on its casters and then set in place with a temporary foundation–two bricks under the front. Homeless Chateau can be easily reconfigured and combined to make dual-occupancy and eight-foot-tall structures.

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So I was sitting at work today when a co-worker of mine came in to chat about gardening.  It was at that point, I told her about my idea about raised bed gardens.  The raised beds would be about 4 feet tall, just the right height to work the garden, but not have to bend.  If you have ever spent an hour weeding, either bending over or kneeling, it can be uncomfortable if not painful.  I explained how at 4 feet tall and 2 feet wide, you can be situated perfectly in terms of ergonomics.  Raised bed allow you to have perfect soil for what you are growing and help reduce weeds in the process.  Overall you have perfect soil, reduce strain and have a very neat looking garden. She left my office and I began to think how I really wish I could implement this idea today.  But alas I am not quite settled where I am living. I opened up Sketchup and started drawing out what I would like this garden to look like.  I then realized what I was doing….I was using this tool to help me visualize the future, to help cement this goal, to keep me motivated.

Then idea crossed my mind, what are the other way I make sure I stay motivated on an idea while I get to where I need to be to implement it?

Now these tools will not work for everyone and I am a particularly computer oriented, also very visual, so I find these methods work for me.

My Blog

What some of you may not realize is, I don’t yet live in a Tiny House.  The plans are in the works, designs being drawn, research on building codes in my area and seeking land, but no house of yet.  By having a blog I am able to share my passion and connect with others that love the idea or live the dream.  It is an intensely empowering tool.  Now some of you are thinking, I don’t want to start a blog or I don’t know how.  Of course there are really easy and free services such as wordpress.com or blogger.com that will get you up and running in under 10 minutes.  But it doesn’t stop there.  Journaling, plain old pen and paper, is the old school version to achieve this.  The advantage of a blog over this method is that when you have an audience, you are accountable to them in a way.  Some one, or in my case several thousand, will notice when you shirk on posting.  Even if you don’t want to go the full blog route, consider writing a guest post for a blog, I am always happy to review and possibly post your piece.

Google Sketchup

This is a program made by google that is completely free (they do a pay for pro version) that allows you to quickly design things and create them in a 3D environment.  It wasn’t until today that I realized that I have this established behavior.  When I have something in mind that I have aspirations for or dream about, I have time and time again opened up google sketchup to draw it.  What does this do?  It creates a visual representation of my dream.  It takes it from my mind into the real world, one step closer to being a reality for me.  I did this with this garden idea, see below, and I have done it countless times with ideas for Tiny Houses.

43Things.com

This is a really interesting website, it basically makes a lists of your goals, connects you with those who have the same goals and empowers you to achieve them.   What takes this to the next level is when someone achieves a goal, it has them describe how they went about getting there.  People can discuss and share ideas about how to tackle roadblocks.Stop Making Excuses
A while ago I was out to dinner with several of my friends, the conversation turned to travel and a friend and I were asked how many places we have been.  I responded 17 countries all before I was 23.  They were floored.  “How did you get to do that!?”  I am not independently wealthy, I don’t have a trust fund and my parents didn’t pay for it, so how did I do it?  I posed the question to them, why didn’t you travel that much?  They instantly said “no time”, “no money”, etc.  My other friend who had been to just as many places as I, chimed in and said “you’re making excuses”.  It then dawned on me, how many times do we make excuses, stupid excuses, defeatist excuses.  Now there is reality and responsibility, but at what point does that end and the excuses begin?  For most, they would agree it would be unreasonable to think that a high schooler could afford a trip to Europe, but I did.   I did, for a whole month, I went to 8 countries and had a blast doing it.  So it brings me back to the point, stop making excuses and do it, because too often the only thing standing in our way, is ourselves.

One particular method I use for this is to take a goal that seems too out of reach.  Write down your goals, then next to them write the very very first step you would have to do to achieve that goal.  To get a better idea, take this example.  Lets say you want to build a Tiny House, you might start by seeking out a place to purchase a trailer.  You might open up excel and make a rough budget, then go price the materials at a hardware store.  You might email someone who lives in a Tiny House and ask them for advice on how to start.  See how these are really simple things.  See how these these things take 5 minutes, 30 minutes.  See how you can do any of these things right now!

Vision Board

This isn’t my favorite idea, but it works for many folks, so it is at least noteworthy.  A vision board is basically a board where you glue photos of what you want to be.  If you want to be happy, paste photos that conjure thoughts of happiness.  If you want to focus more on family, put your favorite photos of your kids, your significant other etc.  Take this  board and place it in a prominent place that you can view it several times a day.  Perhaps place it in a place that you look at it, but others can see it to.  They will ask about it and by sharing your goals, you reinforce it, but then you are almost held accountable to them when they ask about it later.

So here is my garden idea

So this is a pretty interesting one, I have serious doubts about this one, but here it goes. As we make our way to a oil-less future, hopefully sooner rather than later, the questions remains: what do we do with all the old infrastructure? One possible relic is the gas tanker. Now the Gas-off, no pun intended, of the internals of the tank leave me very skeptical. Perhaps a good scrub, then a grinding of the top inner layer might do it. But potentially we could be left with 10′s of thousands of these tankers, here is Aristede Antonas take on how to upcycle these.

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Here is another unique house, the modified “C” shape is crafted from layered wood to create this shape. You can take in amazing views with the floor to ceiling windows. The interior has beautiful wood paneling that is sculpted to the contours of the structure, creating a seamless floor that flows into the wall, then the ceiling. You will no doubt notice the lack of amenities such as a kitchen or bathroom, but is that a bad thing?

What if you were to have several of these houses, each with its own purpose. This one to sleep in, the next to bathe in, another to dine in. It would almost make sense, the simplicity of the structure demands the simplicity in its function.

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Show Tonight At 6pm Eastern

So I started doing some research the other day on roofs.  I never knew there was so much to consider when considering roofs.  So Tonight’s show will talk about everything I have learned in one neat package

• What types of roofs are there?
• What are the pros/cons of each?
• How do you insulate roofs?
• How to control condensation and avoid mold

Online video chat by Ustream

This house defiantly resides in the small house category and not the tiny house one, but at 800 square feet I am amazed at how big it seems.  With a unique stair/seating/maybe sleeping focal point and warm wood tones this is a truly amazing design.  The designer Altelliar Bow Wow is a Japanese architect who has been hailed as truly remarkable in innovation.    Say he is

one of the most innovative practices working today. Achieving near cult status among architectural students around the world. …Atelier Bow-Wow have built a career confronting the challenges posed by dense urban environments. Their city houses—enclosed in vibrant, idiosyncratic forms—are distinguished by their capacity to accommodate the changing needs of the occupants. A basic feature is the permeability of interior spaces, where public and the more intimate places co-mingle.

Check this house out.

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Here is an exert from a great piece called “The art of living in a small space”  It give some great advise and another view point

Long ago, I read that to live in the country you must have the soul of a poet, the dedication of a saint, and a good station wagon.  Today I suppose you’d have to update the station wagon to an SUV, but the fact remains: To live successfully anywhere outside the mainstream of life you must have an unconventional spirit coupled with down-to-earth practicality—a combo that can be hard to find and harder still to balance.   I live in the country, but my latest life choices have also involved living in miniature spaces—which presents an additional set of challenges, both to the soul and to practicality. For the last three years I’ve shared a one-room cabin with a pack of dogs and one outnumbered but boldly unflappable cat. The cabin has an exterior footprint of 409 square feet—nine feet above the minimum my county requires for a residence. Its interior space is about 360 square feet, including closets and cabinet space.

I work as well as live here, so I’m in this one room 24 hours a day, except when the critters and I are out dog walking, running errands, picking blackberries, or otherwise adventuring.  On winter days, when I’m tripping over tails, wiping up muddy pawprints for the umpteenth time, and having accusatory canine noses stuck into my computer (“Mom, we’re booooored!”) the cabin sometimes feels as small as a shoebox. On summer afternoons, it’s luxuriously spacious with its glass door thrown open to sunlight and all its denizens sprawled on the deck.  In fact it seems so large that I’m currently contemplating spending part of my year in a structure about one third this size. Think dollhouse (or rather, converted garden shed).

I’m hardly alone. Even as the size of the average new American house has more than doubled (from 1,100 square feet during the post-WWII housing boom to more than 2,225 by 1999), more and more people are also exploring small-space living. These include, most visibly, RVers spending months in their cleverly designed rolling homelets, simple-living advocates wanting to use fewer resources, homeless camper-dwellers, folks living on boats, and country newcomers (like many readers of this magazine) who are camping out in garages, trailers, cabins, or sheds while building their dream homes. Finally you’ve got people like me who’d rather have 409 paid-for square feet than 2,225 square feet of mortgaged luxury.  RVers and boat dwellers have built-in advantages. Literally built-in. RVs and boats, with their endless crannies, hidden storage spaces, and double-purpose furnishings (like tables that turn into beds) provide the construction model for the rest of us.  But there’s more to small-space living than just clever design. Living well in tiny spaces has four parts:
•    Coping
•    Building
•    Gadgeting
•    Decoratingd
Let’s take a brief look at all four. Oh, and before we do, I’ll confess that a lot of my knowledge comes from what I-didn’t-anticipate, or I-didn’t-do when I built my cabin. It was a learning experience.

This is just the intro, Read more of the Article here

When you look at a cargo container, it typically isn’t the most pleasing thing to look at, often some color of drag designed to take the brunt of storms.  But what if that container had a hidden surprise?  Here is a cargo container that with a push of a button can unfold into a luxury apartment.  With a chandelier, rows of book shelves, a dinning table, a big bed, this is much more then first meets the eye.  It is quite impressive.  Now obviously this needs to be deployed under some form of shelter or on a night with no chance of rain, but I think its pretty neat!

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