Tiny Houses - And the Big Brains that like them

[Damn Near]

How do tiny house people have friends over?

Perhaps they have no friends

 

[mr.moon1488]

The only way I think I'd get a tiny house, would be if it was like a guest house, or something on my property.

 

[дядя Боря]

Taxes. In US, you can write off the debt interest, effectively it's free money. ... unless you live in a shitty tiny house.

Why the fuck would I move to US and live in a tiny shithole? There are communal housing back in the Soviet Union. Basically like a large building with communal kitchen and bathrooms. It makes it very efficient housing. May be fucking hippies and Bernie would like to live in that before they go pinko. (spoiler alert: it sucks ass)

 

[Professional iPad Hoarder]

I would easily rent one if thew were cheap, but a decent one (a.k.a none of the DIY nonsense) I just wonder how good they are in terms of sound and temperature isolation.

 

[дядя Боря]

one thing I always wandered, how do they deal with bathroom? Those houses are the size of my bathroom and with the fan going full tilt, it takes a while after I unload last night's mexcian feast. Sitting and eating in the same space would be cruel.

Did anyone measure oxygen levels in those houses? It seems like they'd be sitting there smelling farts all day long. In a winter ... cabin fever is real.

One good approach would be to dig a root cellar. It would be far more heating efficient, practically carbon neutral. I though that hippies liked that shit.

 

[Sexual Chocolate]

Another argument people give for liking tiny houses is the minimalism aspect, and this can come from just wanting to live a simpler life with less material goods, or it can come from an environmentalist direction, as tiny houses take fewer resources to build and less energy to heat or cool. I'm sympathetic to these arguments somewhat since I agree that we as humans in Western society have vestigial hoarding instincts we'd be better off to stifle a bit more often than we do, and being able to afford something is a far cry from actually needing it.

Disagree. Living in a tiny, cramped, miserable little cell which is too small to get laid in (no girl is going to come over and get banged in a hipster trailer) and too small for children or pets because of The Environment is completely exceptional.

The environment doesn't give a shit about your house. The environment, if it was sentient, actually wants to kill us all and has been the bane of human existence ever since God created us 6,000 years ago (it's Science, bigots)

You know what the environment is? Earthquakes, volcanoes, ice ages, famines, mosquitoes, AIDS, fire ants.

Every year, the environment is responsible for the deaths of countless people.

It's time we stopped apologizing for being a technological species who don't like living in squalor and punched the environment right in its big, fat, stupid, hippie face.

 

[robobobo]

How do tiny house people have friends over?

As far as I can tell, they don't. Seriously, if you see any of the tiny house porn shows on HGTV, it's inevitably a couple of twentysomethings who buy/build the thing then drive it to some other state where one of them has a new job. They're almost always billed as a 'fresh, cheap start for a young family', who always seem to be relocating to a place where they have literally no friends. And will probably never get any, either, since nobody's coming to their shed-sized house to hang out.

Also, because taxes were mentioned, no, they probably aren't tax deductible for the loans. Those trailers aren't subject to a proper home mortgage any more than any other RV is, no bank is gonna give you a 15-year 5% mortgage for your shitty trailer house. They'd be loaned out like a vehicle, so shorter term, higher interest, and not tax-deductible.

 

[Silas]

My house is like 1500 square feet and I wish I had more space, I'd go nuts in a tiny house in about... a day

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

It's time we stopped apologizing for being a technological species who don't like living in squalor and punched the environment right in its big, fat, stupid, hippie face.

We are winning the fight against the environment, but we are winning so hard that people have started to say "Mr. President, please, we can't take it anymore, we can't win anymore like this, Mr. President, you're driving us crazy, you're winning too much, please Mr. President, not so much, and I'm going to say I'm sorry, we're going to keep winning"

 

[Slowboat to China]

I think they're interesting from a purely academic perspective. Sort of like those challenges for Sims players, trying to fit an entire house onto nine or six grid squares on a lot. But trying to actually live in one for months or years at a time would drive most people bananas. Not sure it can be considered efficient housing if you have to build a new extension on the house every time you buy a slightly larger couch.

 

[The best and greatest]

I think they're interesting from a purely academic perspective. Sort of like those challenges for Sims players, trying to fit an entire house onto nine or six grid squares on a lot. But trying to actually live in one for months or years at a time would drive most people bananas. Not sure it can be considered efficient housing if you have to build a new extension on the house every time you buy a slightly larger couch.

Well that's just it, tiny houses make a certain sense if you spend most of your time outdoors and the house is literally just a safe warm spot for sleeping, cooking and storing stuff. Even so I'd probably prefer more rooms, because rooms are useful for things like hobbies....and interests....Things that make you not want to kill yourself out of boredom.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Well that's just it, tiny houses make a certain sense if you spend most of your time outdoors and the house is literally just a safe warm spot for sleeping, cooking and storing stuff. Even so I'd probably prefer more rooms, because rooms are useful for things like hobbies....and interests....Things that make you not want to kill yourself out of boredom.

That's a really good point and in that scenario it makes sense. Hunting lodges and trekking cabins are often small and largely unfurnished because they're not meant to be spent time in as if they were an apartment or a row house. Without electricity there's only natural light in addition to a small fireplace/stove/candles/lanterns, it makes wonders for ones sleep schedule after a while. When it's been dark for an hour or two sleep comes naturally and at first light you spring out of bed full of energy and excitement even if it's 5am and you intend to spend 8 hours foraging for mushrooms and berries.

People think old farmers must have been miserable waking up at the crack of dawn every day but I think it's similar to what I just described.

Though those tiny houses all have electricity, TV's, internet...

 

[robobobo]

What I'd like to see more than shoehorning people into a crap trailer is using the design ideas to make a medium-sized place more efficient. Better storage solutions built into a 1000ish square foot place to make it more usable instead of trying to get people crammed into a 250 square foot space.

 

[Zersetzung]

I think it's kind of stupid that regular houses don't have wheels.

 

[Least Concern]

What I'd like to see more than shoehorning people into a crap trailer is using the design ideas to make a medium-sized place more efficient. Better storage solutions built into a 1000ish square foot place to make it more usable instead of trying to get people crammed into a 250 square foot space.

Now that I can agree with, to a certain extent. For a short while I lived in a tiny urban apartment that actually had a literal Murphy bed (the kind that folds up against a wall when not in use), and it was incredibly convenient because it pretty much blocked off access to half the room while it was down unless you crawled over it. I kind of feel like not hoarding things you don't really need starts to solve that problem by itself, though. There's a law of diminishing returns when it comes to stuff-acquisition.

I think it's kind of stupid that regular houses don't have wheels.

Being able to assume you'll never need to move a house means that you don't have to consider limitations like like weight, aerodynamics, or shape (note that manufactured homes are generally comprised of shapes that fit easily on tractor trailers). There's huge advantages to being able to build a house that will stay in the same place that it was built.

 

[Least Concern]

EA has hopped on the trend by releasing a "tiny homes" content pack for The Sims 4 which includes incentives for building tiny houses for the characters to live in. I never got the appeal of this series of games, but Clint from Lazy Game Reviews loves them, so here's what he has to say about it.

LGR - The Sims 4 Tiny Living Stuff Review

Gameplay and overview of the SIXTEENTH stuff pack for The Sims 4. What kinda tiny stuff is crammed inside this tiny pack? Is living in a micro home worthwhil...

www.youtube.com

So it sounds kind of half-assed and doesn't feature much truly unique to a tiny home compared to a regular house except for that stupid Murphy bed. It seems like it was just a quick cash-in on the trend rather than a sincere attempt.

Does this game allow you to sell a house after you've built it? I wonder if EA accurately modeled the economics of that with regards to these kinds of houses.

 

[mr.moon1488]

EA has hopped on the trend by releasing a "tiny homes" content pack for The Sims 4 which includes incentives for building tiny houses for the characters to live in. I never got the appeal of this series of games, but Clint from Lazy Game Reviews loves them, so here's what he has to say about it.

LGR - The Sims 4 Tiny Living Stuff Review

Gameplay and overview of the SIXTEENTH stuff pack for The Sims 4. What kinda tiny stuff is crammed inside this tiny pack? Is living in a micro home worthwhil...

www.youtube.com

So it sounds kind of half-assed and doesn't feature much truly unique to a tiny home compared to a regular house except for that stupid Murphy bed. It seems like it was just a quick cash-in on the trend rather than a sincere attempt.

Does this game allow you to sell a house after you've built it? I wonder if EA accurately modeled the economics of that with regards to these kinds of houses.

Kinda fits the sims 4 though. Both are worthless things you end up paying way too much money for.

 

[soft breathing]

I love how OP mentioned 'buying a normal house for 150k'.

Houses here will cost you at least 250k and then you still have to pay for the land they're on. My partner and me looked around for an "affordable" house that's still near our workplaces and you end up with 500-750k, sometimes even a million. And the houses are often quite old and in not so pretty conditions - so you have to add up renovation costs to that.

Ironically, tiny houses still don't look attractive to me/us.

I don't see the advantage compared to buying/renting an apartment. I doubt it's quiet in those trailer parks where you set up your tiny house. Or that they're very well isolated against noise. For some reason I always think trailer parks are overflowing with misbehaving children. And screaming children would drive me insane in the long run.

Or: move to the countryside, drive longer to work or look for a new job and buy a cheap(er) house there.

Or, what we're doing right now: Hope the stock market will crash and save up some money for your future house. If it doesn't - you have a nice sum of money saved up. If it does: Yay.

 

[Timmy Testicles]

i will admit that tiny houses can be very visually appealing from the inside sometimes, but i could never live in one. small living spaces can be cozy, but if i can't separate my living room, kitchen, and shitter i'd go nuts. i'll take an apartment over a tiny house any day.

 

[saralovesjuicyfruit]

I lived in a 400 sq ft apartment with my husband for about 4 years in our early 20s and it sucked. Zero privacy both from each other and from the neighbors because the walls were so thin that you could actually hear someone cough, taking dishes out of the cupboard, and I even heard both sides of a phone conversation sometimes if the volume on the phone was high enough. It's bad for mental health. The place was also really hard to clean because you have to pretty much rearrange everything to clean one area, move it back, then clean the area you moved it back from, etc. It's like playing tetris just trying to clean your fucking living space, and because it's such a small space, it gets dirty faster. Not worth it.