I have to say, I enjoyed reading it a lot. If you have any questions or curiousity about living in a tiny house (or even just a smaller-than-normal house), then I recommend this book. It examines this lifestyle from many different angles, and covered some questions I didn’t even have a clue I had.

I’ll go into some of what’s inside Little House on a Small Planet here, in bullet point form:

Tiny House Benefits

• Resource Conservation – not only will a smaller house take up less space, but it’ll save you money (both initially and through lower heating/cooling bills). Also, it’ll require fewer materials than a bigger house to build. A typical new house sends around 3 to 5 tons of waste to a landfill and takes down a 3/4 of an acre of forest.
• Less Housework – some people dream of owning gigantic mansion. They probably don’t dream about the hours of cleaning (or money spent on a cleaner) that a large casa would need.
• Higher Quality – A smaller house is generally cheaper than a bigger house. Take some of the money you saved to buy high quality furniture, sinks, appliances, you name it.
• Efficient Heating/Cooling – If a tiny house is designed properly, it won’t need any air ducts (or air filters!). That’s one less thing to buy and maintain. Also, there are fewer unused rooms to heat and cool.
• Less Pollution – A typical new house’s construction adds 30 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
• More Time Outdoors – Less space indoors means you and/or your kids will spend more time outside. There are tons o’ benefits of being outside, so I recommend it.

Are Tiny Houses for Everyone?

There are many more benefits of living in small houses (closer families, less unnecessary stuff), but it’s not for everybody. Some people might not feel comfortable living in a small house, or might honestly feel like they need more room than the average bear.

Luckily, this book has tests you can do to see if living in a small house (on or off the grid) is for you. You might be surprised by how little room you use or want, or you might change your mind once you see some different kinds of small houses.

Go Get This Book

Whether you hate the idea of small houses, love the idea, or already live in a tiny house, I recommend reading Little House on a Big Planet. It’s chock full of pictures, diagrams, interviews, and all sorts of information about life in small houses.

If you don’t feel like buying the book, go check out your local public library and see if they have it. If all that fails, let me know if you’re trying to borrow the book and maybe we can work something out, ya dig?

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

And the winner, by unanimous decision, is… why, I don’t believe this, it’s none other than Bruce Codere, of http://poterprinciple.blogspot.com/!

Mr. Codere, as soon as I receive the pertinent information as to how to relay this book to you, it shall be sent, straightaway.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Basically, its a documentary of his travels around the U.S. as he visited loads of different people who were living off the grid. How “off the grid” they were varied from “off the grid ready” to completely off the water AND electric grid.

To tell the truth, the book didn’t draw me in at first. After a brief introduction to what living off the grid means, and some info about himself, he goes into the history of the electric and water grids. Although the information itself was neat, it was not the most attention-grabbing stuff.

But as I kept reading, I got more and more into this book. We meet different “classes” of off-grid people, from people who have vacation homes that are off-grid (but live on the grid themselves) to people who live full-time off the grids in tiny houses.

It was interesting reading the conversations Nick had with the off-gridders. A lot of them seemed intelligent and nice, but some would come off as a bit paranoid. This is where we get to see Nick’s dry British humor, as he describes what he’s thinking as the person is telling him their strange ideas.

But most of the people did seem “normal”. Many of them moved off the grid to save money, or because they wanted a nice house on nice land, but couldn’t afford it if it was connected to the grid. Some people did it for ecological reasons, some for paranoia, but almost all because they felt a detachment from the consumerism-dominated American culture.

There were two main parts of the book that were my favorite:

Earthaven and Turtle Island

The first part was when Nick traveled to two places very close to where I grew up in Asheville — Earthaven and Turtle Island, where we meet the (figurative) mountain of a man Eustace Conway. I haven’t been to either of those places, but after reading about them, I definitely want to go and stay for awhile.

Jim Juczak, Sultan of Scrounge

The second part was when he visited the Sultan of Scrounge, Jim Juczak, who lives at the Woodhenge Self-Reliance Campus. This guy sounds like a genuine eco hero. He never pays full price for anything, and gets most things for free, and the rest at insano discounts. His house (which is round and sounds awesome) is built from reused or very discounted materials, and he even gets his food for very cheap. Anyhoo, it seemed like this guy alone could fill a book. Here’s a nice article about him, with pictures of his bodacious casa.

How to Get a Free Copy of
‘Off the Grid’

To sum it all up, I’d recommend this book to anyone who’s tired of the rat race, tired of debt, tired of the mindless consumerism that too many people succumb to. In fact, I will send a free copy of this book to the person who:

• Writes a post on THEIR site (linking to this article) best describing how they save electricity and money
• Tells me about their post
• Gets chosen by me when this contest ends on October 1

So that’s that. I hope you give this book a shot. I thought it had great information and was pretty cool, but you don’t have to take MY word for it.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I guess they used to just expect you to throw away the paper and rubber band (committing a major sin against Mother Earth), but they have seen the light and are now reusing them.

Anyhoo, it’ll be good to see more and more business start finding ways to both help the environment AND save money. A hearty kudos to the Garner Southeast Library.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Anyhoo, some of you may be familiar with the Lorax, a fanciful creature who “speaks for the trees”, straight from the warped mind of Dr. Seuss, PhD. Here’s your chance to get a free PDF of an activity book featuring this true eco-hero.

Just CLICK ON THIS LINK to go and get your free copy of it! Go on, I won’t watch, honest I won’t.

Last, but not least, if you’ve got an attention span longer than mine, you may want to take a peek at this Lorax cartoon, which looks like it was made in the ’70s, based on my expert opinion.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I thought I’d opted out of phone book delivery last year, but just today I got “The Talking Phone Book” plopped on my front porch.

So, here’s a quick, easy way to stop getting “The Talking Phone Book” delivered to your casa. It takes about 3 minutes, so it’s a very easy way to save lots of paper, ink, and gas (for phone book delivery) from being wasted.

1. Click on the city nearest to you on this page.

2. Call the phone number.

3. Hit “0″ when the automated message starts.

4. Ax the operator to kindly stop delivering phone books to your house.

That’s it! Never again will you come home to find cruelly murdered trees in the form of a worthless book in front of your door again. Not on my watch.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Without further ado, I present a graphical summary of The World Without Us.

Here’s another summary of what would happen to mankind’s creations if we disappeared. Weird that within two days, New York City’s subways would be flooded. Dang, it sort of makes you think…

Bookmark It

Hide Sites