buy, swap and sell groups, and once I had these, I was able to
start drawing up my framing – which I did, very simply, on
graph paper; no fancy computer skills needed! Once I had my
design refined, I used as much recycled timber as I could find,
and purchased the rest from a local timber mill, which saved
me almost three-quarters of the cost. I had a friend help me
with the framing as I’d never done it before, but I have been an
earth builder for seven years now. I work with Superadobe, an
earthbag technique developed by Iranian-American architect
Nader Khalili, who created the Cal-Earth Institute in California
where I studied. In fact, while working on projects in Australia,
the US, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, I stumbled across tiny
house projects around the world. And the more I looked at
tiny houses, the more it seemed to make sense as an option
for me. My entire house (including the chassis, a small
solar-powered fridge and solar panel) cost less than $10,000
to build. I now live here with my partner and our golden
retriever/labrador cross, Saffron. Luckily she has short hair
- tiny house, big dog! We’ve been here for almost a year now.
MORTGAGE, SCHMORTGAGE
The response you get when you tell someone you live in a tiny
house is always exciting. You can see a twinkle in their eye
when they see someone doing something they themselves
would love to do! Tiny houses allow us to step off the treadmill
of the mortgage trap and step back into life. And we can all
live without a mortgage if we just change our habits – the
main thing it comes down to is wanting and needing less
stuff, using less power, being conscious of how much waste
we create and being willing to deal with it ourselves.
We compost our food waste, burn paper things that we
can’t compost, recycle or reuse cans and jars, and make
bricks for building out of our clean soft plastics. We simply
shove the soft plastics into a plastic bottle with a wooden
spoon until they’re rock hard. You can fit almost two months
worth of plastic in one bottle depending on your food
packaging and buying habits. This ends up being a “building
brick” in the Superadobe walls, and after render is applied
you can’t see them. In one year we’ve never had a rubbish
collection and have been to the tip only twice.
GREAT AND SMALL
The experience of living tiny with a partner has been
incredibly positive in our case. We love the house, how it
feels and functions and the fact it’s so simplistic. If we need
space, we just go outside. When one of us is sick, there’s
the bed and the couch where we can rest. It’s quite handy
sitting in a kitchen and being able to reach whatever you
need, so endless cups of herbal tea are never a bother! In
fact, we often have friends pop in for a cuppa. If the weather
is bad, we will most probably have our mini wood stove on
and we can fit about six people in the house comfortably
with steaming cups of tea on laps. If the weather is nice, we
entertain outside, but we do find that people prefer to be in
the house because it’s such a lovely space.
There are just so many amazing things about living tiny- being warm, taking five minutes to clean the house, not
having enough space to endlessly accumulate more things
and the simple convenience. It also seems to invoke the child
within – living in a compact and cosy space reminds you of
being in a treehouse as a kid. The biggest challenge is that
you can’t easily buy new things. You might think, “Oh, that’s
a nice jacket. But then where am I going to hang it... OK,
maybe I don’t need it after all!” The one thing that we’re
missing is a deck, and that will be the next step because
I love stretching and that’s one thing that becomes tricky
(but not impossible) in a tiny house.
THE SIMPLE LIFE
In the end, I think the house you live within should be a simple
and attainable thing that doesn’t force you to live beyond your
means. The concept of a tiny house is an affordable and
realistic option for housing, as it removes so many of the costs
that people often have to fork out beyond their financial ability
to pay for. And if you’re considering going down this path, but
don’t know where to start, just ask. There’s a whole connected
community of people out there who are doing the same thing.
Ultimately, a home should be a launching pad from which you
spring into the world and do things that you love – be it a job,
a way of life, a craft, whatever! I think it’s always worth
remembering that life is to be lived, not worked. R“Living tiny seems to invoke the child within – the cosy
space reminds you of being in a treehouse as a kid.”
real living41
LOVING