The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir Read Free

as a middle-class American; like I should want more out of life than this tiny house and the backyard, and the way it feels to sit on the porch and watch the sun come up. But it works for me, and besides, I’m not sure that I was any happier when I had a bigger, more normal house.
    I used to have a three-bedroom bungalow with a nice yard and massive windows that looked out at the gardens in the front yard. It had a furnace that rumbled away in the basement,thumping, bumping, and popping the ductwork, like it was beating back the cold with a tire iron. I felt very safe from the elements.
    The heater was a tireless companion, willing to work day and night, whether we were home or not; it puffed away on metered gas, blowing hot air into the bedrooms and the bathroom, the shampoo bottles and the kitchen silverware drawers. It pushed heat into our bodies, letting us walk around in boxer shorts and tank tops in the middle of winter; it prewarmed our shoes, the toilet seat, the coffee cups. It worked constantly without needing anyone’s attention and hardly being noticed at all until the gas bill would arrive and we’d all scream “Turn down the thermostat!” and grow very quiet.
    The heating bill usually arrived a few days after the electric bill, which came two weeks after the mortgage and insurance were due; then the water, sewer, and trash bill would arrive every three months, and the property taxes would arrive like Satan on a stick once a year. Somewhere in the mix were my monthly credit card bills, tied to all the other necessary household items: a couch, television, window shades, barbecue grill, new hot water tank, bedsheets, telephone, stereo speakers, flower vases, a shower curtain, washing machine, area rugs, garden hoses, lamps, lights, locks, a spade, mattresses, memory foam pillows, wineglasses, a dishwasher, lawn mower, end tables, two cubic yards of garden compost, scrub brushes,butter knives, a refrigerator, wrenches, pry bars, and an assortment of artwork and wall paint to make things look nice. I worked hard back then, strapped to my debt, but I was hardly miserable; I was happy enough “living the dream” as I raced from one place to the next and spent the weekends cleaning the gutters or reading a how-to book on home plumbing repair.
    Now that I live in my little house, I work part-time and pay eight dollars a month for utilities. There’s no mortgage, no Saturday morning with a vacuum, mop, or dust cloth. I have free time to notice the weather, so if my neighbor asks me how it’s going, I can easily explain how “the barometric pressure took a real nosedive at four this morning, causing a lava flow of cooler air to pour into my house through the open windows. It was like waking up in Missoula in September, when you still have your windows open but know things are changing, and quick, toward winter.”
    All the time I save leaves me free to cavort and volunteer, building other little houses with friends, helping to care for my elderly neighbor, or staring mindlessly at the clouds forming into balloon animals and broccoli spears. The other day I spent a couple of hours packing sauerkraut with my friends, nattering about local politics while we shoved stinky cabbage into little jars. Before that, I collected a load of fruit to be delivered all over town as part of a church fund-raiser, and then Itook my dog for a walk down along the old railroad trestle that used to be the shake mill but is now just a massive expanse of busted-up asphalt, blackberry bushes, and Scotch broom. It’s actually quite beautiful down there, loaded with herons, otters, salmon, and seals; stunning despite the shopping carts that the kids have drowned in the mud and the yellow warning signs about contaminated shellfish.
    It’s nice to have time to amble around, or do whatever I want; to drop everything and help the neighbor build a chicken coop, or hop in on a spontaneous game of Pickle-ball in the backyard. A year or so after I