We have trouble running the dishwasher at our house. It’s pretty standard for one of us to fill it, add detergent, and then let it sit like that for 12 to 24 hours–more dirty dishes piling up on the counter all the while. It’s not that we’re too absentminded or lazy to turn the dial to the “Normal Wash” position; it’s that there’s so rarely a good time to run a noisy dishwasher that’s located less than 10 feet from both your couch and your bed. Last night, for instance, I prepped the dishwasher while dinner bubbled on the stove, right before I started making the angel food cake for Eric’s birthday. But I didn’t run it because I wanted to actually hear the music that was playing on the stereo in the living room. I guess I could have started it before we sat down to eat dinner, but who wants to carry on a conversation over the slish-slosh and mechanical hum of a dishwasher? And it would have made sense to fire it up during our after-dinner cleanup, but we were planning to turn on the TV, and the dishwasher would have made it hard to pick up some of the quieter dialogue. I really should have started it right before we went to bed, since neither of us has a problem falling asleep with the dishwasher running just outside the bedroom door, but I forgot. That happens a lot. Because at midnight, with the siren song of sleep in my ears, washing dishes isn’t foremost in my mind. Weird. And then I couldn’t start it when I got up this morning because Eric was sleeping in (it’s the day after his birthday, after all), and staying asleep after someone turns the dishwasher on is another challenge entirely.
Not having to deliberate over the best time to run the dishwasher is just one of the many reasons I can’t wait to move to a house larger than a postage stamp.
When we signed the lease for this house, we knew–in a general sense, at least–what we were getting into. After all, we could see it. We knew it was small. But it had everything else we were looking for: it was a single-family house (we were done sharing walls) in a nice neighborhood with a fenced yard for the dog. It had been recently remodeled by someone who’d done some serious thinking about storage. It had a garage. We liked the landlord. And its size (716 square feet, including the basement) was the only thing that put it in our price range. Even now, we feel lucky to have found it.
But the specific challenges of living here are starting to drive us both up the (shorter-than-average) walls. We have a high tolerance for each other’s near-constant company, so our marriage is fine even though one of us sometimes wants to watch TV while the other one wants to read or sleep. But there are grocery store coupons I can’t use because I have nowhere to store three boxes of cereal all at the same time. We’re only able to park a car in the garage between stacks of our extra stuff because I’m married to a Tetris master. To a spectator, I assume the two of us trying to use the kitchen simultaneously in the morning would look like a clumsily choreographed dance. You have to walk sideways around the coffee table to sit down on the couch. There’s only one bathroom, and it’s adjacent to everything. God forbid you experience a bodily function in there that makes a sound; we tend to turn on the radio or the TV to mask any noises that might emerge through the door. (Sometimes, though, we just run the dishwasher.)
The basement is mostly finished, and theoretically it’s our office. But it’s not well insulated, so for about two-thirds of a Minnesota year, it’s pretty much unlivable. A space heater will warm it to about 65 degrees, but only if you let it run for a couple of very expensive hours. That’s why right now, at 10 AM on a Wednesday, we’re sitting on opposite ends of the couch (technically it’s a loveseat), clicking away on our laptops.
This is, without a doubt, a first-world problem–and a subjective one at that. For some people, a tiny house is the dream. Our landlord claims he’d like to one day sell the much larger house he lives in with his girlfriend and move into this one. They would travel a lot, he says, which I can only imagine would help. We travel less than almost anyone else I know. We also work partly from home. And as I’ve mentioned before, we’re homebodies. So most of the time, we’re in this house, right on top of each other. It’s not devastating, but for the way we live, it sure would be nice to have a little more space.
So how do you live in a tiny house? There’s no one right way. But for us the answer is, “Temporarily.”
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