Visitors

Visitors? People who want to visit me more than my house? Time to clean up and unfold some furniture! Pardon a bit of an insight into life in a tiny house.

Tiny houses are cute. Tiny houses are trendy. I won't list the tiny house sites and videos. There are many more than enough. I don't know if Architectural Digest or Sunset have dedicated columns or at least hashtags for them, but I suspect they do. The ones I see online are gorgeous. Tiny houses are also frugal, pragmatic, and can be highly functional. Mine is definitely lived in and worked in. The way I live in mine is definitely not photogenic. I should know; I've been enough of a photographer to sell my photos (FineArtAmerica.com) and enough of a writer to write about tiny houses for about 15 years so far.

But it looks like I might get visitors during the holidays. Eep! Clean! Declutter! Put things back into closets, sweep those floors, rearrange that furniture! 

Visitors are fun. 

In my previous house, I enjoyed having parties, sometimes with dozens of folks fitting into its 868 square feet. Having an empty room and a large porch and carpark helped.

In my tiny house, lots of people have talked about visiting, but few actually arrive. Maybe it's the fact that I live in a mobile home park that makes people cautious. This isn't the ideal of a tiny house on a large lot in a rural setting with pastoral views. Except that, the local hiking and biking trail is a walk away, farms are near enough that I could shop by bicycle, and I've never lived closer to the mountains or a National Park (Olympics). 

Of course, it might also be hard to avoid the pleasant distraction of the local tourist town of Port Townsend, a fine place to shop, eat, play, and, of course, dance.

The recent surprise came from people wanting to visit me more than visit the tiny house. That may be because they live in tiny houses, too.

But, about that cleaning.

Cleaning a tiny house has some limits that make cleaning quicker. It's tiny. Do I need to say more? The floors aren't carpeted, which means a dust mop can be shoved around at high speed. There's less to dust. Maybe I'll wash the windows, assuming the Pacific Northwest weather doesn't make that moot with yet another storm. The bathroom is tiny, so that gets done quickly. The kitchen, the kitchen. I like to cook, so the kitchen gets as messy here as anywhere. I'm glad it isn't a cavernous 'chef's kitchen'; which, when I was a realtor, I learned was mostly marketing to non-chefs. Chefs who have restaurants can do amazing things with a conventional, somewhat dated, but functional suburban kitchen. (Hmm. That may be another post for when I'm in the midst of holiday baking.)

Declutter! 

Put things back into closets. Aren't they full? Nope. I regularly explode their contents out onto countertops and open-air racks as I indulge my projects. My projects deserve their freedom! OK. That may be overstating their case. Maybe I'm just lazy, but as I gaze around the place from my typing position, the outdoor footwear is drying, the tool batteries are on a counter where they are charged and handy ready for the next chore, my pantry overfloweth as I take advantage of seasonal sales, and the coat rack is over-burdened with winter and wet-weather gear. Hey, it's the Pacific Northwest. Moisture happens. There's more to move, but so much of it becomes part of the daily background that it takes a possible visitation to make me look at it differently.

Furniture

Big, bulky, upholstered furniture doesn't fit in my lifestyle or my living space. The exception is my bed (which has a mattress that I plan to replace, but that's yet another tale.) As I wrote recently (Roll It Fold It Store It), a lot of my furniture can roll away, fold up (not fold down? Ah, the Engish language.), or move in and out of storage as necessary. 

For me, there's an adjustable stool by the bigger computer and monitor (which is still just a laptop cabled to a normal-sized screen) and My Big Comfy Chair. 

For visitors, I have some director's chairs folded and bungee-ed to a storage rack. I'll unfold them, fold up my comfy chair, and adjust the stool for people height rather than computer height. I haven't decided what to do with the kitchen island on wheels or the office file store on rollers. Roll on, and wheel away?

Art

Alas, my guests might arrive before my art. After six months, I finally have an idea of how, what, and where to position my art, both my art and that made by my friends. I've decided to go upscale with some of the pieces by ordering custom framing that fits my tiny home's custom spaces. Ironically, or at least interestingly to me, all of my guests have been artists, and all of my guests have been nice enough to want to talk about my art. Handily, the guests that prompted this post want to talk about my books. They all fit on one bookshelf. Problem solved.

The Way I Live

My space is a living and working space. Little or none is just for show. Even when I lived in big houses with formal living and dining rooms, I rarely had a use for them. My friends are friendlier than that. Formalities can be fairly fake. (My apologies for playing with alliteration for the sake of alliteration. Writer's play.) Look at those other tiny house blogs and videos. Those places are gorgeous. Really. Look at them. I look at them. My place, however, is quite real. That's also why I rarely share photos of the interior. It can take less time to prepare for friendly visitors than for a photo shoot for publication because friends make allowances for reality. Online commentary can be more nit-picky than my mother was about whether I'd cleaned my bedroom. (In retrospect, I see what she meant - but mostly about visitors seeing beyond a baby boom set of sensibilities.)

Tiny houses make for quick tours. Publicity photos can hide things by shoving them out of frame. Real estate photographers can produce wonders. Enjoy those tours.

Houses are for people. Visitors are people. The people are the important part, whether they are residents or friends of the residents. Tiny house living is intentional living, and that includes making room for friends and fun. 

But I really should clean off that counter, and put away those nuts, pumpkins, and noodles I got on sale.