Tiny Home Movement

Contents

  1. 1 Thoreau's cabin redux: 
    1. 1.1 16 year old builds tiny home 
    2. 1.2 Woman Living In A 84 sq foot Home
  2. 2 House Truck Transforms Into Fantasy Castle
    1. 2.1 Henry D. Thoreau - Walden Pond
    2. 2.2 Henry David Thoreau's Walden: A Tribute
    3. 2.3 About Thoreau
    4. 2.4 About Walden
    5. 2.5 About Transcendentalism


This page is about small homes trend but also about Henry David Thoreau, who tried this experiment (for similar reasons to its modern counterparts) in the 19th Century, and had quite a lot to say about the whole thing, being part of a philosophical current called Transcendentalism.


Thoreau's cabin redux: 

tiny homes and happiness


Founder of the Tiny Tumbleweed House Company, Jay Shafer, explains how his small home keeps him happier and how his lifestyle differs from Thoreau's 19th century simple life.



16 year old builds tiny home 

to guarantee mortgage-free future


Austin Hay is still in high school, but he's building his own house. It's only 130 square feet, but it makes him a homeowner without a mortgage at just 16 years old. Right now, it's parked in his parents' backyard, but he's built it on wheels so he plans to take it to college and then wherever he goes after he graduates. 
He's been sleeping in his tiny home for a few months now and he's already decided not to return to big (his parents' home is 1800 square feet). "Living small means less bills, living big means more bills," he explained from the tiny stoop of his new home. "I don't want to pay big bills". 

Hay's 130-square-foot home may make him the youngest member of the growing Small House Movement. 

Hay expects to spend about $12,000 building his home (the used trailer cost him $2000) and he's paying for it working two summer jobs (at a camp and at a park snack bar). He's cut his costs in half (the home's estimated DIY price is $23,000) though this is a considerable discount from the home's estimated price of $23,000 because Hay has scavenged everything from doors, windows and flooring to the kitchen sink (the hardwood floors were $25 at a salvage yard and so was the stainless steel sink).
For more info & links, original story here:http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/16-yr-old-builds-tiny-home-to-guarantee-...


Woman Living In A 84 sq foot Home




House Truck Transforms Into Fantasy Castle

Vídeo de YouTube


This is a house truck that you have to see to believe. Completely road legal, this off-the-grid house truck folds out and transforms into a fantasy castle. This is one Tiny House tour you don't want to miss!

From Living Big In A Tiny House YouTube channel

Henry D. Thoreau - Walden Pond




Henry David Thoreau's Walden: A Tribute


A video containing images of Thoreau, Walden Pond, and surrounding forests, set to music I wrote that Thoreau helped to inspire. The quotes are all from Walden, and include many of my favorite, and I think some of the best, words of wisdom in the book. Some of the images included in the video are from Wikimedia Commons.



About Thoreau

by Henry David Thoreau:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. 

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. 

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."



About Walden


"Walden is a difficult book to read for three reasons: First, it was written by a gifted writer who uses surgically precise language, extended,allegorical metaphors, long and complex paragraphs and sentences, and vivid, detailed, and insightful descriptions. Thoreau does not hesitate to use metaphors, allusions, understatement, hyperbole, personification, irony, satire, metonymy, synecdoche, and oxymorons, and he can shift from a scientific to a transcendental point of view in mid-sentence. 

Second, its logic is based on a different understanding of life, quite contrary to what most people would call common sense. Ironically, this logic is based on what most people say they believe. Thoreau, recognizing this, fills Walden with sarcasm, paradoxes, and double entendres. 

He likes to tease, challenge, and even fool his readers. 

And third, quite often any words would be inadequate at expressing many of Thoreau's non-verbal insights into truth. 

Thoreau must use non-literal language to express these notions, and the reader must reach out to understand."

— Ken Kifer





This is not to suggest that those people today who wish to live simply or want a small home are Transcendentalists, ... but here is something about this philosophical current that Thorough was part of:

About Transcendentalism


Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest to the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School. 

Among the transcendentalists' core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both man and nature. 

Transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions - particularly organized religion and political parties - ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual. 

They had faith that man is at his best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. 

It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed.



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