Planet | Families & Homes | Simple Living

My Tiny, Free House

Michael Janzen had a big house and a big mortgage. Then the financial crisis hit, and he wondered just how small, and how cheap, a house could be.

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by Michael Janzen

posted Aug 10, 2010

In 2008, as the value of my big house was evaporating and layoffs seemed to loom in the distance, I came to my senses.

I began to question the true value of a home—and the real risk of a mortgaged home. I was making a huge financial commitment but not buying the things that really matter, like security and more time with the people I love. A mortgage can buy a lot of instant luxury, but at a significant cost in time, money, and financial risk.

In short, I woke up to the reality that I had taken on too much risk during good times and was totally unprepared for tough times.

I had taken on too much risk during good times and was totally unprepared for tough times.

Armed with this better understanding of the financial risks I’d already committed to, I started looking for answers and found the tiny house movement, which offers a different way of thinking about housing.

The core values of the tiny house movement are that living simply in small spaces empowers us. Committing to a tiny house removes many of the burdens we accepted when we bought into the idea of a "normal" American lifestyle. Instead of focusing on how much we can afford, the tiny space forces us to consider how little we really need.

Building Tiny, for Free

I wouldn’t have believed this scale of housing was possible until I was introduced to Jay Shafer’s Tumbleweed Tiny Houses. Jay has spent years living in tiny houses smaller than 100 square feet. As I learned more about the tiny house movement and began blogging about tiny house design, I met many more people who are carving out fulfilling and happy lives through extreme downsizing.

I decided to take this minimalist approach even further: to build a tiny house without it costing me anything but time and energy. I use mostly recycled materials I can get for free; any money I spend on building supplies will be recaptured by selling the free stuff I find.

The house is built on a small trailer that measures about seven feet wide by 12 feet long, making the total interior space about 80 square feet. It will sleep three people, two in a loft and one on a handmade flip-out bench/bed. A small kitchen and bathroom with a composting toilet will also be included.

: Photos by Julia Janzen.

Most of the framing wood has come from used shipping pallets I’ve salvaged from dumpsters. Pallets aren’t very easy to build with, but it seems like poetic justice for a house that questions consumerism to be made from the very things that carried so many consumer products to market.

I’ve scored some used plywood for the sheathing and a pile of scavenged felt for the roof. I thought about collecting and flattening 200 #10 tin cans for shingles, but a stormy summer has convinced me to hold out for some scrap corrugated roofing.

Construction of my tiny house been slow going, but I couldn’t be more convinced that it’s worth it.

An Education in Independence

You can apply this kind of thinking to any size living space—it really begins with downsizing possessions, debt, and other external burdens.

With a family of three, I don’t plan to live full-time in the tiny house—it’s more of an experiment to find out if a totally free house is possible. I’m convinced, though, that the biggest impact of a tiny house is the way it changes your thinking about what you really need. You can apply this kind of thinking to any size living space—it really begins with downsizing possessions, debt, and other external burdens.

The Righteous Small House
An architect asks, at what point does size cancel out sustainability?

When we choose to live with less, we also choose a lifestyle that requires fewer inputs and increases our immunity to outside forces, like economic turmoil.

Building the tiny house has definitely changed the way I think about my “normal-sized” house: Its upkeep and expenses keep getting in the way of things I want to do (including building the tiny house!), and it feels enormous. I look forward to the day when we’re free to make our own downsizing move—I’ve learned that a home’s value should be measured by the happiness and security it brings instead of its size and cost.

Now I feel like I’m on a path toward a more sustainable, lower-risk, and more fulfilling lifestyle. I still have a long way to go but I take comfort in the knowledge that I’m moving forward.

Michael Janzen wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Michael is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. While he makes his living as a professional web designer, he shows others what it takes to make their own tiny house dreams come true through his blog TinyHouseDesign.com. His education is in the arts and he lived as a studio potter for several years.

Interested?

Living Large in a Tiny House
Dee Williams doesn't need a big house to be happy. Instead she found happiness in a 84-square foot house on wheels.
How To Build A Tiny House
How Dee Williams built her Tumbleweed tiny house.
10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy
Scientists can tell us how to be happy. Really. Here are 10 ways, with the research to prove it.

YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. Janzen, M. (2010, August 06). My Tiny, Free House. Retrieved February 03, 2012, from YES! Magazine Web site: http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/my-tiny-free-house. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

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Reader Comments

Tiny houses

Posted by Clare at Aug 18, 2010 06:17 PM

I go camping with my 3 kids every year for 2 weeks and every year when we pack up we are astounded at how much living we have been able to pack into a very small space (very happily) for those 2 weeks. I come home full of intentions to cull, downsize, life more simply (and I'm not a rampant consumer by any means).

Great article!

What is a 'house'? What is 'Free'?

Posted by David at Sep 22, 2010 02:08 AM

This comment may go against the 'positive' vibe of YES, but I think it's important to be critical as well (will try to be constructively so), in the interest of deepening the articles here so that the values of the magazine can't be so easily dismissed...

Here's my take:

A guy is building a 'house' that he won't live in 'full time', i.e., he's keeping his big house... meaning he now simply has more square footage than ever to take care of - as he himself mentions, the upkeep of the 'real' house is interfering with building the 'free' house...Sounds like a man's glorified kid's playhouse in the backyard. And it's 'free' because he values his time at nothing, and isn't accounting for gas driving all over picking up scraps. And he's teaching others how to do this? To what end? If the plan is to ditch the 'real house' and move the house on the trailer somewhere else to live (like Noah's Ark?) ok, maybe...but the article is full of 'it will have X, Y, Z...' Could these articles wait until it's more than just a dream, and we have some idea of the full cost? And what it's like to actually 'live' in it with 5 people? The other respondent's method seems much more sustainable: Just go camping a few times a year to get a perspective on what you really need. And then actually do something with the thinking when you get home...

Sorry for being critical, but in the time it takes him to build that 'house', China will add X-million square meters of new concrete housing, and still not have close to the percapita spatial consumption of the West...and Haitians who lost everything will still be living in tents in Hurricane country. Ok, bloom where you're planted...but if he valued his 'free' time at 50% his hourly wage (standard benefit-cost analysis practice), or at his full hourly wage (as a web designer, I assume he could take on more work if he wasn't so consumed with his hobby?), we could start building a full-cost accounting of "the biggest impact" of this "experiment" (his word) in 'changing one's thinking' (paraphrase), and compare it to other courses of intervention. How about taking on a boarder who has been foreclosed on? Or a few, until you're down to ~27sqft/person (3bd/80sf cabin) in your existing house? A far more interesting architectural, as well as social, experiment.

In short, it's fun for a middle-aged guy with three kids to build a cabin in the backyard, and I'm sure the movement is coming up with some neat tricks for tucking things in here and there. There are hundreds of books from the 1970's with the same thing (some YES readers probably wrote them). Inasmuch as there's a broad cultural benefit to reconnecting 'Building, Dwelling, [and] Thinking', go TinyHouse movement. But unless you actually live in it, don't be fooled into thinking you're making a dent in the problem. Like the 'Living Water Gardens' [in the recent water issue] that 'demonstrate' biological ways of cleaning water, but only actually clean a tiny amount, or smug urbanites who take public transit but then drive hundreds of miles to the mountains to 'reconnect with nature', looking down on the suburban dwellers with lawns they pass along the way...I'm all for positive stories, especially about this topic generally, but can we have some that are more than veneer?

In hope,

David / China

little hosues

Posted by Ben Daviss at Dec 31, 2010 06:55 AM

This man isn't living in a house. He's living in a corn crib. Anyone can build a shed and live in it if they're willing to do without electricity and haul or manually pump water. The point is not to seek the smallest possible space you can lie down in; the point is make the smallest possible house that's still livable without hardship. If you don't see the lack of running water or electricity (or, in the tiny sheds, heat) as a hardship, then God bless you. If you want to live a life that's responsible without being unnecessarily arduous, then this example is relevant to nothing.