Tiny House Living

Tiny House Living is a weekly newsletter that covers the world of tiny houses and the people that choose to live this simpler life. Each entry is a short summary that links to the original article. Subscribe by Email to Tiny House Living and stay up-to-date on the news and events in our community. You can also Follow us on Twitter.

For other recent tiny house and simple living news also see:

• Simple Living News on RowdyKittens (Monday, June 29, 2009)
• Tiny House Round Up on Coming Unmoored (Friday, June 26, 2009)

Ryan Mitchell is a very active member of the tiny house movement and regular participant on Tiny House Forum. He lives in Charlotte, NC and hopes to build his tiny house within a year and he plans to live there while pursuing his Doctorate in Industrial Organizational Psychology.

Ryan also just launched a tiny house blog and forum in addition to setting up this very novel map that allows everyone in the greater simple living community to add themselves. It’s a three step process and really easy to do. It would be amazing to see this map filled out with simple living advocates from all around the globe. Please add yourself to the map.

Be sure to provide only the information you want to appear publicly online. For example I’m comfortable with my full name being out there, but many people are not. If you’re not comfortable with your street address being published online leave that out and only post the city or state. Here are links to Ryan’s new websites.

• Localize Map
• The Tiny Life Blog
  
• The Tiny Life Forum

The sheddies in the UK are extremely serious about their sheds. Shed Week 2009 begins July 6, 2009 so be sure to keep any eye on the shedblog.co.uk to follow the antics and discover who has won the honor of Shed of the Year. The finalists for Shed of the Year have just been announced.

You can also follow unclewilco on twitter for up to the minute shed news. But for now head on over to Tiny House TV for a quick listen to the  official Shed Week 2009 song in this latest music video by Punks Not Dad called In Me Shed.

Many people like the form factor of cargo container homes but not everyone wants to live in a metal box. Here’s an example of a very high-style modern prefab tiny house that mimics its industrial inspiration while remaining sustainable and green.

Stylish & Modern Shipping Container-Sized Prefab Home
Drop architecture

No matter the size of your home, big or small, careful attention to interior space design, clutter, and organization can help you achieve a more practical and peaceful home. It can also free your brain and lower your stress. There were two post on this recently.

Tiny Homes and Efficiency
How To Design Small Spaces for Multiple People

When I was a kid I can remember my dad telling me about fire lookout towers and how he had once imagined a career as a forest ranger and what it might be like to spend a summer in a remote one-room tower. My dad didn’t follow his forestry passion and instead become a child psychiatrist. Ironically both my brothers ended up in careers closer to forestry. So this post is for my dad, enjoy!

Fire Lookout Towers
Cabin Modeled After Fire Tower
Learn more about fire lookout towers

This week there were two posts on two different blogs about historic tiny houses that avoided the wrecking ball and lost the battle against urban development leaving only a shadow of the existence.

The ghosts of tiny houses

Small Hold-Out “Nail Houses” Versus Huge Developers

Architect Gregory Smith send this photo into Tiny House Blog for Kent’s regular Tiny House in a Landscape feature. It’s a historic weekend cabin near the edge of a river in Cisco Grove, California. I wanted to share it with you because it’s an excellent example of how a free locally sourced material can be used to build a home. It would be heavy meticulous work to build a tiny rock house but it would be cheap and the thermal mass would keep you cool in summer and warm in winter.

Tiny House in a Landscape

Gregory Smith, Architect

James King, another tiny house advocate, wrote up this great article on wikiHow about how to start living in a tiny house. Here is a summary of the steps in the article:

1. Do your research
2. Decide what you need from your dwelling
3. Look at the benefits of living small
4. Realize that small houses cost more per square feet than large houses
5. Decide if you will build your own home from plans
6. Pare down your belongings
7. Be creative about storage and multi-function furniture

Below are a few of the best tiny house and simple living websites:

• Tiny House Blog
• Tiny House Design
• Tiny House TV
• Shedworking
• Shedblog
• Natural Homes
• Tiny House Journal
• Small House Society
• Small Living Journal
• Coming Unmoored
• Rowdy Kittens
• This Tiny House
• The Tiny Life (Map) (Forum)
• Constructing a simpler life
• Gypsy Rose Tiny House
• Green Hamlet
• Small House Style
• Building With Awareness

Tiny House Builders

• Tumbleweed Tiny House Company
• Tortoise Shell Homes
• Little House on the Trailer