Designing a Tiny Home

I love looking at unique tiny houses. Not the shiplap, cookie cutter tiny houses for sale that are smeared all over Pinterest. I have realized several things. I would never want a tiny home with a foam cushion atop a storage box that calls itself a sofa. Nor would I have a television in my tiny home. I would require a place to sew and a place to sit and embroider or to knit. Bookshelves are a must. I'm not into composting toilets. I don't need or want a bathtub. A washer/dryer is a must. And most important, I don't need a kitchen with a four burner stove, full-sized fridge, and a farmhouse sink. Two burners are enough. A middle sized fridge is fine. A loft is not necessary, but a cupboard bed would be great.

My basement studio is 13' wide and 30' long. If the ceiling were higher, I could easily live in this footprint. That's almost 400 square feet. In tiny house space, that's a lot of space.

Why Does the Pile O' Projects Have to Go?

Because eventually, I won't be able to finish them, even though I might want to and have the time to do them. My vision is in the slow process of failing. My glasses are getting more and more complicated and are not as effective. I can't change this. I can't delay it. It sucks.

In my dream world, all the projects that require good vision will get done while I still have decent vision. I will gracefully, gradually shift to projects that don't require the ability to see tiny threads and accurate placement of the needle. I'm not sure that will actually happen, but I can try.

Minimalism Meets Reality

There's a side to minimalism that folks don't talk about.

On a limited income, there is a lot of difference between 'Do I want that?' and 'Can I afford that?'  Extra pillows? A decorative coffee mug? Your thirty-fourth pair of shoes? Those things are all optional and are the kind of things that a minimalist will eschew. They are things that a person on a limited income doesn't even bother to consider. There is no questioning if it will bring joy, the fact is that buying extra stuff means there will be no food on the table, no shoes on the feet, and no heat in the home.

Minimalism is for the rich. If not the actual rich, then the folks who have achieved 'enough' and can look at 'extra.'

The Pile O' Projects

"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."  Thomas Gray.

I had to go digging through my tools and such to find the exact one I wanted to complete a Christmas gift. The gift would use up stash and make my BIL quite happy.

Sigh. No good deed goes unpunished. I found another project for the Pile. This one is a knitted gansey on tiny needles with dark blue yarn. The pattern is rather complicated and is one I designed. Don't look impressed. Designing a gansey is a matter of selecting the patterns you want to use and sticking them into a set of generic directions to make one.

The Pile is growing again. Drat.

No! It isn't growing. I'm not really starting new projects. I'm finding old projects that I hadn't finished. The Pile O' Projects is simply being identified.

Minimalism and the 'To Make' List

Experiences over objects.

Time to focus on what you are doing and not what you are (or are not) using to get that shit done.

Well, what do you know? It's working! This is the smug post about the success I'm having. No eco-tourism for me, though.

I had set aside the projects that were on my 'To Make' list in a pile 'o projects when I did the 2 + 2 = 5 declutter and re organize of my studio. I created a clear and clean space in which to work and solve the problems that had kept me from completing projects. I wasn't thrilled about the pile o' projects, though. I was worried that the pile would just get pushed around and not worked on.

In the first full day of studio use after the re organization, I completed four different projects that had been hanging over my head and making me feel guilty. FOUR. Then I dove into another project that would require a bit of effort, and it's down to just the hemming. Yep. And the hemming is going well.

That pile of projects is halved. Halved, I tell you. I'm now moving through my studio searching for projects to add to that pile, so I can attack them and finish them off. I hate to admit it, but I am finding the occasional stalled WIP (Work In Progress) that I add to the pile. But at least, I've identified them and can finally get them finished.

How to Minimalize and or Declutter in Three Easy Steps

Step One
Throw out all of the things you don't like, don't use, and don't need. Get rid of the boxes you used to use to store that stuff, too. Anything that makes you feel fat, guilty, or disorganized has got to go. Buyers remorse? Trash it.

Step Two
Do not go shopping for things you won't like, won't use, and won't need. Brag about how little you go shopping and how you can now feed your entire family on 35 cents a day. Save your money for experiences, like travel to eco-tourism locations that are suffering from the footprint of the eco tourists.

Step Three
Write blog posts about steps one and two. Feel smug and superior while earning an income due to the clickbait that covers 45% of the screen real estate on your blog.

Why is Easy so Annoying?

I got one of the 'No Sew Throws' to make as a gift. I quilt them and don't do that fringe-and-tie nonsense. This one has the lines to cut the fringe printed on the front. In big, fat, easy to see print. The marks don't wash out. Sigh. I need to cut my 72" throw down by at about 5" on each side before I sew it together. As I'm laying it out, getting ready to start trimming, I notice that the marks aren't even. One side is almost 6" and the others vary, down to 4.5".

Thank goodness I got this on sale. If I'd paid the full price for this project, I'd be even more irritated. As it is, I just get more and more grumpy each time I think about how much time and effort I am putting in to rescue a project that is supposed to be quick and easy.

Ergonomics, Shmerganomics

Ergonomic standards are for human bodies that are pretty standard. I'm taller than average, with arms that are long for my height. I do not fit the average set up for a sewing work surface.

When seated like shown in the picture? There is barely room above my knees for a table.

Where the words "knee angle" are? Nope. The table fills the space when it's me sitting there. My elbows aren't somewhere at the bra line. My elbows are right at the top of my hip bone.

This may be why I sew with my shoulders up by my ears.

2 + 2 = 5

For extremely high values of 2.

I put two ideas together recently. I was searching for ideas on sewing room organization and thinking about all the stuff in my sewing space that I don’t want to hang onto. I was thinking about our successful family room crash and how we emptied the room and then only put things back that we really wanted in that room. 2 + 2 = 5! I want to remove everything from my sewing space and only put back into it the things that I really want to keep, in the locations that make sense. 

This may or may not work, but it will sure help me get rid of crap that I don't want to keep any more.

How Goes the Declutter?

Minimalism and decluttering aren’t the same. I’m not reducing my piles of clutter just to reduce my mess and make my house look all neat and tidy. My end goals are; to own less stuff, have less guilt about projects left undone, do less housework, spend more time doing the things that I enjoy doing, and to spend less money, time and effort keeping up things that I own but never use.

I used to dream of downsizing to a tiny house, but Hubster isn’t jumping on that bandwagon. I use the question, “Would I have this in a tiny house?” as a guideline for deciding what I want to keep or buy. Am I planning to move to a tiny house? No. But I’m also tired of spending my energy on the upkeep of stuff I don’t love and use regularly. I want to rid myself of things that I don’t want, don’t enjoy having, and don’t use.

That is a minimalist outlook. I’m not decluttering. If the end result is that I have decluttered, great - but it wasn’t my goal.

Form or Function?

Architects all know that function is more important than form. It is the use of an object that defines the shape.

This isn't a functional link to the book on Amazon, but it is what pops into my head every time someone says that form is more important than function. Go ahead, pour yourself a hot cup of tea. I dare you.

I saw a potentially beautiful house that a married couple just designed and had built. The kitchen has top of the line appliances, from a Wolf range to a Sub Zero fridge. The wife really wanted them. The husband is meh. There were several things throughout the house that were meh to one of them, but important to the other. As we were talking about this disparate set of house building needs and wants, I summed it up. "She's about the form and he is about the function."

I know I'm more about function than form, but I believe in a different definition of function. I'd get a Sub Zero only if energy efficiency and life expectancy factored in and made the purchase less expensive in the long run. Two cheap ones or one expensive one that lasts more than twice as long? And am I going to be here to use it? When I sell it, will the buyer care? Taking all things under consideration, nope, no Sub Zero for me! I ain't that young, I ain't that settled, and I ain't that rich.

I have taken that personality type exam multiple times. Four capital letters mean nothing to me. I define myself in terms of process over product when I'm making things and function over form for a lot of other things in my life. Useful and quality is more valuable to me than pretty and flimsy.

Room Crash Declutter

When we purchased our house, the family room was painted to exactly match my skin tone. I'd walk into the room and vanish. I hated it. There were dark maroon vertical blinds that I also hated and a difficult to clean, worn out Berber carpet in a mottled gray. These photos are actually a bit lighter than the paint actually was, and don't show the blinds in their full and terrifying glory. This is what the room looked like when the house was on the market. The furniture and art is not ours.

Hubster and I pulled all the furniture of of the room, ripped up the carpet, selected new paint, and tore down the blinds. We put in a tile floor, repaired holes in the walls where cables used to go, and painted.

The process took us far longer than we had anticipated, more like two weeks, instead of two days, and we are still dealing with the occasional touch-up. The carpet we put in isn't the one we want for the long term, but it's a carpet. The room looks a bit like this.

I don't yet have a final pictures that show off the completed room. You are going to have to trust me on this. The only things that have gone back into that room, aside from a couple of tools, are things that we specifically selected to go into the room. Period. Nothing is in there because we own it and it needs a place to be. It's an amazing feeling. 

Everything left. Even the decorating decisions we had not made left. The only things we allowed in were things that we decided on together. What we like, what we use and what works for us. 

Minimalism

I have been embracing minimalism. My beloved husband has not. I’m going through closets and cupboards to get rid of things in a gradual and steady fashion. Hubster? Not so much. Am I upset by this? Not really. I’ve got a huge stash of collected crap to deal with. My husband could not make the decisions for me as to what I keep and what I toss.

Oddly enough, the expensively framed, hundreds of hours of work embroideries are not very high on my ‘keep’ lists. I’m a process person, not a product person. The work was the valuable part. The finished product has minimal value for me. I am thinking about taking a lot of works out of their frames and turning the collection into a quilt. I’d get some practical use out of them.

What am I discovering on this minimalist journey? That I am an excellent steward. I take good care of the things I own, even if I no longer want or use them. This care has, for all intents and purposes, been wasted effort. I am getting rid of things in excellent condition. When I no longer have to worry about dusting, storing, protecting, and tracking them, I feel a mental lightness. There have been brain cells freed up to be used for other thoughts and memories. I don’t want to spend this mental resource on making or gathering more things to stash.

I looked closely at my ‘to make’ list and realized that there were many gift items for family, but limited things for myself. I can relate to this in a very different way since my adoption of a minimalist outlook. I can enjoy the process and then make a gift of the product. I won’t have to store, dust, protect, or keep track of them!