💾 Archived View for gemini.ctrl-c.club › ~ › wholesomedonut › gemlog › 2023-01-21.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 16:21:55. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Realizing you already live pretty tiny

I'll peel back the curtain a bit and say I've never owned a home. I'm not sure I ever really _want_ to in this kind of economy. I am leery of going into that much debt (because that's all a mortgage is and until yours is paid off that house is _not_ yours); however, I'm even more sensitive to the implication that I'm tied to that spot and am stuck with that commitment until I get it sold or paid off.

Considering that for the last 4 or 5 years my wife and I have moved pretty regularly, seemingly at least once a year.. the absence of a sense of permanence has led me to have a mentality of "well does it matter if we do X modification to the dwelling or get Y appliance? We're only here for (probably a year)." Not only that, it's resulted in our used living space being pretty small.

It's also led to the idea that it's a lot easier to pack up and move if there's not a whole lot of stuff to pack!

As a note, I count used living space as the actual space we use to live -- IE eat food, sleep, do activities, and etc.

Some reflections on the current state of affairs

For example, in terms of "living space" at our current home:

we only use one of our two bathrooms
my "office" is a makeshift "storage room" full of totes of our stuff that we don't normally access (or things we should probably just get rid of)
said "office/storage room" is also my wife's "craft room", and we have both our work tables/desks in here
I can still fit basically all the clothes I own into a few duffel bags and one of those fancy folding Samsonite suit cases, which I found like 10 years ago at a thrift store.
the "dining room" is, wait for it... just a pile of boxes full of food and whatever else; we eat in the living room
said living room is also the "game room" or where we entertain guests.

Or to summarize, the overwhelming majority of our space is used to just store food and things, and the space we actually use on a daily basis oftentimes has more than one purpose.

Oh jeez, that's another thing. SO MUCH of our stuff has come from the thrift store. We obviously buy new things on occasion and try to replace what gets truly worn out... but if I were to select and delete everything in this home that is considered "used" or "pre-owned"....

About 75% of all my technology (and probably about as much of the cabling) would disappear;
I'd only basically have a few pairs of pants, merch / work shirts, and some socks
Our bed frame would poof out of existence
Most all of our furniture would cease to exist
My bookshelves would be about 60-65% empty

on and on and on. It actually caught me off guard how much of our stuff isn't stuff that we actually originally purchased, but instead bought used later on in said thing's life.

So what does it matter?

Well, I've had a thought that I want to wind up downsizing. Partially because smaller == cheaper in most places, but mostly because I like using what space is needed and not much more. And it turns out that the majority of the space I do have is mostly focused on storing stuff in an organized manner.

And also because (to Mrs Donut's never ending chagrin) I really want to try out living in a tiny house. I'd much rather take the opportunity for my actual house to be pretty small. I need a kitchen, I need a bathroom and shower, and I need a place to sleep. Done and done. If I need more space, that's what getting prefab sheds put out on the property somewhere is for. Including for a man shack and/or office, instead of trying to keep work and play and sleep and food all under the same <400 sq-ft roof.

That's the other thing: it's a lot cheaper to put a manufactured home or a tiny home trailer or something on a spit of land somewhere for cheap, compared to buying a suburban house lot and getting a foundation poured and utilities run. Expansion is trivial when you get more prefab sheds or structures, which can be a healthy and viable way to segregate your work or hobby stuff from family time and food; and most of the time these additional mini structures don't even count as "buildings" or "dwellings" or what-have-you under the eyes of local property law, so long as you simply don't run water to them. Or something equally silly. Your mileage may vary.

What have I learned? Cook the frog slow

What reflecting on the last 5 years has shown me lately is that I've already made some significant progress towards making the logistics of my dreams a reality. It's nice to know that (assuming I condensed storage and got rid of some more stuff that I guaranteedly don't actually need) I already live on a decently small footprint. It's nice to know that if I were to play my cards right, I could actually figure out getting a small home set up in a real nice spot with a modicum of actual adjustments required to my lifestyle and my expectations on living space.

That's pretty cool.

And I won't lie, it just comforts me that this is an achievable thing - unlike my very Dwarf Fortress desire to have a large, sprawling complex to live in that's full of stuff, for no other reason than "Well, what else would I do with a whole mountain to myself?"

Contact me

Email: wholesomedonut(at)ctrl-c(d0t)club .