Doing more with less

A tiny home in Portland, Oregon. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

I watched a few episodes of an old TV-favourite during Christmas. The title is taken from a famous folk song, and it roughly translates to “We live where no one would believe that anyone could live”. There was a time when I watched a lot of that type of shows, people that had chosen an alternative lifestyle, some for idealistic reasons, and some because it was financially smart. In addition to this Norwegian one, I remember Tiny House Nation and Treehouse Masters, and a lot of blogs and You tube channels that provided inspiration. In terms of story telling, I still like the Norwegian show best.

The idea is to find families that live so far away from anything than many of us can’t understand how they could possibly be happy there, but sometimes the story is more important than the location. I used to work with a man who appeared in one of the episodes. He was married to Jenny Hampe Endresen, and the story focused mostly on her. She was from Westport, Connecticut, and apparantly grew up in a pretty upscale neigbourhood. Two of her childhood neighbours were reportedly Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

She was clearly destined for a  different life than she decided to pursue. I’m not sure how she discovered the “Walden Pond-lifestyle”, but she eventually met a Norwegian man that shared her interest in the environment and cultivating the land. They moved to Norway, but the marriage ended. She then met Ole Endresen and that’s how she ended up in Vinje, Telemark, where this episode is from. It’s a good story, even though this farm isn’t remote at all. There was no running water and electricity, and they didn’t have a road, but this property wasn’t far from a major county road.

I enjoyed this kind of programmes, but they also provoke me a little. There is an assumption, a story many like to tell, that being different has never been easier. We have developed a society that is so much more tolerant than previous versions, but the truth is that it’s hard for many of us to make the decisions some of these people have made. I lived for four years in the same community as the Endresen family, and I really liked that region. West-Telemark consists of six municipalities and roughly 7 500 km², with a total population of only 12 000. I wish they had been open to newcomers, but I found them to be quite the opposite, which is why I moved away.

There are many myths we like to tell. Our willingness to accept diversity is one of them. There is a financial question involved, and there are limits to how alternative you can get before authorities start reining you in. It’s not illegal to build a tiny house, or to live in a boat, van, or a ship container. It’s not technically illegal to live completely off the grid (electricity, water, and sewage), as there are alternatives. It’s not illegal to produce your own food either, but there will be obstacles if you try.

You’d think that you could park a mobile home, and stay for as long as you wanted on your own land, but you can’t. There are different restrictions in different countries, and I think it’s two months in Norway. Building a tiny house isn’t that straightforward either. The building codes are made for a traditional and larger house, and bureacracy isn’t any better here than in other countries. I’m reminded of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit and Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Having limited space, you naturally want to use the height as much as possible, but a mezzanine would probably have been a problem. The requirement is that the window is big enough for you to escape through in case of fire, but many wouldn’t be able to meet this requirement.

Many have also found it difficult to live in boats. The law stated a few years ago that all citizens had to have a permanent address. You couldn’t do anything, not even buy a cell phone without it. People got around that by using a friend’s address, but there are additional problems if you have a family. When the law changed it was possible to live in a boat, but the requirement now is that you park your boat in a marina, or some other place where you have access to electricity, water and sewage. You are probably not going to pay less than a regular house-owner. It can be done, but it’s strongly discouraged.

There have been many news articles trying to convince us of what a bad idea a tiny house would be, and price is the most common argument. The total price of a tiny house is lower than of a big house, but it is correct that the price per m² is higher. I still think the argument is too simplistic, because there are many advantages of minimalism. A smaller house is easier to clean, heat, and not the least to maintain. It’s also reasonable to assume that the amount of emissions and the amount of energy that went into producing the materials, is considerably lower for a tiny house.

I’m writing a lot about neurodevelopmental disorders, and my agenda is to promote independence. A tiny house could be a lifelong lifestyle, but it could also be a first step towards something bigger. It makes independence easier to accomplish. I’d like to see small communities of for example aspies. There could be a dozen tiny homes together in a village like this, with the community spirit we don’t always find in society. That’s what minimalism could do.

Incidentally, the lifestyle minimalism, says that we should only live with the things we really needed. Could you do it? There are different definitions, but it’s basically a tool that can help you find more freedom. I wouldn’t be able to do an extreme form of minimalism, but I always try to implement some of the philosophy. It may sound like a cliché, but life is frequently better with less. I listened to Joshua Fields and Ryan Nicodemus’ podcast the Minimalists for a while too, but it’s never as simple as they claim. I don’t know how many times I’ve read news stories concerning different public agencies, where the main objection they have towards the parents was that they were different.

Doing things in ways that are not done in Norway could be difficult, if you are different in a way people don’t approve of. I still like the idea of less sound, less drama, less worries, less clutter in general. I sometimes feel that the alternative is life skills without the first s.

Homesickness

I live by the ocean and see many boats and ships leaving. I wish I could follow, but I also find it hard to leave.

I wrote a few posts about milennials a while back. I feel a certain closeness to this generation, although I’m Gen X myself. That’s partly because I have always been restless. I’ve had a hunger for something more than I had, and a need to search for what I thought life could be, at the same time as I didn’t. Milennials tend to drift, because after college they suddenly find that it’s up to them. Life has been pretty much planned from kindergarten to graduation from the university, and then they are left alone to cope in a pretty complicated world. That’s hard without guidance, and all we can do is to improvise. Some do that better than others.

I don’t read a lot of blogs, but have a few I like to read regularly, as well as some I read occasionally. Extra Dry Martini is in the first category, while Such Small Hands is an example of the other. They have both written about moving, about finding the place you belong to. The blogger Such Small Hands was living in South-Korea when I started reading her posts, and after living in South Carolina for a while, she now lives in Hong Kong. I think Extra Dry Martini (Sarah) spent her childhood in Alaska and Washington state, but moved to Los Angeles at the age of 18. She spent about as many years there, but moved to New York City a year ago. All this moving sounds exciting, but they also describe a challenging life. I think you’ll find that almost everything Sarah writes is relevant if you are struggling with doubt and feeling that you are not sure where you should be, but Ocean Avenue isn’t a bad place to start.

I mentioned the podcaster Megan Tan last time I wrote about this. She talked about friends that travelled the world when they didn’t get the life they wanted at home. She interviewed a guy that had spent the last three years in the Caribbean, sailing. I think it was his job to deliver boats by sailing them to customers. His life looked glamorous on social media, but that may not be the whole truth. The cowboy lifestyle may seem appealing for a while, but to some people it would be difficult sleeping alone in front of the fire every night.

I live by the ocean and see many small boats and big ships leave. I wonder how it would be like to have the freedom to go. I was as a young man fascinated by the tradition of frontier and movement in American popular culture (from great names like Mark Twain, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Jack London to On the Road and Easy Rider). A bohemian lifestyle seemed fascinating, but in reality most countercultures produce just as many disappointed and desillusioned people as the societies they rejected.

I don’t have the solution, but maybe a counterculture is preferable after all. It encourages independence and reflexion, providing  you think critically and come to the conclusion yourself. That’s not always the case. There’s often a pressure to adopt whatever is the popular attitude at the time, and many don’t accept the definition of tolerance. It doesn’t  mean that I have to agree. There’s a bit of a bohemian in me. I’d like to think I’m outside the box a lot of the time. I like to make my own thinking and decisions. Many say they think outside the box, and job ads even claim they want someone with that ability, but that’s nothing but rhetoric. We Norwegians are not beatnik at all. There’s a strong pressure to conform here. We are doing a lot of things right, but we also need input. That’s where we fail because we are unwilling to listen to and reflect on opposing views. That’s especially true with public employees. This is a country that needs a rebellion, and better counselors.

I still have the urge I had in my youth to experience something new, at the same time as I don’t see the benefits of living on the outskirts of what individuals in the government find acceptable (CPS, school, the hospital, Police and so on can be used to limit your movement). I sort of see the concern because countercultures tend to leave out moral, but I try to let ideas outside the box inspire me. I can live in a conservative society and still make my own, different choices. This should be viewed as a strength, but people in public positions tend to see it as a threat.

This is one of the reasons why I haven’t embraced neurodiversity. It is a risky position in this society. Different isn’t necessarily seen as positive, because while some see it as a good thing, others think deviants, and psychologists may label it suboptimal development. Life inside a box that encourages this kind of thinking isn’t pleasant.

Incidentally, the American literary tradition isn’t just about leaving a landscape behind. It’s also about a change within, about coping with difficult things in life, and about looking for solutions. I’d like to think I’m an autonomous unit, one that sometimes needs help, but still capable of making independent decisions. I turned 50 this summer, but I’m still learning, still trying to figure things out, trying to choreograph a life. I don’t think I’m home yet, but I’m moving towards it.

The dream of freedom

I love looking at the sound as I cross the bridge. I love my town, but I also abhor the restraints.

The headline might be a little controversial to some. Norway is s democracy and I am not at all comparing my situation to countries where people are really suffering, but there are problems in what many outsiders believe is a perfect Scandinavian society.

Have you ever felt like leaving the rat race for a while, like Felix Stark and Selima Taibi from Franfurt, Germany did? They converted an American school bus to an RV and traveled from Alaska to Argentina. This is documented in the film Expedition Happiness, which is available on Netflix. View some of their videos on their You tube channel.

I go through the occasional sadness for the many things I missed out on when I was young, such as the life Jenna Spesard from Tiny House Giant Journey has, but my biggest concern at the moment is having the freedom of owning my own dwelling. That’s a freedom I don’t have, so it remains my main focus. The problem with renting is that it’s expensive and there are uncertainties to live with. The landlord can decide to break the contract, and although a standard contract in Norway requires a 3 month notice, that is a possibility you avoid as an owner. Besides, many don’t want to rent to minorities and disabled people, and if you are in one or both of those groups, you are not likely to get the best priced apartments. Many landlords buy houses and turn them into 3-4 apartments. I really hate it when I share a house with some people I like, but when they move out, the new tenants are horrible. That has happened several times, so renting may not feel like a very stable existence.

I turn 50 soon, and as much as I like the historic American tradition of freedom and moving west, something a lot of Norwegians did in the 19th century, freedom for me is more about establishing a base. Freedom is about individualism, being allowed to think and act differently, to be different. There are a lot of things you can’t do as a family, a disabled person, and multi-racial family, and it could be costly to assume that you can.

A report from The Norwegian State Housing Bank three years ago concluded that the people that are supposed to be their target group, economically disadvantaged, actually manage surprisingly well. There has been an assumption that they would have problems paying the loan back, even though this government program offers a lower interest than any private bank, but the sense of achieving something, of gradually owning more of their own dwelling, seems to make them more likely to succeed. So why is it so hard to give them this help?

I’m left with the impression that some people are more vulnerable than others, because they don’t have the same amount of freedom. The Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affair published a study a couple of years ago where they had asked parents of disabled children about how much help they felt they had received. The parents had a much more positive experience if their children had been diagnosed right after birth, while other parents felt that no one gave them the information they needed. They had to figure out themselves who to ask and how to coordinate the help. I know about quite a few cases where no one believed the parents, which is a scary scenario in a country where the CPS takes a lot of controversial decisions .

There is not a lot of room for some families to choose even a slightly different path. Norway is sort of like the Borg. There is a very strong expectation in this country that you allow the collective to assimilate you. The individual is sacrificed because being different isn’t good at all. The truth is that most people have an idea of what normal, or the norm is, and anything outside this definition is bad. At least for some people.

We need something new

A tiny home in Portland, Oregon. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Let’s face it. As exciting as it is living with the opportunities life offers us today, modernity is basically a killer. Your life span may be long enough, but there is no doubt that life also imposes stress and misery on us, especially if we are burdened with debt. Personally, I feel that living with NLD in a society that supposedly appreciates differences has been a struggle with or without debt.

I wrote about a local micro house in Live a little better in your own house. There are at the moment 39 properties in my hometown that cost the same or less, and another 60 if you add housing cooperatives. I think the local company Start Micro Housing is quite expensive with 1,8 million NOK as the cheapest alternative. Norwegians don’t know what micro really is, or freedom for that matter. My country is in some ways a very totalitarian regime. No, not in the way you think of the word. The Norwegian society is nothing like North-Korea or Saudi-Arabia, but there is still an attempt to subjugate the population.

Minimalism has been a bit of a fashion for a few years, but I believe this goes far back in the USA. In some ways this is in accordance with the independence the country was founded on, and independence is a strong theme in American literature. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mark Twain could serve as excellent representatives. I think we could include women and minorities in their philosophies, and even though disability was not a topic at the time, it seems reasonable to assume that they would have included this group too if they had been around today. Economy is an important point today, and with a micro house people can live debt free, which is a much better life.

I know about one case from Norway that makes me believe it’ll be a lot harder here. A two year old article described Kari Schvibevaag’s encounter with bureaucracy. She was the world kiting champion some years ago, and when she retired she wanted to settle in Flakstad in Lofoten, Norway. She got permission from the local authorities to build a micro house, but then the problems started. You need permission to move into your new home because everything has to be according to building codes. It would have been alright if they could present everything at once, but they were clearly not sure about how to use old codes on a new building, so after she had straightened one thing out, there was always a new code, and this continued. When NRK (our PBS) wrote this article she had been living in her van parked next to her completed house for two years, which was a pretty crazy situation.

This could also be why the micro houses in Haugesund are so expensive. The regulatory framework is much too complicated. Norwegian authorities like to think of themselves as democratic, but the truth is that there is a strong desire to control people for the purpose of uniformity. I guess that’s the side effect of socialism. Yes, we have much more stable lives than many other countries, but there isn’t a lot of room for individuality here. Being different here is difficult. That is something we really need to change because I think there could be problems ahead. At some point people are going to be tired of being treated as second class citizens. Look at the African Americans. I believe they are about 13 percent of the US population today, but that was probably closer to 10 in the 1960’s. I think a lot of their civil rights victories happened because the authorities were afraid of what could happen if they resisted change. It’s hard to stop people moving forward.

Change now would make it more peaceful, but change is inevitable. It should be as simple as buying the plans and start building, but as the case from Lofoten showed it isn’t. Tiny House DESIGN sell plans for $ 29 and their biggest house on wheels is Westport 28. That refers to how long it is, and I wouldn’t exactly be comfortable driving that all over the country, but I would love to park this California inspired house somewhere. Look at some sketches. The gallery at Tiny House UK looks very similar, so I suspect they have bought the plans in the USA. Have a look.

There are many inspirational stories online. Jenna Spesard from the blog/You tube channel Tiny House Giant Journey did what many have dreamed about. She became a minimalist. This is an option for singles/couples, and it is more challenging for families in a society that see individuality as a threat, but it’s exciting to see how others manage this lifestyle. There are many houses in a similar style in You tube videos, but Jenna’s house is a fine example of how nice and quirky a mobile home can be. Check out her blog.