Stuff

Last Days Hamilton

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Laura

I am getting geared down for my summer at the Tiny House.  I expect to arrive there some time this weekend get my bike going and enjoy the warm weather months in the peace of Tiny House Ontario.

Before I go there is a lot of stuff to do here.  Today I am going to a little Arts and Crafters show and sale in Dundas, Ontario which is being held at the Community Centre at King and Market Streets from 10-4.  It is being held by the Lion’s Hall and the Westover Artists Group who have invited me to join them.  This group meets once a week, I understand, and paints.  I am considering it, but won’t decide until I have met them and also have returned from my stay at Tiny House Ontario in the fall.  To be honest, I am not sure it would work… it seems to me that packing up materials and work with others might not really be my thing.  It is a funny thing because while I long for human connection, I also find that I feel so awkward and unlikable when I am with others that I don’t want to go through the awkward stuff.  It is stranger still too, because I think that people always find me to be social, loud, and confident, which tells me that either I am a very good faker, or perhaps I have some sort of social anxiety disorder?  I don’t know if one is better than the other, but just that this is what it is.  Awkward, uncomfortable, lonely too.  Sigh….

Obviously, that little aside had nothing to do with what there is to do in order to prepare for my months at Tiny House Ontario, but this is not terribly exciting stuff – packing personal belongings, toiletries, tools, dogs and dog stuff, water jugs, paintings for the show and sale at Hatter’s Bay and so on.  It has been impossible to prepare because I am dog sitting a rather rambunctious young one who was recently adopted by a friend of mine.  He is not trained at all and has (w)reeked havoc on every aspect of my life for the past two weeks.  Still he gets picked up tomorrow, so life will resume with its normal amount of chaos shortly.

So, with today planned and tomorrow a pick up and pack up day, I guess what I am saying is that the next posts will come from my off grid experiences this summer when I am able to access a signal.  Sunday – maybe Monday… will be my first visit back here.

Until then try and find one way over this holiday weekend to live life in a Tiny House kind of way.  Even if it is something small like not buying that object that you think you need – just so that you can throw it away later.  If you are going to buy something make it something like a wonderful local food to sustain you, or a piece of local art (or your own art supplies) to brighten up your life.

I hope this weekend will be a pleasure-fest!

I leave you with this beautiful art work which I found here.

Categories: Art, Simple living, Stuff, Tiny House Ontario, Writing | Leave a comment

The Beatles Tiny House Recording

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Laura

I found a Tiny House, obscure Beatles recording from 1969 (now removed from You Tube sorry folks!).  It is hard to make out the beginning few seconds but you can read along at 0.34.

Sounds like they are having a GREAT TIME with Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellen Bogen by the Sea, by Al Hoffman and Dick Manning.  The Beatles would have been working on Abbey Road.  I understand that they were having a tough time as a band during that period but, even so this Tiny House song seems to have brought them some much needed distraction.

I wish I could say that it was written for me, but I was only 4 when this recording was done.

Here are the lyrics:

There’s a tiny house

By a tiny stream

Where a lovely lass

Had a lovely dream

And her dream came true

Quite unexpectedly

In Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellen Bogen By The Sea

Categories: Art, Open your eyes, Simple living, Stuff, The Beatles, Tiny House Ontario | 1 Comment

Tiny House in a big world

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Laura

Yesterday, I posted about the people I know reacting to my move toward living in Tiny House Ontario and two things happened since then to make me think about perceptions – a little bit more closely.

The first thing is that my beautiful and long time friend, Donna, who lives in Kingston, Jamaica, wrote to me semi-privately about the last post: “I’m a little amused/amazed about the reactions to your Tiny House. People live like that all over the world, happily and joyfully!”  Of course she is correct.  We Canadians have so much space around us that we tend to forget, actually, we really do not know, that people all over the world live in little spaces.

I was oblivious that people would be able to live permanently in anything small until a few years ago when I had an opportunity to visit another beautiful and long time friend Sigita for the first time in Germany.  Then I saw this again when I visited Kafka’s home on Golden Lane in Prague, Czech Republic.  Both of these experiences did not make me want to live in a Tiny House, but they did show me that it is possible to do so, and to recognize that people can, and do live comfortably in small spaces.

Don’t misunderstand me.  I lived in a room when I was a student and I also lived in a tiny (240 square foot) one bedroom apartment when I was a young woman.  But I always saw these smaller places as being temporary – until I could afford bigger, better, more.  I did not aim to live “that” way forever.  The early part of my life was all about saving for a bigger house, and then when I got a bigger house, I wanted an even bigger one.  As a matter of fact, it was my large collection of stuff that made me believe that I needed to have a bigger house.  You know, so that I could put all my stuff in there; just like George Carlin said.  I don’t believe that I am a particularly greedy or unusual Canadian.  I think it is normal for us to expect to own a home when we grow up here.  Perhaps it is part of being a society of immigrants who came hoping for something more and better?

The second thing that made me think about people’s reactions, is that I got my first annual report from WordPress.  I opened it up to read and discovered that I have readers from other places on this planet; this really surprised me!  Given that my blog is only one month and two days old, I already felt pleased at just how many people stop in daily to read about my passion.  I have, to date had nearly 4000 reads, that is about 85 a day, and I really thought that all these reads were my friends and family.  I assumed (because they know me), they are interested in what I am doing.  Or at least worried that I might ask them a question next time I see them.  What I mean, is finding out that other people who do not know me are reading, makes me believe, I should acknowledge there is habitable land outside my own small geographic area.

Now that I know that there are readers from places outside of Canada, I want to be sure that I am not forgetting that to the rest of the world the concept of a Tiny House may be really quite normal.  Also to acknowledge that I come from a position of relative privilege, and I want you to know that I recognize that to a lot of people in the world (including in Canada), having any kind of roof over head is not attainable.  I do know that people live different lives not just here in Canada but everywhere in the world.  I do know and this and this is one of the reasons why the reduction of my footprint on this planet is so very important to me.

So, here you are!  From Canada, USA, Jamaica, Chile, United Kingdom, Romania, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, Philippines and Australia if WordPress got you all right.  Wow!  Thank you for reading!  Tiny House Ontario is just this wee spot which I feel is sort of sacred and I am so pleased to find out that other people feel drawn to it too.  The Tiny House has had such a huge impact on me and it is changing me profoundly still, every day, even when I can’t be there.

Here, I have posted a photo of Golden Lane in Prague.  The Tiny Blue House is where Franz Kafka lived and wrote.  It is much smaller inside than it looks from outside because the walls are very thick.  The map is of those of you who found Tiny House Ontario and again, thank you for stopping by!  

Categories: Environmentalism, Materialism, Readers, Stuff, Sustainable living, Tiny house, World | 3 Comments

Great Uncle Frank’s Tiny House

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Laura

I went to Tiny House Ontario over the weekend and drove in to see my grandma Violet Rickards.  Grandma is approaching 90 and recently, feeling slowed down and tired.  On the route in, I took Rideau Street, ironically, where grandma’s brother, Frank Compton (Punky) lived in his Tiny House when I was a young girl.  Great Uncle Frank worked on the big ships and due to this work, he grew accustomed to small spaces and when he finally hit land he never changed that way of living.  He bought a Tiny House and lived there until the end of his life.

When I was young, I loved to visit Great Uncle Frank.  He allowed me to open the cupboards and look around.  Not only that, he encouraged me to explore.  He would say “there is a treat somewhere, and you will have to find it”.   Or, go lift up the latch in the closet and see what is down in the cellar.  In retrospect I suppose that this allowed him to have a grown up visit at his Tiny House, but when I was a kid, I did not see it like that.  What I saw was that I was allowed to to exactly what I wanted to do when I visited him.

This Tiny House at 371 Rideau Street in Kingston Ontario, sits empty.  It was never what one would call a fancy house but all a single person needs to live comfortably.  It had a quirky but functional bathroom, a decent sized kitchen, a small bedroom with a closet (where the basement entry latch was in the floor), and a little sitting room too.  The coolest thing about this tiny house is that it also has a really good sized shed and a back yard that is a great size and which overlooks the Rideau Canal, he kept his horse there.  It is a great, conveniently located, spot except that the street is somewhat busy and there is an industrial welder who is housed across.   Still, it sickens me to see this Tiny House sit empty in a world where so many people are homeless.  No reason why this could not be tidied up again and made into a house that someone could call home.  When I was a young single mom, I would have loved to have had this tiny house to live in, still would!

Today, when kids in the neighbourhood of Tiny House Ontario come to visit, and they do come… I do just as Great Uncle Frank did.  I tell them to look around, open things up, go upstairs and see what I have done up there.  I encourage them to look for hidden treats and also to tell me about themselves.  I very rarely have grown ups there when they come, so I don’t really care about adult conversations, and maybe Great Uncle Frank did not either.  Perhaps, just perhaps, it is just as it should be and he was truly Great Uncle Frank, just as he was called.  

Categories: Building code, Materialism, Rules, Stuff, Sustainable living, Tiny house | 1 Comment