The big house mentality is evident when you’re telling someone about the tiny living movement and they just give you a blank stare. No matter how much you explain the advantages, they just don’t get it. And they probably never will.
I brought up the subject of the tiny living movement to a close friend while I was at his and his wife’s (3,000 sq.) house for dinner. I was excited to tell him about a new interest of mine that I was passionate about.
I talked about the tiny living movement with great excitement as I explained all the advantages and motivations for this lifestyle. My friend is a thoughtful person so he made every attempt to carefully listen and understand. His struggle to grasp it and maintain his interest was evident as I spoke. I felt that his comments were just polite gestures.
Tiny Green Living & Stone Faces
He just couldn’t get his head around the idea of living in a small house, driving a small car, or anything else small. This really wasn’t a surprise to me since he and his wife don’t recycle anything even though their trash collection service provides nice recycle baskets and a twice-weekly pickup. I believe green living goes hand in hand with tiny living. I just can’t imagine a person who is into tiny living but not into green living. It would be like a gardener who is not into fertilizer and pest control.
I guess it’s like anything else. It’s improbable that you can convenience a person of something foreign to them especially when you have basic philosophical differences. You can only plant a seed and maybe it will germinate or lie dormant indefinitely.
I wasn’t trying to persuade my friend to join me in this lifestyle. But since tiny living is an important part of my life, I was hoping that he would at least acknowledge its value and benefits. He never did. After quite a bit of discussion, and knowing their history, it became clear to me that he and his wife have a nonnegotiable big house mentally.
He didn’t show much true interest in tiny living. He probably saw it as a topic that would draw little public interest, although he would never say that to me. I hope that he doesn’t ask me about it in the future just to be polite. I don’t enjoy talking to stone faces.
I’m not upset with my friend or his wife in any way. We just have grown in different directions in a few key areas in recent years. But we still have enough in common to sustain our friendship, which is solid.
Lesson Learned
Don’t waste your energy sharing your enthusiasm about tiny living with people who you know in your heart of hearts will not relate to it. The same goes for anyone who shows little interest should you bring up the topic. For some, it would probably take a lobotomy to change their big house mentality. So don’t waste your time. Go build a small house instead.
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It took quite a while for energy-efficient appliances, renewable energy, and fuel-efficient vehicles to become popular and more mainstream. I think it’s going to be the same for tiny living. It will probably be a gradual transition from 3,000 square foot houses to 2,000 and then settle in the 500 to 1,500 range. At least that’s my guess now. Any significant decrease in house size will benefit homeowners and the environment though.
Although I mentioned several times how small houses help the environment in this article, there are huge advantages for the homeowner that I want to reiterate. The benefits to the homeowner are reduced expenses and increased savings and freedom! And the amount of each is proportional to the size of the house.
I’d love to build a micro mansion in a Beverly Hills type community. Wouldn’t that cause a ruckus? It would be an amazing contradiction to observe since it’s usually the building of an enormous mansion that gets the neighbor’s competitive juices stirred up. I’d probably be called the “Beverly Tinybilly.” I’d enjoy every microsecond of it. 😀