Smalltopia: Living big in tiny houses
By Heather Morgan
It feels huge. It’s actually a little bigger than what I need. This is a ton of space. It is beautiful. I feel really lucky.
These are all phrases Nelsonville area resident Pat uses when describing the house she had custom built for her in 2005. Is she describing a “Parade of Homes” McMansion with several bedrooms and bathrooms, a great room, media room, bonus room and three-car garage? Not exactly.
Pat’s home, built by eco-friendly Amherst construction company Gimme Shelter Construction, is a showpiece. But it’s a compact 750 square feet. With no garage.
Pat, a writer who loves her privacy and asked that the SCENE not use her last name, is one of a growing number of people who, fed up with America’s culture of greed, has become part of the small home movement.
“I did intentionally decide to go small,” says Pat, who grew up near Nelsonville before moving away and living in urban environments like Japan, California and Minneapolis for 25 years. She moved back to Central Wisconsin in 2003, longing once again for tranquil woods, lakes and nature. “It’s a beautiful setting,” she says of the 17 acres of land she lives on. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of plunking some big monster (conventional house) here.”
The small house movement, which was born out of environmental concerns as well as a shifting economy, is not a movement about people claiming to be “tinier than thou,” according the to the Small House Society, which promotes use of small living spaces that foster sustainable living. Instead, the movement is about people making a conscious decision to shift toward simpler and smaller living.
The movement, in essence, begs the questions of how much does a person really need to be happy? And were we just kidding ourselves all those years of consumerism, super-sized houses and excess?
Size is relative, with some much-publicized companies such as Tiny Texas Houses and Tumbleweed Houses, offering plans for tiny houses as small as 65 to 140 square feet. These tiny, or micro homes, as they’re sometimes called, often come on wheels so that they can be considered travel trailers and therefore circumvent minimum square footage regulations of local municipalities. A tiny home on wheels can be placed anywhere that allows RVs.
For people who need a little more space for families or who just aren’t ready for the extreme lifestyle of a 100-square-foot micro home, small homes that range from 600 square feet to 1,000 square feet are an option.
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