Well, look, here we are at the end of Jroon already. (By which I mean the month. The domain is not going to expire anytime soon.) I did my Jroon 3rd comics a long time ago, but I only just scanned them right now. Here they are. Other, more punctual comics by others can be found, as usual, here.
This is also your reminder, if you needed it, that the 3rd is coming around again soon.
So last week, while catching up with the Tiny House blogosphere (which is anything but tiny, let me tell you), I read an announcement about a tiny house building workshop right here in North Portland... taking place in just a couple of days. Ai yi yi, I almost missed it! It was with Dee Williams, who built a teeny trailer-mounted house five years ago and has lived in it ever since. Here's a great video about Dee and her house.
The workshop was Super Great. Dee and KT, a professional carpenter, taught us how to safely use a number of power tools, and over the course of a Saturday led us through framing, sealing, and insulating the floor of a little house on a trailer. It was pretty much exactly at the level of learning I needed (i.e, for those with little to no construction experience). Plus it was great to meet some folks who are fairly serious about constructing their own tiny domiciles. And by "fairly serious" I mean "pretty much for sure going to do this thing." I brought my camera to the workshop, but when I realized how vested some of the others were in documenting the process (with way better cameras than mine), I was like, aw, go for it, guys. And they didn't disappoint, either. Check out the impressive photoset collected by tiny house blogger Rowdykittens (she and her husband drove all the way from Sacramento for the workshop)!
A few words about my own plans. I still think this is a great idea, but I haven't got all the logistics worked out, and I'm not committing to anything yet. So you'll all have to be in suspense with me about whether or not I actually wind up living in an oversized dollhouse on wheels. The workshop shifted my understanding of the building process from nebulous scariness to specific kinds of scary, which, though it may not sound like much, is a significant step toward making it happen.
Dee's house is like a little chapel, airy and cedary-smelling. The narrowness of the walls makes the open ceiling seem really high. It actually has the feel, to me, of a sacred kind of place. But no plumbing, very few possessions. As much as I love it, it's not quite what I want. I really want a sink and shower in my home, and I have no desire at this time to reduce my belongings to quite that few. (It's taken me almost six months to get rid of 1/3 of the 300 books I plan to part with before the year is out.) And my lifestyle is unlikely to look quite like Dee's. I need a little more space, a little more clutter, a little more "cush." But seeing how someone else does this tiny house thing makes it easier to visualize how I might do it.
Which is, um, pretty exciting.
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5 comments:
It's getting easier for me to let go of books, but I'm still far far away from your ultimate goal of 100. I might reach my goal of less than 1000 before I move, at least. voila! I just spotted a couple more I can release...
I saw in comments on Jay's site that he's worked up plans for mobile versions of some of the 3-400 sq ft houses. They're not online yet, but I'm very curious to see how that will work.
That ultimate goal feels a loooong way away right now. It occurred to me just this morning that 200 books/6 months = 1 book per day. Yikes! I better get it in gear!
I find that there are just a few books I feel comfortable getting rid of at any given time, but when I get rid of those, I uncover a few more books I feel comfortable getting rid of. The process is inefficient, but I'm a lot happier with it (and having a lot more fun) than if I just dumped a bunch at once.
I also go through iterations of selection, although I don't have to get them out of the house at once; I build what I call a compost pile (currently behind the couch) over several months and then just before a Powell's run, I take them all out of library thing. At that point a few of them may return to the collection. Going to the Powell's warehouse instead of the store removes immediate temptation to turn cash back into more books. What Powell's doesn't take I give to Goodwill or Title Wave so I don't get another chance to reconsider taking them back.
I've got another batch of books I'm ready to get rid of except that I am sure they would be extremely difficult to replace or find again, even with vast library resources (welsh-language learning, for example, and some limited-run mass market science fiction from the 1980s). Maybe I'll be able to let go by the time I move back.
Did you check those rareys on abebooks.com to make sure they're actually hard to replace?
I like your compost pile idea. Lately I've found this to be helpful, as many of my books are ex-library and too worn to be swappable.
We should co-author a Bibliophile's Guide to the Disposal of Books!
If you're at all interested in tiny house living, I recommend it. Of course you have to pare down your belongings, but you really end up having only things you really want. It's kind of zen, kind of liberating. Also, cheap!
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