Why did I Start Building Tiny Boxes?
I like to drive Around a little bit
OK maybe a lot.
Here’s everywhere I drove to in the past few years.
So I often find myself in places like this…
Or This…
Everytime, I WIsh I could stay
for a bit longer than a few hours, and in something a bit warmer than a tent, not only to admire the landscape but, even more importantly,
because it’s the best productivity hack ever
Housing Affordability
I still remember the length my parents and I would go through to save $50/month on rent, when we first moved to Canada. Actually I still remember the burning smell of the place we lived in, because it had sustained quite a bit of fire damage.
18 million
households spend more than
50%
of their income on housing*
*Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard Universities 2021
Not only is this extremely stressful for all of those families, but lacking something so essential is a recipe for social unrest.
To this day, it still pains me to pay $20,000-$30,000 / year for rent
when all I do there is sleep and daydream about being in a national park instead
What if, instead of spending $1/2 Million on a Condo, I buy 10 tinyhouses and spread them around the country: in mountains, on beaches and in cities
Then, I’ll get 10-20 of my friends to do the same and together, we’ll have a network of 100+ houses where we can travel to for rent-free!
But soon I realized that:
Tiny houses are more expensive than I thought (see why builders are incentivized not to build affordable tinyhouses)
Even if I had one fully built in front of my door, it’s going to take months and tens of thousand of dollars for permitting, connecting the water/sewage/electricity, and setting a foundation.
There’s no Amazon Prime Experience for housing,
where you order online, the house shows up tomorrow, and you can move in the day after.
So I decided to build one!
Last year, on a beach in Newfoundland, I was using the landscape to be very productive when I got up and drew a floorplan around me. “If these walls were real, I’d stay here for a LONG time and my productivity will be through the roof!”
The first floorplan of Tinybox, drawn on the sand, on a Beach in Newfoundland’s Gros Morne National Park
To make sure this wasn’t just a travel-bug fantasy, I spend the next 5 days working in an utility shed on a picnic table (30 square feet), and sleeping in a tent (40square feet).
I was able to confirm that I am
very productive
Without no distractions, I was able to complete the design and a list of suppliers to call
not space-constrained
I used a total of less than 100sf and felt completely at ease
Whenever I’m bored or need some space, I just head out to the backyard. The backyard in question being…
