The End of Materialism as 'We' Know It
By Libby Bakalar, WICF Guest Blog Contributor
[Libby is a lawyer-mommy-hobby-blogger based in Juneau, Alaska. When she's not working or blogging, she enjoys spending time with her two children and her husband, writer Geoff Kirsch. Follow her blog at onehotmessalaska.blogspot.com.]
So, I want to tell you about this new movement and this thing we're doing? It’s called "The Tiny House Movement." Have you heard of it? It’s where you get rid of all your shit and replace it with self-righteousness and a few well-appointed, high-end amenities like a composting stainless steel toilet and a designer loft bed made from hemp for your tiny, fit body to sleep on. You know, the body that runs exclusively on Bikram yoga and tiny, hand-thrown ceramic mugs of unpasteurized unicorn milk?
See, and I don't know if you were aware of this, but self-righteousness actually has no adverse environmental impact and takes up no room at all! It's one of the most sustainable lifestyles you can have. That’s one of the many very awesome things about The Tiny House Movement. Also, it's called a "movement," so you know it's progressive and something you want to get into before everyone else does and makes it lame. That's the very definition of a movement.
Yeah, I know I join a movement every single morning with my composting toilet, but this is a different kind of movement. A really special movement. A movement that somehow managed to keep all the insufferable parts of being a hippie and ditch all the fun parts like smoking shit tons of weed, dropping acid, listening to good music, boning in the back of a Winnebago, and being poor.
The other cool thing about The Tiny House Movement is how proud and superior I feel about living in a 500 square foot sustainable cedar-bark yurt with solar panels and a Peruvian guinea pig farm. Because, like, superiority and pride take up even less room than self-righteousness and are also very sustainable! See, like, the Peruvian guinea pigs run around in these little Carbonite wheels? And they harness the energy that fuels our two LED light bulbs? We feed them chard that we grow in our garden and then we use their dung to fertilize our marigold border.
I used to be JUST like you. Sad, bedraggled, unenlightened, tired-looking, and burdened by possessions. Like 89 bath towels from Bed, Bath, N’ Beyond; a Cuisinart ice cream maker you use once a year; sixteen candle sticks your great-grandma gave you; and a PlaySkool jumperoo for my baby. Now my baby is attached to my body at all times in a 500-thread-count ultra-soft organic cotton wrap, so we don’t need any of those unsustainable swings and bouncers and other crap The Establishment wants you to buy for your baby and that will never fit in our Tiny House.
Goodbye to all that!
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| Photo by Country Living |
We left all that behind long ago when we joined The Tiny House Movement. Now we have one cast iron pan; one hammered-copper skillet; a single fork, spoon, and knife; all of the amenities I mentioned above; plus the guinea pigs; the marigolds; and oh wait--I almost forgt--this chair from Pier One Imports that you see in the picture below. Haha. We weren't ready to give that up! Also, a brand-new kayak and some other stuff from REI that we store in a rack on the side of our Tiny House. Oh, and please excuse the state of our tiny front entryway: we've ordered a Tibetan prayer flag from Amazon Prime and it hasn't arrived yet. Something about not shipping to a P.O. Box.
Just one more tiny second. Here's the best part: it only cost us twice as much to get rid of all our shit as it did to accumulate it in the first place! Isn't that cool?
Bottom line, I feel really sorry for you that you're still living in the material world. So give me a call, or just feel free to stop by anytime with a nice, robust pinot noir if you want to chat about how you too can join this growing movement.
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