From time to time, Dee Williams does a possession count. The last tally was 305.
In many homes, that may amount to the stuff found in the kitchen cupboards, or the contents of one walk-in closet. For Ms. Williams, it included all of her worldly belongings, from her bedroom suite (a mattress and a quilt) to her home entertainment equipment (a laptop) to her jewelry collection (four pieces in all: two necklaces and two pairs of earrings).
"That's everything," she said, adding that she recently ordered a book on house design, a big splurge. "I'm constantly going through my stuff, figuring out what I should get rid of. Cr! eep happens."
When your house is 84 square feet, life gets pared down.
Ten years ago, Ms. Williams, now 51, sold her three-bedroom bungalow in Portland, Ore., built a tiny house on a metal truck trailer and drove it to Olympia, Wash., where it came to rest in the backyard of her friends Hugh O'Neill and Annie McManus. Her "great room" is too small for a couch, her upstairs is just a sleeping loft with a skylight. There's a kitchen counter with a propane one-burner, but no oven or refrigerator. There are lights, but they run on solar power. There's a sink and a toilet, but no running water (which means composting and no shower).
Visitors to the property may be forgiven f! or thinking someone had taken up residence in a beautifully built pine-and-cedar toolshed out back.
Before going tiny, Ms. Williams wanted to downsize, inspired by a trip she took to an impoverished area of Guatemala, and the growing sense that her life was being consumed by household chores. But, as she writes in "The Big Tiny" (Blue Rider Press), her affecting new memoir, there came a point when her heart, quite literally, was no longer in a standard-size house.
At 40, Ms. Williams had a heart attack and was told she had cardiomyopathy, a condition that can be fatal. She began to consider her mortality, and how she wanted to spend her remaining time. Cleaning the gutters didn't rank high on the list.
"I started seeing 'congestive heart failure' in my health records," Ms. Williams said. "If you look it up online, your life expectancy is typically one to five years. The notion of paying a 30-year mortgage didn't make sense."
In a doctor's waiting room, Ms. Williams read a magazine article about a man named Jay Shafer and the tiny house he had built, and was taken with the idea. Soon she was flying to Iowa City to meet with Mr. Shafer, a guru in the tiny-house world, and poring over blueprints back in Portland. It was a distinctive response to a health crisis, she admits.
"Lots of people end up with a bad diagnosis," Ms. Williams said. "Bu! t they don't end up building a little house."
Still, she added, "Living in a little house made sense for me, it clicked. It gave me a chance to live close to my friends and be happy with the time that I have."
In the book, Ms. Williams writes about inviting her friends over to her bungalow to show them the floor plan of her new tiny house. The proposed living space was not much bigger than the area rug on which she stood. One of those friends, Joan Grimm, recalled her skepticism.
"I remember looking at her and going: 'You are a kook. This doesn't make any sense,' " Ms. Grimm said. "I had no construct for that in my head. I was working so hard for a house. I was thinking, this is never going! to last. Or this will last a month."
These days, Ms. Grimm is Ms. Williams's business partner in Portland Alternative Dwellings, a company that provides resources for building tiny houses to the D.I.Y. crowd.
"Dee always says there's one part how-to and two parts why-not," Ms. Grimm said. "There's a point where you have to take a leap."
For Ms. Williams, that leap might have been less successful had she not landed where she did. By parking her tiny house in her friends' backyard, she and her previous dog, RooDee, became part of a tiny community, whose members included Mr. O'N! eill and Ms. McManus and their two young children, Keeva and Kellen, an! d Mr. O'Neill's elderly Aunt Rita, who lived next door.
The shared backyard became a group living room, or The Compound, as they called it. And Ms. Williams was able to slip into Aunt Rita's house to use the amenities her tiny house lacked — to shower, say, or bake a pie.
"I started to feel that I belonged," Ms. Williams said. "I was part of this setup. Aunt Rita was someone who needed my help. And she was really good company." (Aunt Rita died last spring, and renters who embraced the Compound ethos have recently moved in.)
It was a risk for her and her husband to invite Ms. Williams to park her tiny house on their property, ! Annie McManus admitted. But one that has paid off, especially for the children.
"In their growing-up years, they had both Dee and Rita as important adults in their life, beyond their mom and dad," she said. "There was Dee and RooDee in the backyard. There was a lot of play, a lot of laughter."
Ms. McManus and Ms. Williams both cited the unplanned social interaction as a huge benefit. "I can walk outside and Dee is on her porch, and I can look up and say, 'You want to go for a walk?' " Ms. McManus said.
In the early years, Ms. Williams sometimes hitched her tiny house to her truck and drove it to worksh! ops. But the house hasn't budged lately, and it is likely to stay put! for a long time. Asked if living in a tiny house has limited her romantic prospects, Ms. Williams, who has never been married, agreed that sleeping two is not an option, at least not for an extended period. Even houseguests are challenging, she said.
"When my brother comes to visit, I feel insulted that he brings a backpack," Ms. Williams said, laughing. "Where are you going to put it?"
She was recently involved in a relationship that made her question her commitment to tiny living. "I came to the conclusion that my little house fits now, but it might not always fit me," she said. "I like to think I'd be brave enough to make the change."
Over the last decade, she has become a big voice in the tiny-house world, teaching workshops, helping others build their own tiny dwellings and now publishing a memoir. Her lack of a mortgage allows her to work part time, freeing up days to visit friends or travel. She recently flew to Charlotte, N.C., to attend the Tiny House Conference, where she delivered the keynote address.
Some of the conference attendees had already built a tiny house. Many were college students, retirees or others who dream of simplifying their lives or financial commitments. But a lot of the people she talks to will never move beyond the planning stage and pick up a hammer — "and that's O.K.," Ms. Williams said. "That dream is a good dream."
Ms. Williams is still facing down her mortality; she is! on heart medication, and takes things day to day. But she writes in "The Big Tiny" of finding a centeredness and peace in her little house, of being less fearful, more alive. Some of the best passages are when she describes the sensory experience of being inside: smelling raw cedar and knotty pine; listening to the weather.
"In a big house, it's easier to ignore what's going on outside," she said. "Or you're constantly trying to compete with nature through your thermostat. I'm more into collaborating with nature now."
Ms. Williams sold her big house in Portland to a friend, and over the years she has been back inside a few times, with no regrets. "The last time I was over, I noticed the house needed to be repainted," she said. ! "I was like, God, I'm glad I don't have to do that."
Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/garden/square-feet-84-possessions-305.html
