Living Large In Our Little House

An arti­cle on small homes, by yours truly, fea­tur­ing some Living Large com­mu­nity members

Recently dereg­u­lated GMO alfalfa will con­t­a­m­i­nate, say experts.

A com­pre­hen­sive green check­list

Organic broc­coli and rice casse­role recipe

A man trav­el­ing the coun­try in horse­drawn RV

How can we pet lovers save on vet expenses? Check out my arti­cle on Mainstreet​.com

Microhouses

Students protest new green fee

One thing that has been very chal­leng­ing for us since build­ing Our Little House has been the financing.

I know, the Small House Movement con­verts and min­i­mal­ists are prob­a­bly won­der­ing what the point was of hav­ing a small home if we still had to finance.

I’ve writ­ten before about our atti­tudes towards debt. We were chil­dren of the 70s and early 80s that was raised in a cul­ture of hav­ing an atti­tude that debt is ok, par­tic­u­larly on houses and vehicles.

I even worked nearly half of my adult life in the credit industry.

Our atti­tudes have changed now, our whole goal is to get out of debt, but we really need to refi­nance Our Little House while the inter­est rates are low to help us achieve our goals.

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I stum­bled upon this arti­cle, enti­tled “The tiny house move­ment still comes with a size­able price tag.”

The arti­cle left me scratch­ing my head, to say the least.

The author starts off great by com­par­ing McMansions with fast food joints, “On a cost per square foot basis, the typ­i­cal McMansion may seem like a good deal, but like a Big Mac, what sort of nour­ish­ment does it truly deliver?”

That’s the ques­tion we asked our­selves when we lived in the city. We had 1,100 square feet, not a McMansion by any means, but we still had enough space in the house to have one bed­room that was com­pletely unused except when we wanted to throw some­thing we didn’t know what to do with in there because our clos­ets were so full.

We had four tele­vi­sions in the house and enough space to allow us to spend more time with those sets than with each other.

How nour­ish­ing was that to our rela­tion­ship, much less the envi­ron­ment when there was so much wasted/unused space?

He sets up what was seem­ingly his the­sis “But how to con­vince America’s real estate glut­tons that this approach can apply equally to din­ing rooms as well as dinner?”

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Here are some links you might enjoy check­ing out this weekend!

Organic pet food sales are grow­ing (remem­ber, read­ers, I work for an excel­lent com­pany, K9 Cuisine, which sup­plies online only the high­est qual­ity com­mer­cial pet foods on the mar­ket. You can pur­chase your high qual­ity pet food with­out addi­tional sales taxes and have it deliv­ered directly to your door!) The best part of it is the com­pany founder’s val­ues regard­ing donat­ing to ani­mal causes.

This arti­cle defines fresh, local, organic.

Coupons a good way to also save on organic gro­ceries.

Start ‘em off right. Organic cloth­ing for new­borns.

McMansions falling out of home buyer’s favor (Really!? We small house own­ers could have told them that!)

This writer argues that bam­boo is not really green.

Going green with your exer­cise rou­tine!

An ultra mod­ern tiny kitchen design.

Would you pay more for green toys?