Tiny House...Big Obsession

"Tiny houses are the next BIG thing" according to the hosts of my new favorite show, Tiny House Nation. There's just something about these tiny houses that are almost alluring. We live in a pretty spacious but cozy home that's far from tiny, yet I'm strangely obsessed with tiny houses.

• Whenever someone posts something tiny house related on Facebook, my feed kinda blows up and I enthusiastically google "tiny houses" and spend at least an hour ogling photos of tiny houses. 
• I'm so excited about Somerville BIG tiny house festival in September. I'm so there and I'm so dragging Adam with me. 
• I would absolutely consider hopping on a plane to visit a tiny house uninvited if only one of my acquaintances would move into one. Build some tiny houses people!!!
• I not so secretly wish I could have a tiny house for my yard so I can go hang out there and pretend to be some sort of tiny house homesteader which might invite unfortunate comparisons to Marie Antoinette now that I think of it.
• I watch Tiny House Nation religiously, more religiously than my actual prayer habits. After each week's episode of Tiny House Nation, I find Adam and hopefully suggest, "maybe we should live in a tiny house?"

Fortunately for Adam, I'm not actually serious about living in an actual tiny house given that our newly renovated kitchen is the size of a tiny house. Why then am I totally enamored with these teeny tiny homes? A few thoughts:

• Tiny houses are so damn cute!
• Freedom! Financial freedom from radical downsizing. Freedom to enjoy life versus the obligation of taking care of stuff.
• Tiny houses are like Swiss Army knives with their ingenious multipurpose design idea.
• Tiny houses need to be so efficiently designed, that there's virtually no wasted space and how virtuous is that?
• I have a hunch that it would be good for my soul to live with less stuff. At least I could finally have some sort of life choice that I could be justifiably self righteous about because my love of junk food is never going to be righteous, it's merely obnoxious. 
• Oh, I forgot to mention that tiny houses are really freakin' cute.

While I will probably never live in an actual tiny house, the tiny house movement does prompt me to be feel gratitude. It also reminds me that if I don't really "need" or "want" a larger home, it's not "unAmerican," it's maybe a perfectly okay choice.

It's really a "junk" station, but let's call it a modular storage solution

Adam and I have a special talent for creating piles of clutter and we're constantly trying to invent new systems of organizing our entryway stuff with very little success. Because we've totally bought into the American Dream, the one where everyone can shop their way into a super organized life, we've shopped our way into a new system that I'm hoping will help us find our stuff so we can get out the door more easily. A girl can dream!

Our little entryway is too small for a console table so we appropriated a shallow area in the corner of our kitchen. It's a mere 15 inches deep so anything deeper than 13-14 inches starts intruding into the walkway of the kitchen and anything less than 12 inches is kinda useless and flimsy. I almost had to buy a children's bookcase since it was a bit challenging to find an attractive shallow bookcase that was sturdy, functional and the right size.

My original plan was pretty conventionally boring, buy some canvas bins and baskets and organize our stuff,  but then I came across this modular bookcase where the bins and trays are actually built into the design. The bookcase is a wood frame and then you can buy separate modular trays, shelfs and bins to configure the storage. Rather than buying a traditional bookcase and then buying separate bins and trays to organize the bookcase, it's all integrated.

We just go it today so we're still getting used to it, but right now we have our bins and trays set up so we each have a separate bin. That way, our stuff can coexist peacefully without too much stressful commingling. I'm really hoping that Adam won't be asking me "where's my wallet" or "where's my phone" or " where's my sunglasses" or "have you seen my bag" as much. Like I said, a girl can dream!