Member-only story
Tiny Houses are For the Birds
They aren’t for creative families with pets, though.
When I first moved into the cabin, I was a single mother with a four year old daughter who still slept in my bed, a 50 pound dog, and a 15 pound Maine Coon cat. Our 600 square foot space (which I realize is on the large end of what’s generally considered a “tiny home”), tucked very shadily into a grove of massive pines and cedars on an unfenced acre and a half of land, worked for us — it gave me less to clean, less stuff to manage, and less square footage or utilities to pay for.
Soon, however, I resurrected my upcycled-leather jewelry design business, which began taking over a corner of the cabin. My daughter started getting into Legos and participating in dance recitals that required elaborate, floofy tutus we “got” to stuff into an already-maxed, tiny little closet afterward. Thrift shopping, an addiction of mine, also continued.
A year and a half into that, I fell in love with a musician. Along with her came a collection of guitars, electrical cords, and weird electronic boxes covered in blinky lights, and another thrift-shopping addiction.
We also added another rescued dog to the mix, a 75-pound, grinning gasbag of a Treeing Walker hound that did not know her own size or strength and tended to follow her nose off the property…
