Talk to your home

I don’t want to go back to a time that only worked for white men, but I do like vintage interior.

Bedroom 1950’s

I wrote a couple of posts last year about minimalism and change, which is both an old movement/philosophy and a modern craze. I believe it is relevant on a blog about developmental disorders, because it’s not just about removing clutter from our homes. It’s also about making our lives more manageable. We can make things easier for ourselves by removing the things we don’t need.

We have to be practical about this, something they’re trying to in the TV show Tiny House Nation. It’s about couples and families moving into a tiny house, and the host gives the buyers a challenge before moving. It’s usually about scaling down, about how much (or how little) they can bring from the house or apartment they’re moving out of. I like the idea, but we also have to consider the real world, and in the real world my country has an international reputation for targetting “living outside the box-families”. Choosing a different lifestyle can be risky, especially if one or both the parents are foreign citizens (it isn’t necessarily about colour). Norwegians simply don’t understand why anyone would want to live differently. It makes them suspicious. This is what I mean by practical. There are things to consider besides being willing to live with less comfort.

So we have to consider all aspects, but I like the philosophy behind minimalism. A blogger I’m following recently wrote about a TV programme she had seen. It was with Marie Kondo, who basically cleans with Shintoism. She’s apparantly controversial in her own country, Japan, because she’s being accused of using a watered down version of Shintoism. She sees objects as animate, and she believes that these objects, as well as the house itself, want to be useful to us. Her method is to hold everything she owns and ask if this item gives her joy, and if it doesn’t, she gives it away.

Religion is frequently abused and misunderstood, so it may be risky to mix it into everything, but it could still be a good idea. It’s sort of what I have been trying to do in recent years anyway. I ask myself what I get out of it. I used to watch more TV than I do now. It was on most of the time, even though I wasn’t actually watching it that closely. It was so easy, if I was bored, to look for some diversion. I try to be more active now, and I ask myself if that is the best use of my time.

It’s not a bad thing to watch sport if that gives you joy, but I frequently found that it didn’t because I kept thinking of the tings I wanted to do, but never had the drive or energy to get started. I switch between Netflix, music and podcasts on Spotify/iTunes, reading, and writing these days. I’m not perfect of course, and there are days when I don’t feel like doing much. I allow myself an occasional day of apathy and music, but then I remind myself that I should challenge myself.

I could have lived well in a tiny house myself, if they had been legal here (like I said, making a different choice is hard here). I don’t need much as I have downsized my library. I only buy books I know I want to re-read, and I get the rest from the library. It’s the same story with films, because apart from LOFTR, The Hobbit, Star Wars, and Star Trek I get the rest from streaming.

Minimalism is not a law. The whole point is that there isn’t a national or international standard you have to meet. I haven’t really done it before, but thinking in religious terms may be useful. I don’t know if any religion allows you to pursue money. That doesn’t mean that having money is a bad thing, but to continue pursuing it after you are rich probably isn’t conducive to a spiritual lifestyle. The way the stock market works is that corporations are being punished if their profit is slightly lower than expected. It has always puzzled me how a stock goes down because the market wanted more. That’s how it is constantly pursuing money, you’ll never be satisfied.

You can have money and still choose a minimalist liestyle, which will enable you to spend it on someone else. That would be a spiritual lifestyle no matter what religion you belonged to. I believe some do because it’s more relaxed lifestyle.  So I’d like to ask myself questions like: Does the item have a purpose, does it make it easier ot harder for me to connect to God and the people around me, does it make it harder or easier to reach my goal of becoming an author, does it make me less or more healthy? In short, does it improve lives?

Besides, we are just here for a short period anyway, 90 years or a little more if we are fortunate. The things we think we own are just borrowed, we have to return them. They belong to God (or the universe), and like my fellow blogger, I might ask God how he wants me to use these objects.

The posts I referred to in the introduction are Minimalism: The new elitist lifestyle, Finding the old me, We need something new.

The photos are from a museum in my hometown. It’s from a collection of houses showing how people lived there from the 1860 ‘s to the 1950’s. I suscpect this interior shows the end of that period, and the point isn’t that I want to go back to a life without technology, but in some ways life may have been less complicated back then. It’s probably better now, but still, quite confusing.

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.

Live a little better in your own house

This 66 m² so-called micro house is exhibited downtown in my hometown

Independence is important to me. That’s why I sometimes write about it, although it isn’t always directly relevant as this blog is mostly about NLD and ASD. This is one of those posts.

Housing is an important part of an independent life, and I have written extensively about how low income families and disabled people have been betrayed by Norwegian authorities. I say that because The State Housing Bank had made promises on their website that municipalities ignore when they turn down loan applications. This bank gives out favourable loans to people that have bee turned down in private banks. They are also supposed to offer grants to people that have problems paying the loan. This is official politics because authorities say they want people to have a stable housing situation, and because Norwegian tax laws favour the house owner. The problems is that there are many new apartments being built now where The State Housing Bank gives a loan for 80 percent of the apartment, and these apartments cost 2,5-5 million NOK (about $ 320 000 – 640 000), while many are turned down for older, but well maintained apartments that cost 1-1,5 million NOK. It’s madness!

I have been excited about microhouses or tiny homes since I found out about them a few years ago. They are popular in the USA where you can get them for around $ 50 000, a lot less if you are able to do much of the work yourself. I have written about the company Start Microhousing before. It’s from my hometown Haugesund, but in my opinion it’s not an option if price is the main issue. I hadn’t heard any updates from them for a while, but they have been active with Facebook ads this weekend, and I thought their angle was pretty hopeless this time too. The message was that smaller space enabled you to live more, spend less money and work less on maintenance. This would give you more time to do what you wanted. On the company website they use shortage of space, sustainable development, and cheaper living costs as arguments for buying their houses. I can agree with these points, but I also want more people to be able to choose this environmental friendly lifestyle.

Shortage of space is not relevant yet as Norway is underpopulated, but these houses could make it possible for more people to live downtown (there is currently a debate in my hometown whether we should build small or tall in order to increase the population downtown). The cheapest of the houses this company offers is 66 m² and costs 1 790 000 NOK, while something they call a garden house costs 990 000 NOK. That one is only 20 m² and I suspect it wouldn’t be approved as a permanent residence. This price doesn’t include land, and I can’t see them as an alternative to the regular housing market.

It’s pretty typical that every time there is a call for something environmental friendly consumers have to pay a higher price. In my next post I will show what a micro house really is.