Tiny houses, travel & defining home

 What does it mean to be un-moored from any specific place?

SusanCaba
Resale Evangelista

Today, I’m writing from a hillside house in Santa Barbara. The scarlet bougainvillea —attended by hummingbirds—competes for sunlight with lavender blooms of jacaranda trees and spikey purple agapanthas in the garden. I walked outside in my robe this morning to have coffee by the pool overlooking dun-colored hills.

The Pacific is an indigo wedge on the horizon. I’ll swim a few lengths of the pool—no suit needed—before showering in a spa-like master bath with heated floors. For these two months, I’m driving a vintage white Mercedes dubbed “The Sugar Cube.”

In a way, house-sitting is an idyllic life. But I know the ultimate goal of my year of living restlessly is to find a place that feels permanent. Actually, I’ve come to realize that’s been a goal of mine my entire life. I’m also getting inklings that what I’m looking for is less a place than a sense–a sense of belonging. So far, I have only vague ideas–maybe daydreams, maybe delusions–of what that sense of belonging would look or feel like.

I started musing along these lines after coming across a couple of essays by San Francisco blogger Cheri Lucas Rowlands. She and her husband, another writer, have sold most of their stuff, rented their loft and are in the process of completing a tiny house–20 feet long, 8 feet wide, 131 square feet–on wheels. (They bought a partially completed model from the Tumbleweed Tiny House Co.)

Like me, Rowlands and her husband decided that finding their place in life required stripping down to the core.

“We want a physical home we can call our own — one we really do own, with no mortgage, excessive bills, or superfluous possessions to weigh us down. Escaping a mortgage and living more simply will free up money, which will free up time,” Rowlands wrote, describing the birth of her Tiny House Travelers journey.

But Rowlands and her husband, Nick, are looking at their decision to downsize and detach from any one location from a perspective beyond mere housing:

“As travelers…trying out different locations for size; as a couple exploring our relationship to our shared space and to each other; and as writers deeply interested in the evolution of space, place and home, and in people’s ties to physical objects and locations in a world where the boundaries between the ideas of the digital and the physical are becoming increasingly blurred.”

I’ve embarked on a similar adventure, through serial house-sitting. I hadn’t really articulated what I hoped to discover, other than a permanent place to live. My thoughts started to gel along the lines of “a sense of belonging” after reading Rowlands’ essay.

A few weeks back, I wrote about my friend Doreen Carvajal  unraveling mysteries about her family’s history that had been quietly churning in the back of her mind for decades. I started the post by asking, “What is the burning question in your life?”

“I’m asking” I wrote, “because I think the search for an answer–whatever the question–creates a sense of passion and purpose in life. I’m envious of those who not only have such a question (and recognize it) but summon the will, the energy and the resources to pursue the answer. In the process, those people experience a deep sense of satisfaction and, I think, come to know some fundamental truths about themselves.”

I haven’t been able to fully shape my burning question yet. But I think it’s related to finding that sense of belonging. And, as I wrote that last sentence, it occurred to me that instead of using the word “finding,” I should have written “creating.” As in creating that sense of belonging.

In a New York Times article about her quest to uncover family secrets, Doreen wrote: “We can change the story we tell about ourselves and, by doing that, change our future.”

Coincidentally, I had been thinking that the subtext of my year of living restlessly is, “Change my story, change my brain, change my life.” I’m a believer in the science that says we can “rewire” our brains by over-riding the stories about ourselves that we grew up believing.

That’s why I said I should have written “creating” a sense of belonging rather than “finding” a sense of belonging. Apparently, I have control over whether I belong or not. Now that’s a scary realization!

I’ll finish with one more thought from another of Rowlands’ essays, “What it means to write about travel.”

“Traveling can simply mean exploring–whatever your world, whatever your reality–and is often less about place and more about time, change and one’s relationship to a moment.”

In that sense, I’m traveling…aren’t we all?

 

 

 

 

Tiny house simplifies life

Illness led her to downsize–drastically

SusanCaba
The Resale Evangelista

I have a “thing” for tiny houses.

That’s always been true, though I think their pull is stronger at the moment as I’m selling my current home–which is not so big. There is a purity of function to a tiny house. Nothing unneeded–or at least, not much that’s unneeded–is allowed to take up precious space.

I’m sure it’s because that’s how I would like not only my house, but my mind, to function. Edit away the superfluous to focus on the essential. I’d elaborate but I have to get back to the house and finish cleaning out the closets before I move out for good tomorrow.

In the meantime, here’s an article from the New York Times about a woman who, upon learning she has a chronic and serious health condition, pared down to the minimum. And I do mean minimum–she downsized from a three-bedroom house to an 84-square foot cabin she built herself. It’s built on a truck bed, so it’s mobile. This reminds me of the gypsy wagons I saw long ago in Ireland.

The little house that Dee Williams built is a bit too minimalistic for me–it has one propane burner for a kitchen and no shower. She’s parked the house in the yard of close friends in Olympia, Washington, and uses one of their houses if she wants to bake or take a bath. The arrangement has created an intimate community of fewer than 10 people.

I haven’t had a chance to find her book, but she’s written a memoir–The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir (Blue Rider Press)–about her diagnosis of cardiomyopathy and how it caused her to reassess her life. “I started seeing ‘congestive heart failure’ in my health records,” Ms. Williams told the Times reporter.  “If you look it up online, your life expectancy is typically one to five years. The notion of paying a 30-year mortgage didn’t make sense.”

I’m looking forward to reading it and contemplating what’s next–as soon as I get rid of the queen size mattress still lingering at the house, and finish dumping whatever is in the boxes still tucked in the back of the closets. Here’s my advice to any of you thinking you may move in the next four, five, 10 or 15 years–start culling now!

 

 

Is there magic behind the blue door?

Susan Caba
The Resale Evangelista

There is something mysterious and welcoming about this tiny house in the foothills behind Santa Barbara. The tumble of rocks, the brick pathway, the capacious window and stout chimney. And, of course, the promise behind that big blue door.

I can just imagine writing there–the best writing spots, I find, hold me close and keep me focused, but with a comfortable, not constraining, embrace. I could slip into this artful gem with ease.

Just 500 square feet, it was crafted from handmade adobe bricks, reclaimed lumber and other salvaged material in the 1940s, part of what became known as the Mountain Drive Artist Colony. The Bohemian denizens of the colony became known for, among other things, their annual wine-making festival and the fact that they invented the hot tub.

A perfect place for morning coffee

What I call the Blue Door Cottage is one of just three of the originals that have survived the ravages of wildfires over the years. The Coyote Fire, named for the road on which the cottage sits, roared through in 1954, followed by the Sycamore Fire in 1977. The last, the Montecito Tea Fire in 2008, consumed 210 homes, including 22 from the Artist Colony era.

But it was fire that made the colony possible in the first place. The writer Bobby Hyde bought a large swath of charred land in the late 1940s, which he later parceled out to like-minded friends. One of those was architect Frank Robinson, who designed and built many of the houses in the neighborhood of unique homes. When a new resident came along, everyone worked together to help them build, including making bricks from the soil excavated for the house.

Hyde and his wife, Florence–known as Floppy, were “green” long before the term was coined. They were also the original hippies. Santa Barbara architect Jeff Shelton told a local writer that the Hydes and their neighbors advocated the concepts of “salvage chic, sustainability and simplicity.” Pull up your chair and soak in the warmth from the stone fireplace

They also staged frequent celebrations, including their annual Wine Stomp, conceived in 1952. The men filled a large wooden vat with grapes and selected a Wine Queen while the women prepared a feast. After the meal, the queen–wearing only a grape leaf crown–stepped into the vat and began the ritual wine-making. The rest of the crew, similarly garbed, soon joined her.

The wine reportedly was terrible. But the Stomp left its cultural mark–when not used for making wine, the grape vat doubled as the original California hot tub.

I didn’t know a thing about the Mountain Drive Colony until I saw a listing for the cottage on my last visit to Santa Barbara. The asking price was $1.19 million–which raised eyebrows even in Santa Barbara. You know the saying: Location, location, location. After all, Oprah paid $50 million for her slightly larger estate nearby. The cottage–hot tub included–is no longer on the market.

Not that I could afford it, but I just know there is magic behind that blue door.