I recently read a treatment of the Tiny House movement by fellow blogger Mama Zed’s Homestead. It’s true, I’ve been a devotee of small for many years. There are a ton of advantages to the smaller homes… up to a point! I am currently in the process of refining my personal ethos on this. I’m thinking that for us, that point is on a continuum relative to the number of household members. 

I have been very happy for nine years in my one bedroom 550 ft2 urban condo… high ceilings, a view, lots of character, efficient to clean. Upon getting married even my husband and I are happy living here together for more than a year. Now, however, we have our five month old sleeping in his custom loft crib in the walk-in hall closet and there is no room for relatives to stay over.  For us, this has become our breakaway point. Throw in an au pair and some visiting friends or relatives and our new Tiny is 550 ft2 per family member. And a fenced backyard for the felines!

 

We will miss our great neighbors though! Nine years of living across the hall… we have sure been through a lot together.

We visited our soon-to-be new home today to take some measurements and to spend some more time getting acquainted. It feels good to be there. Mary Durkan, our real estate agent, met us there; she is so awesome! She recounted her recent adventure coming back from Palm Springs with a humorous anecdote. It’s especially relevant given that today is Dia de los Muertos. She was bringing her mother’s ashes back home with her on the airplane and since the flight wasn’t very full, her mother got her own seat. Mary magnanimously gave her mother the window seat. Her mother always coveted that one, but couldn’t enjoy it on account of her bladder and requiring the aisle seat. What a gem you are Mary. And thank you for finding us our house!

Incidentally, we’ve been getting some record rains and the basement is happily still bone dry! Bye for now happy house! See you soon… keys in two weeks!

Happy November 1st friends! One of us got our new day and new month off to a “rabbit rabbit” start. Especially since the other one of us got up at 4am and had a chance over the course of an hour breastfeeding to slowly remember and tip the still-asleep one off. So this month I’m thinking the luck runs in the team approach. We are luckier together!

Well, and the big news is: we voted today! I liked President Barak Obama’s early voting call to action (available on You Tube). And this year we really appreciated the extra time, and the leisure of living room ballots, mail-in/drop-off, early voting. Voting was a big commitment this November. It practically took us a full day on Sunday, and that was after I’d been chipping away at it all week in between Lake activities. It was a lot of work to get to the point of feeling like I was able to make an informed decision: reading the voters’ pamphlet, discussing, and trying to sift through the complex initiatives and numerous strong candidates. Whew! We did it.

Now we pray for the success of our First Lady President and Prop 1: ST3 lightning fast light rail!