A few months ago I started reading e-books - on a cell phone. I didn't think I could adjust but I did quickly. I find myself reading around TINY HOUSES, LIVING IN RV's, and BOX CAR HOUSING. I also read around these subjects on newish blogs and web sites.
Growing up there was this teeny tiny house that a spinster or widow lived in. No one seemed to see the woman much, and everyone thought it a little peculiar that anyone would want to live in a one bedroom house, maybe a third the size of the houses in the neighborhood. I'll never know the story about this woman. There was another family that lived in a house almost old enough to be a log cabin. People used to laugh and say there was so many of them in this house that they slept standing up. They only had cold running water. They all had beautiful complexions. You felt as if their family had been in the area since pre-Colonial times.
What's happening now is that "millennials" are finding independent living too costly to contemplate in Southern California. If you cannot or will not live with home owner parents, and you really do want to leave home and go through traditional rights of passage, then you probably need to move away, or find some less conventional way to afford it, beginning with a TINY house, tiny enough that it could fit in an RV, or is made of a box car.
With some design background and exposure to architecture, I've learned that constructing these yourself is not for the timid or ignorant, and that you can buy them premanufactured. Like mobil homes, these are not really intended to be carted around the country on wheels like a gypsy caravan, but the living is similar, particularily if you find your legal place to park or place is far from electricity, sewer lines, and other water sources.
Yet I've read stories of couples who have traveled (with laptops and wifi ready to work and earn money all over) and who have even reproduced and managed to prosper in these spaces.
Like everyone else, I have my dream house (having read an old book called Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House long ago), the kind of house that many people take for granted, but which I have never been close to owning. The dream house lately has taken on some of the characteristics of the Tiny House.
Including - a very large covered over platform for outdoor living.
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