Some good news…
According to this video, home sizes have leveled off and are now contracting. The video features one of the leaders of this trend.
I love this guy’s attitude. Not many people have the ability to live small or unconventionally. Not many people would even consider it. He’s taken a very “city” idea and applied it to a place where it makes sense.
I live in about 900 square feet (9 times the size of this featured home) with my wife and child, and it requires some planning, adjusting, and sharing of public spaces compared to most everywhere else I’ve lived in America. I can imagine a future where a lot of families start to double and triple up in those McMansions even as the particle board starts to wither and mold, so we may want to get used to this concept.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I like it.
To quote my daughter:
“Where would you put all the books?”
The Great Transition is insisting we reinvent ourselves, challenging us to rethink every aspect of our lives. The super-sizing of homes over the last 20 years was an exercise in insanity; there are some folks who have closets or bathrooms the size of your apartment! I’m thinking it will be difficult for them to opt out…unless they absolutely have to. But for the rest of us, there are options – and a wonderful opportunity to be CREATIVE in the process.
Looks like a grand adventure to me! I’m up for alternatives, but getting my husband there is another matter.
Would LOVE to live in a Yurt + composting toilets are amazing!
http://www.coloradoyurt.com/yurts
http://www.yurts.com/
http://www.envirolet.com/
I think this guy at least fits #1,
David Korten:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-big-picture-5-ways-to-know-if-youre-making-a-difference
To bring down the institutions of Empire, we must begin to build the rules, relationships, and institutions of a New Economy. These must be lived into being from the bottom up.
So how do you know whether your work is contributing to a big-picture outcome? If you can answer yes to any one of the following five questions, then be assured that it is.
1. Does it help discredit a false cultural story fabricated to legitimize relationships of domination and exploitation and to replace it with a true story describing unrealized possibilities for growing the real wealth of healthy communities?
2. Is it connecting others of the movement’s millions of leaders who didn’t previously know one another, helping them find common cause and build relationships of mutual trust that allow them to speak honestly from their hearts and to know that they can call on one another for support when needed?
3. Is it creating and expanding liberated social spaces in which people experience the freedom and support to experiment with living the creative, cooperative, self-organizing relationships of the new story they seek to bring into the larger culture?
4. Is it providing a public demonstration of the possibilities of a real-wealth economy?
5. Is it mobilizing support for a rule change that will shift the balance of power from the people and institutions of the Wall Street phantom-wealth economy to the people and institutions of living-wealth Main Street economies?
These are useful guidelines for setting both individual and group priorities. Bear in mind that in a systems-change undertaking of this magnitude, there is no magic bullet and no one is going to make it happen on their own, so don’t be discouraged if the world looks much the same today despite your special and heroic effort yesterday. It took five thousand years to create the mess we are in today. It will take more than a few days to set it right.
The headline of this post just says it all!