April 23, 2015 Ms. Kathy Rowan Funding Director Tiny House Association 4938 Filbert Street Bethlehem, PA 18018 Subject: Tiny House Funding Proposal Dear Ms. Rowan: My name is Jazmine Farmer. I attend California State University, Northridge and I am majoring in Business Law. I’m taking a journey to revamp my lifestyle from having a very complex and chaotic lifestyle to a very clean-cut and simple one; this journey is the Tiny House Movement. There are numerous amounts of advantages to living this life style, but the two benefits that persuaded me to take part in this movement are that it will guarantee me having a financially stable future, as well as it helping me live a more organized and simplistic lifestyle. I’ve made the calculations for the budget of my Tiny house and it estimates to around $40,000. I am only proposing for $7,000 to help cover the necessities of my home and partially for the home itself. Since it being my first move I will need a bed, small love seat, kitchen supplies, refrigerator, bathroom supplies, and a television for entertainment. Since the house is only 150 square feet I’ve only made a list of things I truly need because I can only fit so much without it being cluttered. To contact me you can reach me at my email: [email protected] or my phone: 818-282-0471 I’d like to thank you for your time and this opportunity; I hope to be apart of your consideration in this difficult chose. Sincerely, Jazmine M. Farmer 19948 Blythe Street Winnetka, CA, 91306 Literature Review There are many people who romanticize the idea of living tiny, but forget to realize the big challenges it comes with. Linda Federico-O’Murchu’s article, “Tiny Homes Can Mean Big Lifestyle Squeeze” she speaks on the experiences of Leah Atwood. The young woman who’s been living tiny for a few months explains, “In my experience, some people can handle it and some people can’t” (O’Murchu). When living tiny you have to be willing to make sacrifices that you do in your every day life; such as being able to bring over as many guests as you please. Atwood expresses, “What I miss most about living in a big house is being able to invite people over” (O’Murchu). As for myself, I don’t see this as a big challenge being that I keep to myself most of the time and the amount of people I keep closest to me are in a small quantity. So, people able to only entertain a couple of guests at a time wouldn’t be much of a problem for me. In O’Murchu’s article the tiny liver Atwood states, “Living in a small space also means owing very few possessions.” This for me may be one of the momentous challenges because I like to call myself a discrete hoarder. I hoard a lot of my belongings from the past neatly away around my room so it appears to be that I don’t have much belongings and my room always stays clean. Though, once you go deep into the crevasses of my room and pull out all that I own it definitely wouldn’t fit in a tiny home. This challenge of living tiny may seem like a drawback for me the entire idea of hoarding less objects is not. Atwood explains, “It forces you to be conscientious about the possessions you get attached to” (O’Murchu). It being a necessity to downsize the amount of things I have is exactly what I need to change in my life; it’ll help me grow as a person and learn to let go of things because all of the objects I hoard are from the past in which I don’t necessarily need anymore. It’s definitely easier said than done, but I’m willing to take on this challenge. Of course to every bad there is good. Liz Pleasants’ article on, “Tiny House Living: How Two Families Made it Work—Teenagers Sleepovers Alone Time, And All” explains the benefits of living tiny and how to ‘survive’ it. One of the biggest reasons, as I said before, to going tiny is to be financially stable. Andrew Morrison, living tiny in a home of only 317 square feet, explains that when he used to live in what he “thought was the perfect house” he realized him and his wife were “spending way too much money, and more importantly, too much time paying for a house that we didn’t need” (Pleasants). Although, Morrison may be speaking on living in a home this still applies to myself because if I were to rent a studio apartment I’d still be paying at least $900 a month in rent which are not including amenities. I’d be living check to check with my part time job, because I am a full time student, which is not how I’d like to live my life. Pleasant expresses, “Going tiny also means that bills for water, sewage, garbage, and electricity drop significantly. And, of course, you can’t fit much stuff into a tiny home. Less stuff to buy means more money in your pocket.” This is what I look forward to the most— spending less. I don’t like to admit it, but I definitely do have a shopping addiction. So, adventuring out into tiny living will significantly help my shopping problem because I wouldn’t have much space to store all of my clothes. It being Earth Day on April 22, 2015 I found this not only a major advantage to this endeavor, but rather relevant; by living tiny you are actually saving the planet. Since the house is so small they “require less material input as well as fewer equipment and labor hours to construct” (Pleasants, EPA). Along with that tiny homeowners use a lot less energy to operate their homes. This is important to me because living in such a crowded and busy town there’s always new buildings being put up to shelter the over populated city and all of the construction, nevertheless, pollutes the air we breathe. If the Tiny House movement continues to grow, as it has been the past for years, we could be on the verge of saving our planet one step at a time. Lastly, one of the most eye-opening possibilities for this movement is happiness. One of the keys to happiness is having some free time for yourself of course; with living tiny, like stated before, you’re not paying as many bills “which means less time necessary to spend at work” (Pleasants). You are now able to have the extra down time to do activities that truly make you happy, such as being able to spend more time with the people you love outdoors rather than being indoors working extremely hard to pay numerous bills. Inside Edition’s, “Grandmother of 'Boyhood' Star Lives On a Bus.” Interviews the grandmother, of a male celebrity, who lives on a bus as her tiny home. Throughout the video she expresses how happy and care free she has been for the past three years when she dropped her career as being a teacher and became a “hippie.” This is a big factor to me because I feel as if I’m constantly indoors; The only outdoor time I experience is leaving class on my way to work thus, being indoors for another six to eight hours straight then going home to be indoors for the rest of the night. It’s not nearly enough time outdoors as I’d like to it be and being outdoors in the sun makes me extremely happy. One might say that living in a home of only 150 square feet may make you feel claustrophobic, but in Nina Glinski’s article “Tiny Houses Big With U.S. Owners Seeking Economic Freedom” a Tiny home owner, Doug Immel, has found a way to defeat a lot of people’s main concern. “His home, which has a façade that’s 20 percent glass, doesn’t feel claustrophobic.” (Glinski) Building in more windows into a home gives off the impression of a home looking and feeling bigger than it actually is; as well as allowing more sunlight into the home. What about during the winter you may ask; he only spends about $900 a year—“including about $112 for propane” (Glinski) for heat throughout his tiny home. As for me, living in the San Fernando Valley, winter nights won’t be too bad and summer days – well, I absolutely love the heat. Bring on 100-degree weather; it won’t bother me. With having the research I have done behind the Tiny House Movement I believe I will be able to outweigh the difficulties of living tiny with the advantages of it. All of them from stopping the shopping addiction to being mostly alone being outdoors to saving money which all seems like a very even, if not better, trade to me. Proposed Budget Conclusion To conclude my proposal I do truly believe that joining the Tiny House Movement will benefit my lifestyle in many ways. I will live a less complex lifestyle by making my living space much more simplistic by only being able to have the essentials that I need in my home. I’ll be living a clutter free, financially stable, private, and most importantly happy lifestyle. The Tiny House Movement is important to me because this is going to be a stepping-stone in this chapter of my life, which is moving out on my own and becoming an official adult. The Tiny House Movement makes it much easier for me to do so by only having to pay so little for rent each month. Being a Business Law student I will be in school for many years before I can achieve the degree I plan to receive which in turn is going to be a financial burden. So, this endeavor is extremely important to me for my future especially and I really hope you’ll be able to help get this journey started. Once again thank you for your time and consideration. Works Cited Federico-O'Murchu, Linda. "Tiny Homes Can Mean Big Lifestyle Squeeze." TODAY.com. Today Home, 8 Sept. 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. Glinski, Nina. "Tiny Houses Big With U.S. Owners Seeking Economic Freedom." Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, 9 July 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. Inside Edition. “Grandmother of 'Boyhood' Star Lives On a Bus.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 6 Jan. 2015. Web. 16 Apr. 2015. Pleasant, Liz. "Tiny House Living: How Two Families Made It Work-Teenagers, Sleepovers, Alone Time, and All." YES! Magazine. Beta Yes Magazine, 24 Dec. 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. |
0 Comments
|