Tiny House

Today is Blog Action Day, which is new to me and most likely most of you reading this. I learned about it from www.houseblogs.net, which gave this as an explanation:

“A day when thousands of blogs are joining together to blog about a single important issue…the environment. Blog Action Day is not pushing a specific point of view, it only seeks to promote the discussion.”

Now, I wouldn’t consider myself an environmentalist by definition. When it comes right down to it, I only have so much time and so much energy to give, so there are other issues that rank higher on my scale of importance. However, I was raised in a home where recycling and composting were the norm before they were cool. So, in thinking about what I could contribute to this discussion, I started thinking about ways that we have contributed to a more sustainable environment in our current home. One of the first things that came to mind was that we bought a home as opposed to building one. No new resources required there. And, it’s almost 90 years old, so it’s sheltered plenty of families over the years in its cozy rooms. It’s also a tiny house, less than 800 square feet. But, it’s set up to use every square inch of that space since there aren’t any hallways. We’re using our space to the max and even thought it’s small, we have everything we need and not an additional 2,500 square feet of wasted space like today’s McMansions, see:

This is what it looked like when we closed on it in February. We’ve added a bistro table, rockers and lights on the porch as well as some flowers in the planter next to the porch, but you get the general idea. It’s amazing how many people walk in and say how it’s  so much bigger than they expected. They don’t even notice we don’t have hallways. In fact, I’m thinking that maybe we’ll never have hallways again. Who needs to waste precious space?

The other things we do to go green are composting and recycling. My mother is a fabulous gardener, so compost was always a most in our house growing up. There’s just something about putting all of our organic waste and clippings into a bin and getting luscious dirt in a few years. Really, I’ve seen the pay off, it’s that good. The compost box was the first thing Matthew built for me when we moved in. He made it out of material he salvaged from work, which is another way to go green. See:

We also recycle. The City of Wake Forest gives everyone a huge recycling can on wheels that goes with the trash on pick up days. It’s so easy compared to the sorting, storing and hauling across town to the recycling center that my parents did when I was a kid. When it’s this easy, why not recycle?

So, that’s our contribution to the environment on this Blog Action Day. I won’t mention that I commute an hour each way to work, in my *gasp* car, by myself *gasp* or that my husband likes to leave most of the lights on most of the time. But we do have one of those squiggly bulbs- that’s one more than we had last year!