Everything is the "Living Room"

When you live in a van everything is the living room. You don't get to refer to the "living room closet" or the "table in the living room" anymore. The eating, the reading, even the driving happens in the living room. It's all just one, big. . .small, cozy, organized place where everything mentionable and unmentionable happens.  Like a yurt on wheels.

This kind of reality must be attractive these days, though--the Tinyhouse industry is booming.  I think everyone I've ever met in every state I've ever been in is talking about wanting to move into a tinyhouse. People who drive large cars and have mortgages and stuff, everyone has contracted a mania to move into the livingroom.  Even me.

Makes sense.  I mean, during this design process we seem to ask ourselves two basic questions: 1. What do I need from a living space? and 2. What layout will maximize ease-of-use?  In order to commit to living out of a van at all Danimal and I must have quietly asked ourselves these same questions. The answer seems to have been: I need to chuck all my stuff out the window and move into the living room.  

The living room of any home is where both the action and relaxation happens. It's where entertainment happens, both the screen-based (movies) and discourse or conversation-based (friends come over for dinner/small children play here). Because it is often the room with the largest table, the living room is where projects happen. The living room is where it's at.  As long as the refrigerator and food prep moves in, it's the only room you really need. All the tinyhouse droolers were right after all.

This obvious and powerful truth, however much I am stoked for it and have invested in it--that all I really need can be built into an 11'x5' space--still frightens me about the future. My privileged upbringing afforded me large domestic spaces to dwell in, houses with rooms upon rooms, places where you could do your homework on one side of the house and not know for hours if someone was choking on a chicken wing or practicing for the opera on the other. The apartments and homes I've rented for the past 12 years were clearly scaled down quite a bit, but for the sake of this argument they were more or less the same. I have been so tied up in the layout process of the Sprinter-build, in the inches and folds, the angles, the if-you-sit-there-what-does-it-feel-like-when's that I hadn't given much thought to what everyone else in my life seems to have been wondering: How are you going to live in there?

Well. . .what's the big deal? Snails do it.  -Delilah

#greatmeasuringsnailrace

Stanley 25 out in front but still anyone's race.

Tune in next time to find out what happens in the Great Measuring Snail Race!