The Difference Between Buying a House and Buying a Tiny House

I have not always been poor and rural.

My life has gone through a number of socio-economic phases. I started off as a middle-class urban kid, transitioned to being a poor rural kid, then I was a working-class (but educated) urban young adult, then a middle-class urban adult and now I'm a rural adult artist (more fun than working- or middle-class, but much less financially stable than either).

Almost ten years ago, back when I was a yuppie, I bought a house in Toronto with my then partner. Now, I can't even fathom how I had the gall to do that. That house cost more than 30 times what I paid for my tiny home last month. It was a relatively inexpensive Toronto house, in a neighbourhood that was gentrifying, but still fairly working class. The house was nice and big: 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths; it had great lines, fit our furniture and was relatively easy to heat. We bought top-of-the-line stainless steel appliances and settled in for the duration. We thought.

We both had decent jobs (my then partner's job was particularly well-paid), and we figured we could carry it. And, financially, it was manageable.

It seemed like a dream come true, owning a Toronto house in our mid-thirties. But let me tell you, buying and owning that house was incredibly stressful. We fought about buying it. We fought about how to paint it. We fought about whether to buy a giant flat-screen TV to put in the living room. We fought about how to pay for it all.

And, in the end, we fought ourselves right out of love with each other. (Admittedly, it was not only about the house. There were some other issues that I won't get into here. If you want a general sense of what the end of that relationship was like, you can listen to the break-up album I wrote about that and some of my other relationships here: Love Bites on Bandcamp).

But at the core, there was something that went wrong in that relationship that was directly related to the house. We didn't own that house. The house owned us and after a couple of years, the house, and the stuff inside it, had become more important than loving and supporting one another. I couldn't tolerate the hollowness of it. I couldn't love a house instead of a human being.

It was such a relief for me to walk away from that house, that mortgage and that relationship.

I am struck by the contrast with my experience of buying my tiny home. I feel like I can love this little dwelling. It's almost small enough to hug. And I can afford it (thanks to a kind, informal, interest-free family loan - thank you! thank you!). No stress. No arguments. And, since it isn't big enough for another person to stay for more than a few days: no risk of territorial disputes.

This house is the right house for me. At 232 square feet, it is just the right size. It isn't about impressing anybody. It isn't about all of the "supposed to's" of home ownership. It has everything I need and nothing I don't need.

The Great De-Stuffing Part 2: Farewell Furniture and... Paper?

The Great De-Stuffing continues, somewhat hampered by the terribly cold weather we're having in Nova Scotia. I've been closing off the upstairs of the house so that the wood stove has a better chance of heating the living room and kitchen, and that means that some days it is simply too cold to do any sorting work upstairs and I'm forced to sit downstairs by the fire, crocheting and watching Portlandia. Forced, I tell you.

Despite the cold, though, things have started to leave my house. Fortunately, some of my friends are moving into new homes at the same time as I am trying to get rid of lots of my stuff. One of my friends came and took two of my bookshelves (of the seven I own). And other friends are coming, probably next week, to take away a bureau, desk, filing cabinet and two other bookshelves.

This feels exciting. I will get a chance to experiment with living with my clothes in baskets tucked under my bed, before I even get into my Tiny Home. I'm hoping this will help me choose what to keep and what to sell/gift/donate or, as a last resort, throw away.

Of course, for now, the contents of these pieces of furniture are spilling out on to the floor. I'm planning some kind of massive sale/donation/gift-a-thon in the spring, but I have to sort everything first and that is going to be the true challenge. I'm not attached to most of my furniture. Very little of it came with me from Toronto, so it's mostly odds and end that I have picked up in the past three years. I will have enough room in the Tiny Home for the pieces that are important and/or sentimental to me: my bed, desk, one bookshelf and an arm chair/ottoman combo. But the "stuff" is much harder to deal with. I'm very attached to most of it, since it survived the big sort I did before I moved here from Toronto.

And, at the same time, I'm excited to let go of it.

For some reason this week, people keep posting on FB and sending me links to videos and blog posts (like this one) about how overwhelming modern society is for our little human brains. That's how I feel about my stuff, especially the paper. It overwhelms me. Sure, some of it is necessary. As the sole proprietor of the business of my life, I have to keep records. But most of it is outdated. I have, for example, all of the statements for a pension plan I left behind in 2002. I've held on to a lot of paper like that out of a habit that pre-dates the ready availability of information on the Internet, and out of a paralysis that has kept me from making a decision about it.

The time has come. The decision is forced.

I predict that there will be a great big document bonfire in my future.

New Year's Rulin's

I'm a resolver. I love New Year's. Mostly because the Christmas season is over for another year, but also because of the fresh start feeling.

Seventy years ago, Woody Guthrie made a list of resolutions called his Rulin's.

Here is my list of Rulin's for 2014:

1. Sing for the love of it
2. Help other people to the best of my ability at all times
3. Be kinder than necessary
4. Pay down debt
5. Save up money to travel to see family
6. Learn how to make a decent loaf of rye bread
7. Revive my practice of starting each day with movement
8. Finish many unfinished projects (especially textile projects)
9. Simplify, simplify, simplify

And that should do it. I can hardly wait.