Laura Fenton’s The Little Book of Living Small, is a required reading for anyone who wants to live happily forever outside the confines of a McMansion. Reading this book was like re-discovering minimalism, was like those days in the monastery and having the environment to be content, is like how one feels after a good spring clean, is like getting over an addiction and being free, is like waking up in the morning on a campground and smiling to yourself for no reason, is like a night when you sit on your couch hugging your puppy and just be, is like serendipitously glancing upon a night sky full of stars and pausing to take it in, going to an eulogy and realizing what is important in life, like marrying your partner and to know that you are on a pathway to figure this life out with the right companion on your side, … A weight lifted, that is the impact this book had on me. It is “permission” to feel good about living small. ( Just like how wabi sabi teaches you to not be ashamed of old worn out things. ) After time wasted obsessing over a housing upgrade, I stopped and settled in. The book has some good philosophy and the subsequent information for anyone pursuing this path of living with less. Reading this book helped me re-caliber my thinking on what my house should be, and to see a small house as a long term home for us. I have been coming up with some more commandments for myself :
1. A house is much more about filling a space with good ideas than it is about comforts and aesthetic. Abolish patriarchy. Adopt permaculture.
2. House becomes a home when we stop interior designing and start living
3. A house is for the ones who live in it full time. Not for guests who might visit. Not for the one party we throw every month. Not for a design exercise for the brain muscles. Not for instagram. Not for blog. Not for any other purpose beyond it being our nest.
4. Our happiness is not tied to a glossier house.
5. NO HOUSE is supposed to RESEMBLE ANOTHER. No house need be inspired by another or live up to another or be like another. You do your unique you. Stop peer pressure in its tracks by limiting time spent on social media. Fear of missing out on inspiration and ideas ? Reframe it : Joy of missing out on the constant frenzy of “better”. Joy of not grazing stuff that can be consumed. Joy of being content.
6. Time is luxury. Being able to calmly move through the world at my own pace, is a luxury. I used to get irritated and fixated on scratching the itches that crossed my mind. Buddhist practices like vipassana and wabi sabi are helping me control my impulses. When I do take on the project, I want to do it well. Till then, self it for the future. Save the energy, time, attention and money until it’s time to take the plunge.
7. Entire house should be a cozy space. There is a popular lounger chair called the womb chair whose name I like more than the actual chair. Every small space has the potential to be womb-like and cozy.
8. Solar panels on roof, rainwater management and compost are the essentials.
9. A yard is measured by the biodiversity it supports. If it’s mostly lawn and a few humans lounging for 45 minutes a week (national average), it’s space wasted after being violently taken from a once-forest.
10. A garden is no garden unless it resembles the ecosystem it is located in. Build for the bees, insects, birds, worms, bacteria, small animals, native plants, wild weeds, ground cover, diversity of plants, … first. Grow food for the humans next. Aesthetics later. Monoculture industrial gardens and modernist mindless designs that force life into recognizable shapes do not belong in my home.
11. Lighting is my first priority when making the inside of a house more livable. Proper insulation is next. The rest, we can slowly do.
12. The opposite of over-designed, over-thought and overdone.
13. No to beige on beige on beige.
14. Keep the kitchen simple. Do not get carried away by appliances. No need to cook a zillion things and need equipment that requires it’s own share of housing. It is okay if I don’t make dosa or pizza or air fried chicken or wok tossed fried rice or grilled meat. Keep the suppers simple and nourishing. Don’t make food that requires a woman to be chained to the stove for extended periods of time.
15. Stay away from the domestic goddesses of the internet with money wands who constantly renovate like they are stuck in a loop. Escape the loop by not stepping into it.
16. Get my partner more involved. He is currently a pillion rider with me driving our needs and making the decisions. There has to be equality.
17. Make money go long way. How long ? Beyond my own use and stay. Let everything have the potential to become vintage item of a certain quality. Do without till such item can be afforded.
18. Do not start buying and decorating right away. Live in a space first with minimum possible, get a feel of it, and then start making it yours.
19. Permaculture is what makes a good animal of us in our ecosystem. Learn the philosophy and start with applying it at home. Start with #1 : Stop, Look, Listen.
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I want to read people write personal essays about their homes. I want to know your process and how you evolved over time. I want to know your philosophy of nesting. I want to know how you grew content and happy with what they have. I want to hear about the long pauses one takes before improving a house. I want to know about design rules and trends you fought off in your head, to take a chance at creating something you envisioned. I want to sit in on conversations about a 360 degree change of mind in ones design process. I want to know your stories, how ever unrelatable they are. Oddly enough, I also want to hear people ramble about their chairs or tables and light fixtures. I want to hear about pet-peeves that intersect with the McMansions. I want to read an essay on love of a bookshelf or a cozy corner. “For the love of a window”, is a perfectly acceptable blog post title for an essay. I am recording my evolution here, for anyone who wants to read what I wish I could read about your homemaking process.
I had been thinking of carving out a space where I could store my herbalism tools and books until I decided to turn the dining room into my lab. It’s not pretty or perfect but it makes me happy to grow plants and study there now. I don’t know why I had this idea that I need a separate room for my different interests. Another important lesson I learned recently is that it’s ok to try to do small improvements myself. I was always looking for experts, too afraid to damage my house, but the fact is people learn through practice and there are enough resources available to help you do most small jobs.
Love dining tables that become do-alls and truly become the heart of the home. I wish you luck on becoming a master witch with the herbs ! We recently went on a hike with a naturalist who would point at random plants along the way and tell us how the native Americans used it. It was brilliant that they knew so much. Made me want to become a native too with such knowledge.
I watched some YouTube videos on how houses are built and repaired. It makes me think its less complicated than some of the systems we build at work, with an option of calling a handyman if I mess up something. I am also eager to understand structures of home, tools in general and to attempt small projects slowly at my own pace. Our home has orange peel texture that I dislike immensely and I want to skim coat the walls myself. It is a big project and I think I will do it this fall.
As always, your posts get me thinking a lot. Thank you.
Recently I came to the conclusion I don’t want a backyard. I want a reflection garden. Your comment about people staying in the yard for 45 minutes and it being a waste is very true. I’ve always hated the sound of mowing. My husband usually mows but I had to recently and hated it. The smell, the noise – all of it. I want us to mow as little as possible and am now looking into putting in a seating area in the backyard that has a gazebo-like covering or awning. I then want to dig up the grass and put in more shrubs and native plants. I bought a bunch of native plants from a local wild flower preserve that specializes in teaching about native plants to the area. My dream is for the whole yard to have these plants scattered about with some stepping stones and a place to sit in the middle of it all and enjoy it every day. For the front yard, I keep putting down clover seed in hopes it would take root. Clover doesn’t need to be mowed as much, stays green longer than grass, and plenty of native kinds can be found.
I never liked the neon color tone in lawns and struggle to see the beauty in it. Gardening can be enchanting and reducing it to mowing a lawn is a disservice to ourselves maybe ? My partner is the exact opposite and we have lawn related quarrels very often. Someday, I will convince him to let go of our front yard patch for wild flower meadow.
A zen garden with native plants sounds lovely ! I read an entry on Planthunter recently on how the gardener uses stepping stones and plants that intrude into pathways making the humans bend/watch step/be more mindful/physically acknowledge entering a landscape that welcomes wilderness … and its got me inspired to let go of some of the orderliness.
I sprinkled clover seeds in the backyard and it’s taken over the land. We are doing more weeding in our vegetable beds and around the plants we grow, but I do love it. The number of bees in my garden can be attributed to clover flowers in the winter.
“Gardening can be enchanting and reducing it to mowing a lawn is a disservice to ourselves maybe ?” YES! I would much rather spend time weeding around vegetables and some flower beds than mowing. The zen garden will take time but I’ve already started plotting how to fill in some gaps – adding ground cover to the back under the trees where it’s hard to mow already, and planting more flowers in the front. I planted yarrow, lavender, foxglove, and roses this week. It may take me a year to save up for the seating area I want in the middle but in the meantime I’m eyeing up stones at gardening centers and checking Facebook for leftover pavers. I’m glad your clover has taken over. Clover flowers are beautiful as well. Our grass is already almost all dead from a heatwave we had a couple weeks ago, but all the clover remains.
Ah, I love this. Although I am always slightly amused by the very ‘trendy’ approach to small living or simple living. It is something that I grew up with and is an inherent part of the culture of my people (Mennonite). Yes, we have some books that Mennonites have written, but mostly we just live this way because it is an extension of our values and our beliefs about peace and justice and caring for the earth and its people. But nowadays there’s all this consumer-signalling in the new-wave of simple/small living–this idea that someone living minimally must have certain products and a certain look to their home (all the blogs have the same look and the same items arranged in different ways). And there is often this presentation of buy these things or do things the way I did them, which doesn’t make much sense, if it’s tied to values of sustainability and human and environmental ethics. Which is why I appreciate reading your blog because you find ways to do things your own way and really think through them from the point of view of your values and beliefs, which I think is so important. What we really believe is how we live. I’ve moved a lot in my life and as much as possible carry the same things with me. (For many years I had the same set of cardboard boxes I had labelled and things were re-packed and unpacked for each move.) Most of the things are old or used, things I found along the way when I needed them. When I arrive in a new living space I take my time, move my things around, and if I need something new, I have to wait and think about, sometimes for so long that I decide I don’t need it or find another way or thing to use instead. I try to find old things or used things or make something. But it’s a slow process for me, seeing how we live in the space and finding things that are beautiful and useful both. Right now my father and husband are building a medicine cabinet from scrap wood we found on the street and a framed mirror we bought from a local frame shop for our bathroom (we’ve been without for 2 years) but I couldn’t find something where we live that didn’t have plastic or fit what I wanted. So we waited and found a way to make our own. I look forward to reading more about how you continue to make your small space your home.
I hope its a trend that stays. Living small was a norm in my childhood more out of circumstance than voluntary simplicity, and always viewed as something to escape. As long as its trendy, more folks may try it out ? As long as its super trendy and done with style, maybe folks like me who are struggling to settle into it in the long term can find adequate inspiration to keep going ?
The pandemic made a whole lot of us flee the cities for the suburbs with bigger space. I hope we return to urban density and smaller spaces again.
Culture matters. I am surrounded with parents who constantly tell me that I need a bigger house, friends who ask if we truly intend to live in this small space in the long run, well meaning folks who give us ideas on which walls to take down to add additional square footage to the house, …. I have to fight these urges to want more constantly. I would like culture change to be a part of climate solution which IPCC chapter 5 came out and advocated for too.Makes me want to write this blog more and glorify the culture of small, so that I might help myself too.
the idea of a medicine cabinet from reclaimed wood sounds amazing. Made me start looking at wood scraps since I read this. Maybe I will make something on my own too, someday. Thank you for sharing.