October 01st, 2018

I bought a new pair of sandals over the weekend.  Woohoo!  Long overdue purchase.  Especially when you consider that I wear sandals nearly every day.   I think I owned two pair of sandals when we moved here.  Both of those have been thrown out already.  So they were both replaced. I admit that part of the reason is because I have a penchant for buying cheap stuff but the other part is because I just plain old wore them out.  I walk a lot. And it appears that I do not tread lightly.   I recently realized that another pair needed to be tossed so it was time.

This time I opted to buy better quality shoes to Tim's delight. (He is ALWAYS nudging me about purchasing better quality shoes and he's not wrong. I'm just so cheap!)  So off we went to Peltz.  It's up the road in Sarasota and a much larger shoe store than locally so there was a stronger possibility of my actually finding something that fit, that I like, that is comfortable and at a price I am almost willing to pay.  Tough criteria.


Obviously they did have a shoe I liked - yay!  And on sale - Yay!!  But they didn't have the colour I wanted which was red - boo.  Oh well.  Black goes with almost everything so hurrah new sandals!

When we left, we wandered down a road we've never been down before. Simply because we've never driven that way before and we are the curious types.  To our surprise and delight, we did learn something new:

An entire village of Tiny Homes!    We had no idea this was here!  Wow!

One after the other after the other!  Some of them appeared to be privately owned but others were vacation rentals. And each one was at least a little bit different from the others. It was charming and adorable. Like a long line of children's playhouses.  As a vacation rental, it might be fun to do. Like it might be fun to stay in a houseboat while on a trip or a Yurt or a Teepee. They same way, when we went to South Dakota instead of staying in a hotel, we stayed in a cabin.  Just for the sake of new experiences.  Short term fun experience.

Living in one however?  Big Nope.  It was hard enough downsizing from our Colorado House (over 3200 Sq Ft) to our current Florida House (roughly 1600 Sq Ft).  Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we did it.  Smaller house, less to clean, I'm all in favour of that!  But I just know that I am not a tiny home full-time living person.  And it's good to know yourself.

I've seen the TV shows. I know that it's kind of a "thing' right now to simplify your life and go much smaller, like tiny home smaller.  And I marvel at how brilliantly the builders use the space, how personalized these homes can be.  How unique they are, how doggone adorable they are, really. They look like toys. 

But the first thought that always crosses my mind is, privacy.  Or rather the lack of it.  I adore my husband.  I love spending time with him, I truly do.  BUT I also occasionally need to spend time by myself.  And where do you go in a house that small to be alone? Outside? 

I have also noticed that the bedroom in these itty bitty structures is almost always in a "loft".  And the loft is so low that even I would not be able to stand up in it.  How do you get dressed?  How do you get undressed?  And speaking of clothes, where do you keep them?  I don't have a ton of clothes, but I do have some. And as I enjoy both variety and dressing appropriate to various different sorts of occasions and weather conditions, this requires quite a variety.  Where does a person keep these things?  How do you set up an ironing board?  Where do you put your laundry, your groceries, those cooking implements that you perhaps don't use every day but still occasionally use.   My books?  My piano? 

And then there's Tim's stuff.  He has less stuff than I do probably.  Well he does have a lot of tools and those absolutely wouldn't all fit, but he does work from home and they requires a lot of computers (he has three monitors plus his laptop on his desk right now) and printers and all sorts of other techie stuff which would pretty much take up the entire tiny home. So Nope.  Still doens't work.

I suppose I understand how a solo person might enjoy the novelty of tiny home living or an adventurous couple that REALLLLLLY like each other a lot.  But I've seen Tiny Home shows where whole families with multiple kiddos and pets (sometimes rather large dogs too) opt for full time tiny home living.  And home schooling the kids!  Nobody is every not with everyone else!  ARGH! My hat is off to them because I have no idea how they manage it and still stay sane.

Same goes for RV living.  As an occasional thing, for traveling and adventuring, I could maybe do it. But full time living?  Nope.  I know me pretty well at this point in my life and I know that I would go full on squirrelly forced to live in such a small space full time.

My sister and her beau, as you may remember, work as Rangers in Yellowstone for about six months every year.  During that time they primarily live in their RV. And wow I cannot begint o tell you how impressed I am that they manage it The thing that I think helps them a lot, is that they are in the great outdoors when they are working during the day, and not stuck in an office somewhere. AND that about an hour or so away they have a house up on a mountain in Montana that they often retreat to on their days off.  Ahhhh. Space :)

But you know, different strokes for different folks.  And if someone is perfectly content with living in a tiny home or an RV or on a boat for that matter I suppose, then that is what works for them and that is awesome.  I'm old enough at this point that I no longer delude myself about me.   And I know as tiny as I may be, that tiny home living is not for me.  Hey, I rhymed!