Small Living Journal

I have always been one that loves to reminisce. As far as I am concerned, the old days were the best days – hands down!! I am not sure if that is because, at my age, I tend to dig up those memories that were supposed to be saved for this time in my life or if it’s that the world is in such a state of disarray I am just going back there more to avoid the present.

When I was a kid I grew up in this great little neighborhood at the far end of a small town! My Dad was a Dry Cleaner, the only one for miles and it was always thriving with loyal customers. The business was on the same property in which we lived. Mom was always home with us and she relieved Dad for morning coffee breaks, lunches and afternoon snacks. Our neighbors were like family. If you ran out of sugar or milk you could always count on a free handout without a moment’s thought…and vice versa. We never even locked our doors. I woke up one night to the neighbor lady coming in for a glass of milk because she couldn’t sleep and the milkman (yes, I said milkman!!) wasn’t due for another 3 hours. We sat and talked for a half hour and I often sensed that our little talk was way more important than the glass of milk she took home with her that night

We were there for each other during good times and bad. All we had to do is walk across the field. We had loads of fun too. On holidays and throughout the year we always had dinners & parties & picnics…in summer we went swimming in the pond or ice skating in the winter with a cup of hot chocolate waiting for us afterwards…we fished in the brook alongside of us…we loved to play ball in the backyard or chase lightning bugs after dark…all the simple things in life. There was nothing like it. I took it for granted this was how everyone lived – with that sense of always being welcomed, loved and safe.

I went from there into the military where I learned another kind of community & family closeness. Everyone was away from home, most for the first time. We helped each other cope with the loneliness and adjustment of making new friends in new surroundings. Each time I moved to another base, I had to start all over again. I sensed that gap getting bigger.

From there I went to college late in life and found a good job so I could have a comfortable living. I moved closer to my work in the city and I now live in an apartment complex where most of us have no idea who lives next door. People come and go in a transient fog. They are often too tired to even say hello and on the weekends they crash from the exhaustion.

So how can we change it? What can we do to bring back those kinds of real community again? The world is changing rapidly and it seems like now, more than ever, we need to find a sense of community with love, belonging, support and ‘family’.  Even within the family we have become distant. The real quality time seems to have vanished. Maybe a quick – hello, how are you? – but no time to actually hear or care what your answer is. People don’t seem to make time for that anymore.

How do we make a quality community in a place where people are constantly on the move? I am guilty of that myself!! Nowadays you must go where the jobs and/or promotions are. It’s not like back when Dad had his thriving business for 40 years in the same little town – when Mom stayed home, took care of our house, made 3 home-cooked meals every day & took care of all of us – when our doctor made housecalls…when the milkman delivered ice cold milk topped with fresh cream in glass reusable bottles to your front door in the wee hours of the morning so you could have some on your breakfast cereal…when the Freihofer man stopped at your house every week so you could pick out your favorite fresh-made breads and/or donuts & goodies off his truck…when people lived in one house throughout their lives and real estate turnovers were few & far between – when you knew just about anyone you ran into at the grocery store – when security and stability were abundant. People hardly stay in one job for a lifetime or until they retire and those Mom & Pop stores just cannot exist these days with corporate businesses moving in to run them out. When I drive thru my little hometown these days and even my neighborhood, I can honestly say I don’t even know 95% of the people that live there now!

I think the true sense of community starts in the home!! From there, it extends into the neighborhood. For whatever it’s worth, I am sure this is a monumental reason why the world is the way it is today – because those two things are seriously lacking. For without a good sense of this kind of family and community comes that big gaping hole inside that is difficult to fill.

I have moved many times in my life and I have never felt anything like the sense of community I felt back then. Maybe I just never stayed long enough to find out, but even if I did, the fact still remains I am likely to never find it again! I feel blessed to have experienced it and I will be forever grateful

In the course of doing research for my thesis on the Small Home Movement, I found many fascinating articles about how we value and use our houses, spaces, and communities. From what I can tell, houses really became fortress-like between the ’40s and ’60s. Just as time-saving devices were emerging to counter time spent working on household chores, and make home a true sanctuary, the Red Scare flourished and pushed people into feeling privacy was of utmost importance. The following quote is from an advertisement around this time:

“The fence creates a small private world around you and yours. Today, that is exactly what communists and bureaucrats and authoritarians  want to destroy: the        private sphere around the person.”

One could argue that George Bush fits into that category of people wanting to destroy the private sphere. Up until this time, people who had fences were considered miserly and antisocial by their neighbors. In an article is Scientific American Mind entitled “The Comfort Zone,” by Rachel Adams, she states that five factors in brain science and psychology were “necessary for home-satisfaction: ‘contact with neighbors, privacy, flexible usage, opportunities for personalization, and security.’ None of these are linked to a large living space.”

Growing up in the country, there was a lot of space between us and our neighbors. To get to our friends’ house, my parents would have to drive my brother and I, even though we were technically in the same “neighborhood.” Things which other people took for granted living in the city were more difficult for us: I had to go to more than one neighborhood to sell girl scout cookies, because there weren’t enough people in my own, and finding a neighborhood without a resident girl scout was a challenge. People would amiably ask me where I lived when I came up to their door and I couldn’t say “one block over in the green house,” but instead had to explain why I was there at all. Halloween, also, was a bit strange. We’d drive into the city and pick a random neighborhood and my mom would park the car while my brother and I walked from house to house. I loved growing up where I did, but I can’t say we really had a “community” through our living space. My family was my community.

The neighborhood I live in now is called “Beach Flats.” Though I was warned about how dangerous it could be, what I’ve found is it’s a real community. I live only two blocks from my closest friend here and I can walk from my house to hers in just a couple of minutes. Today, on my way over there, a little girl said hello to me, and I said hello back. She asked what my name was and I told her, and then asked what hers was: “Marisol.” I said “Very nice to meet you, Marisol,” and she smiled and I kept walking. There is a park here and a community garden and kids riding Razors and skateboards in the street. Saturday night, a band was playing a couple houses down, and on weekends tourists throng to the area and pass by my window wrapped in towels or carrying lawn chairs toward the Boardwalk. A week after I moved in, Tyson and I were struggling to figure out how to get my little craigslist couch into the house, and a guy walking down the street came back and asked if we needed help. He picked up one end of the couch and Ty got the other and they carried it up to my door. The man wasn’t looking for money, wasn’t creepy, was just a friendly person who saw someone who needed a hand. I feel like this is the first time I’ve ever really understood what a neighborhood should be. It’s a place where you not only have but also talk to your neighbors.

About five years ago, when I assisted Jay Shafer with the design and construction of my tiny home, the Mobile Hermitage, I intentionally designed the home with community in mind. It was because I leveraged my interdependence with the surrounding community and resources that I was able to make the house so tiny.

Community interdependence is the cornerstone and foundation of the movement toward simpler, smaller, and more sustainable living.

Sometimes referred to as New Urbanism, the principle is to have efficiency in the practical overlap and shared utilization of services and resources. An excellent example of this is The Cottage Company and their holistic approach to right sized communities.

The short-lived trend toward bloated and oversized homes was, in fact, a symptom of a pandemic societal illness of isolationsim and selfishness. This is similar to the phenomenon where illness, imbalance, and/or behavioral disorders can lead to obesity. Our homes were becoming obese because of an inability to interact interdependently and cooperatively with each other.

The Cottage Company is developing what they call smart communities. Through innovative land use codes, a higher quality of living is acheived.