Homebdies - Little boxes...

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Published on Saturday, August 29, 2015

By Rita Friesen

The Neepawa Banner

Pete Seeger’s song ‘Little Boxes’, back in the sixties, expressed the futility of life. Small cookie cutter houses, the humdrum repetitiousness of going to work; the song is a political satire about the development of suburbia and associated conformist middle-class attitudes. Suburban tract housing, “little boxes”, of different colors, but “all made out of ticky-tacky”, and which “all look just the same.” “Ticky-tacky” -the shoddy material used in the construction of housing of that time. 

Where am I going with this one? Little houses are making a strong comeback. There is even a television series about this tiny homes movement. I watch it. And then I think of our early settlers. Their first home, a log cabin, a soddie or a semlin, provided shelter and, sometimes, warmth. There is more than one story about a pioneer family raising a large family in a very small space! Kids stacked like cord word, taking turns sitting at the table for meals. They survived and thrived.   

The movement now is for carefully crafted fully contained homes with most of the amenities. Compost toilets, some with solar panels, every nook and cranny utilised for comfortable living. Some are no bigger than a gypsy caravan, or the covered wagon that crossed the prairies. But oh! So much prettier and comfortable. Some are constructed as a mobile home, some designed to nest on rural family property.

The idea intrigues me. I am perched on the precipice of downsizing. How tiny can I go? But, if I understand correctly, most towns will not allow anything smaller than nine hundred square feet to be built or settled in their district. These tiny houses are way smaller than that! Some right around the one hundred square feet. That’s ten by ten – I know! You really have to want to cut down on your footprint, and do without a great many ‘things’. Again think covered wagon. The pioneers had their galvanised tub hanging on the outside, along with buckets and gear. We know what their bathroom looked like – a lot like nature! 

I was discussing this topic with one of my younger friends. There is such a crying need for affordable housing. This concept would not work well for a growing family, but for an individual that requires assistance with living and housing costs, I think it would work. Let’s not make a slum of tiny houses, perhaps a safe ‘village’, or incorporate them into our everyday living. Less expensive to create, less expensive to maintain, but providing a home and dignity. 

I recall a housing development in Moscow. Stacks of shipping containers housing migrant workers. Plain, unadorned cargo boxes stacked in glaring sun. Steep stairs leading upward. That worked, but that’s not what I am thinking about. These needed tiny houses ought to be clean, accessible and desirable! I want one. More than ‘little boxes’.