It was a
most unusual day: a moose lodge, a tiny home, and a house made of hay.
For over a
year I had been regularly hearing about “Daily Acts”, a relatively new local
environmental org, best known for its sustainability tours. Daily Acts inhabits
a sweet spot on the activist spectrum, a mix of Paul Hawken
practicality, Ram Dass spirituality, and Wavy Gravy
whimsy. This owes much to DA founder and Director, a former snowboarder dude
and now greenie named Trathen Heckman. Trathen, along with my friend Ellen Bichler,
organized and hosted a recent outing called My Green Granny (as in “granny
units”)
I’m a big
fan of small homes. So many things about the way we live would improve if we
had the courage to downsize our dwellings. Less land to
clear. Less to build and maintain, to pay mortgage on,
to heat, light, and clean. Less stuff to buy and store
and clean and pack and discard. And less is more: more time, money,
beauty, and peace. Thus, I took an interest in the Daily Acts tour, an introduction
to examples of small homes, including “granny units”, in
The tour
began at a moose lodge-- that is, the Petaluma Moose Lodge on
Grannies
are a great way for
The next
stop was the parking lot, where we toured one of Jay Shafer’s’ tiny homes (as
seen on Oprah!) Jay’s hand-made pint-sized palace was mounted to a small
flatbed trailer, with a footprint of less than one hundred square feet. Reminds
me of when I lived comfortably in a 4 by 20 wine storage closet, except Jay’s
structures have kitchens, bathrooms, and charm. This is made possible by clever
design, mobile home appliances, and first-rate materials and craftsmanship (see
www.tumbleweedhouses.com)
Our final
destination was Forty Oaks, a “co-housing” development a few miles west of
town. Co-housing is a concept that deserves an entire column. It offers some of
the best elements of communal living-- like the sharing of child care and
gardens-- while preserving the privacy and independence of single family homes.
At Forty Oaks, we toured two lovely grannies: one with walls of rastra (a combination of cement and foam pellet blocks,
rebar, and concrete… not hemp!), another using stacked and stuccoed
straw bales. Two little girls who lived in the straw bale house happily
testified that it was “warm in the winter…” and “cool in the summer.”
On the City
bus back into town, we tourists buzzed about what it meant to have a smaller
home. One wished he had a Harry Potter wand that would magically disappear all
the stuff from his house that he didn’t really need. Like how a fire burns out
the underbrush in a forest, said another. A virtual-fire life-uncluttering service…like moving, except instead of a van
they park the donation/recycling/garbage truck in front of your house, haul
everything out (tracking of your charitable contribution as they pass), and you
have to stop them, rescuing the important things from the virtual fire. Wow,
what a metaphor for the ecological crisis…
Lots of ideas… thanks to Daily Acts. If you’d like to get in on their
action, visit www.daily-acts.org.