Abstract
Over the past decade, tiny houses and the lifestyle they promote have become a world-wide phenomenon, with the trend especially impactful in the United States. Given their broad appeal and increasing prominence within popular culture, it is surprising how little research exists on them. To help to better understand what motivates people to adopt this lifestyle, this paper presents insights from an exploratory study in the United States and offers the first contours of a new conceptual framework. Situating the lifestyle within the larger economic and cultural forces of our times, it argues that going “tiny” is seen by tiny house enthusiasts as a practical roadmap to the Good Life: A simpler life characterized by more security, autonomy, relationships, and meaningful experiences. The paper ends with a brief discussion of broader implications and directions for future research.
Highlights
While the idea of living —in the American context—can primarily be traced back to the writings of Henry David Thoreau, the modern tiny house movement takes hold with the writing of Lester Walker’s (1987) book Tiny, Tiny Houses or How to Get Away from It All and Sara Susanka and Obolensky’s (1998) The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live (Lasky 2016).With the hit of the 2008 global economic recession, many individuals found the idea of living in a tiny house1 compelling, and traction within the tiny house (TH) movement began to pick up (Jones 2016)
While the individual appeal of the tiny house lifestyle can be traced to a multifaceted, often nonlinear, and highly complex reevaluation process, one that mirrors the principle of ‘edit’ in minimalism (Babauta 2009), the storyline that emerges from the interviews is much more intriguing
In a culture that stresses success, hard work, and material comfort while at the same time encouraging individuals to strive for happiness and fulfilment (Williams 1970; McMahon 2006), the tiny house house (TH) lifestyle seems to offer an experiential lifeboat to navigate the ever-changing waters of our time and a “new” moral compass to orient their lives
Summary
With the hit of the 2008 global economic recession, many individuals found the idea of living in a tiny house compelling, and traction within the tiny house (TH) movement began to pick up (Jones 2016). House Hunters), newspaper and magazine articles, tiny house builders, and information disseminated during annual TH conferences and workshops. These sources paint the tiny house lifestyle as a rejection of the American bigger-is-better mantra, in which individuals seek a “better life” by downsizing belongings, becoming more conscious consumers, and lessening their environmental impact The TH lifestyle has received little attention within academia
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