The tiny-house trend may be the current craze, but what if your tiny house is one that floats? Life can be pretty great on a small boat; for example, a deep clean of your interior living space takes maybe an hour… Two tops. However, there are always compromises. If you are considering living on a boat that’s around 30 feet long, here are 5 potentially problematic points to consider before taking the plunge.
1. Your entire wardrobe fits in 3 8x11x5 inch containers that you keep in the niche under your bed.
2. You often sport bruises from bumping into things.
3. Your life will occasionally lurch from the wake of all the speedboats that pass by while the mega yachts across from you stand stock still.
4. You and your spouse (or whoever you’re planning on sharing your tiny adventure with) regularly have to do a complicated, bumble-bee dance to move around/past each other and other obstacles in your tiny space.
5. Last but not least, you probably won’t have that most blessed of twentieth century inventions called air conditioning… And if you do, you don’t have the power to keep it running unless you’re on a dock with shore power access… Which is expensive. If you have the money to afford it, you’re probably wealthy enough to afford a bigger boat, which may be advisable.
In the end, it all comes down to the trade-offs. Here are five things you stand to gain from tiny-boat living.
1) An ever-changing back yard that never needs mowed.
2) A life that moves at a more leisurely pace. Or, as Joel would say, your sanity.
3) A greater awareness of your ecological impact on the world.
4) The potential to have deeper relationships. When you slow down your life, you have more time to notice, recognize, and relate to the lives of others.
5) The knowledge you can live a full life without a house full of things. I think of all the “must-have” items that we don’t need. A life less cluttered offers a much clearer view.
