The Tiny Life

Over at Apartment Therapy a reader has turned to the blog for help trying to make a 400 square foot apartment livable.

I’m moving into my first apartment next month and I’m starting to get cold feet! I signed a lease for a 400 sq ft studio in Chicago. I’m looking for suggestions of how to lay it out and decorate it without making it too cluttered but still keeping it somewhat “homey.” I don’t know if I should try to squeeze a bed and a couch in the unit or suck it up and sleep on a futon! And, if I get a futon, how do I make that look nice?

Lend a hand with the design here

So one of the most frequent questions I get about Tiny Houses is: “what if I have a family?”  It is a good question.  To paraphrase Jay Schaffer, “it’s not the size of the house that matters, it is the size in relation to the number of people living in it.”

But this question always bring to mind a question for me

Is it ethical to raise children in such small spaces?

Now I would love to hear you all weigh in on this in the comments section, so please, share your thoughts, I love discussion!  But here is my take on it all, it might not be right, so take it with a grain of salt.  It is also important to know, as a matter of full disclosure, I don’t have kids, nor do I plan on having any.

Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs

I personally think that the raising of a child is successful when the child is loved, is socialized properly, is taught life skills and intellectual ones.   This combined with consistency, safety, room to be a kid and financial resources are also very important.  I feel that as a young child, living in a 400-500 square foot home would be excellent so long as there is a safe place to play outside.

As a child my mother almost never let us watch TV, we didn’t have video games or a computer and if it wasn’t raining outside, out we went.  Luckily we lived on a decent lot in a small town in New Hampshire.  My mother would always dress me in a bright red jacket, which happened to be my favorite color (here I was thinking she encouraged it because I loved red), and I would make forts, climb trees, jump on the trampoline.  In the winter it was snowmen, snow caves and munching on icicles.  I couldn’t imagine having anything less for a child of my own.

The reason I tell this story is that one of the big appeals to Tiny Living is that it gets you outside and reconnecting with nature.  The outside world becomes your second home.  This rare in our society and it is to our downfall, in my opinion.

There are two instances where I think that a Tiny House might not be all that ethical or good for the child.  These two, privacy/boundaries and evaluation of social services, really concern me.  As a child gets older she/he needs their own space, they need their own privacy, a dedicated space solely to them is important in my mind.  It also builds in responsibility for keeping up one’s own space, cleaning, folding, how to make a bed, personalization, and a place for solitude when needed.

The final issue that I think that is a huge issue and this has yet to be tested in the real world is how a representative of social services / child protective services would view a child living in such a small space.  It is often the case that Tiny Houses are not legal, that they in fact by definition (however  deeply flawed) is not a habitable space and would be condemned.

I fear that a child would be removed from the home and the custody of the parents.  That the Tiny House would be boarded up, the parents might be charged with neglect.  It is simply a parents worst nightmare, to have their children taken from them because they are labeled bad parents.

What do you think?

What would social services think?

Is it ethical to raise a child in a Tiny House?

The Seattle Times has a great new article on a really Tiny Apartment that fit the needs of this bachelor.  Really interesting design elements here, especially the hidden soaking tube that is hidden under the floor!

Sauer likes this precision. Awkward spaces, wasted places annoy him. Two alarm clocks, two music sources, extra furniture. Needless, needless, needless.  “What I really wanted was one place with exactly what I needed and wanted. Quality is more important than quantity for me, and extra space only a problem,” he has written, describing his nearby too-big-for-him, one-bedroom condo.  To me he says, “I tend to like things in their place.”  And that explains it: The uber-cool, fully functional 182-square-foot home for two on the basement floor of a 102-year-old apartment building that Sauer is finishing after seven years of work. It could also have something to do with his line of work — airplane interiors engineering for Boeing. And education — a master’s degree in whole-systems design.

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When I was looking around for videos I noticed that for some reason, videos of hide away beds includes techno music, but none the less, these are pretty neat!

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Tiny Houses have continued to charm and excite imaginations with yet another headline by NPR featured on the Yahoo! homepage.  It is obviously that Tiny Houses have an innate charm and spark conversations across the globe about how we live or more specifically, what we live in.

The Japanese have long endured crowded cities and scarce living space, with homes so humble a scornful European official once branded them rabbit hutches.

But in recent years, Japanese architects have turned necessity into virtue, vying to design unorthodox and visually stunning houses on remarkably narrow pieces of land. In the process, they are also redefining the rules of home design.

Few Americans would consider a parking-space-sized lot as an adequate site to build a house. But in Japan, homes are rising on odd parcels of land, some as tiny as 300 square feet.

Link to full story:  here

Here is a 8 foot by 40 foot container home located in texts.  Designed by Jim Poteet to be living space plus a garden storage area on one end, the entire thing is surrounded by well manicured gardens.

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So many of you know about the Tiny Lake House, I think it is my favorite Tiny Houses to date, but this one might be in the running.  Not surprisingly it is built by the same architect  Broadhurst Architects which has hit another home run with this one.  The house features their signature all glass garage style door, opening out to the most gorgeous vista.  With the fall colors it reminds me of living in New Hampshire when I was a child.  The house is simple, but has a very honest quality to it.  The garage door opens out to a porch to take advantage of the outdoors, I would just love to be able to sleep in a comfy bed with the door open (maybe add a bug screen) on a warm summer night.

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So recently things have blown up with the Yahoo video, but PBS also posted a video.  Talking about the motivations, construction and counter-consumer culture trend this video hits the nail on the head.  I first found this through Michael over at Tiny House Design and Tammy over at Rowdy Kittens both really good blogs.

I wonder if the Tiny House Movement is gaining traction?  Are people rethinking normal, is bigger better?

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

Here is a neat prototype is kinda neat and has recently won a few awards for design.  From the designer:

The ECObitat start from a modular system of 2.44 m x 3,10 m x 12.20 m, scaled from the standard OSB  plate (oriented strand board) of 1.22 m x 2.44 m, defining areas of flexible multipurpose that can be progressively coupled and adequate for transport. Legs telescope from the base ensuring a good adaptability to different types of topographies. The responsible use of recyclable and industrial materials results in a speedy and prompt delivery of manufacturing space modules.
The main materials of the system are:
- Structure in “steel framing”
- Vertical walls and floor in OSB with thermo-acoustic insulation;
- Coverage in metal type sandwich tiles;
- Window in tempered glass;
- Green roof and walls;
- System of reuse of water;
- Use of solar panels for water heating;
- Use of wind power to generate electricity.

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The Luxe Hara Villa  was designed by Pinakin Patel, a designer who first got his start creating picture frames in Mumbai, has released a new prefab luxury villa for India.  Designed to be low impact, this prefab can be erected in a short time, but still have a very sense of class.   Designed to limit the use of water and electricity, this house still has all the comforts of a modern house.  A single bedroom, well apointed bathroom, AC, internet, energy saving lights the whole house comes in at $64,000 US Dollars, not half bad.

This house is pretty compact, with only 325 square feet inside and another 325 square feet of patio under a pergola, it certainly is a Tiny House.

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