One of my favorite books on the subject of small home living is Greg Johnson’s Put Your Life On a Diet: Lessons Learned from Living in 140 Square Feet.

What I love about this book is that it describes the journey Greg took to arrive in his 140 square foot home.  It also provides a series of chapters and workbook pages to allow the reader to consider different aspects of their own life and what would be the most meaningful lifestyle for them.  This is one of the best resources out there on how one might downsize to fit into a tiny home.

Below is an interview and book reading conducted by Prairie Lights in Iowa City that was part of the launch party for Greg’s book. In it he reads an excerpt from the book and also answers many questions on small home living.

Make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, sit down, and enjoy.

Greg Johnson is the co-founder and current president of the Small House Society.  Additional information on him and the Mobile Hermitage can be found at ResourcesforLife.com.

Each Friday Coming Unmoored runs a weekly roundup of tiny homes featured on the web and recent news stories that may be of interest to small home enthusiasts.

This week, in particular, has been a bumper-crop of news stories.  Make sure to check out some of the ones below!

Enjoy and have a wonderful weekend!

Tiny Houses Featured in the Past Week:

• Bedford Trucks: Traveller Homes
• Tiny Earthbag House
• Narrowboats
• Shed-Boy Mini-Home
• New Tortoise Shell Home design
• NextGen House
• Sustain Solo miniHome
• Weather Station
• Multifunktioneller Glühweinstand
• Travel Cottage
• C3 Cabin
• WoW Pod (Warning! Don’t show to your S.O. who’s addicted to World of Warcraft)
• Tiny Texas House videos
• Clayton i-House (mid-size but interesting)
• 100K House Pictures (mid-size)

Recent News Stories and Essays on Tiny Homes and the Small Home Movement:

• Downsizing the Carbon Footprint with Tiny Texas Houses (Consumer Energy Report)
• Little Boxes: The New Movement to Seriously Downsize Our Homes (eMagazine.com)
• The “Tiny Houses” Movement (7×7)
• Is Living in Small Spaces Cruel to Children? (Treehugger)
• Backyard Living (NPR)
• Why Downsizing to a Smaller Home Can Make You Happy (Millionaire Mommy)
• The Pros and Cons of Downsizing Our House (Digerati Life)

New Small Home Websites and Blogs to Check Out:

• Small Living Journal Issue #4
• The Scrap House
• Mini Mobile Cottage
• Little House Living

With a footprint of 332 square feet and interior space of a little over 900 square feet, the Penguin House in Japan might better be categorized as a “small” rather than “tiny” home. (And by Japanese standards it’s quite expansive.)

However, this home provides some great ideas in terms of how one might be able to design a small space to feel larger by creative use of light, sight-lines, and varying ceiling heights depending on room size.

Alright, dear readers.  I happen to have an extra, shiny, brand-new copy of Jay Shafer’s lovely Small House Book on hand.

As wonderful as this book is, those of you who’ve been following my story will understand that the last thing I need in my life is a duplicate copy of a book.  (Especially when I actually have two other copies of my own.)

So, for the next week, I will be running a contest to find a new, appreciative home for this book.

In order to “enter”, all you need to do is leave a comment on this post giving me your wish-list of what you would like to see on Coming Unmoored.  (For example: more info on how to build your own home, more personal anecdotes, less personal anecdotes, more pictures of Rumi.  What have you.)

I’m in the process of planning where my blog will go from here and I really want to make it something that is both entertaining and useful to our regular readers.

Next Wednesday, I will randomly select someone from everyone who’s taken the time to comment and mail the book to them.  (So please make sure to leave an email address where I can reach you!)

I look forward to hearing your feedback.

(And if you don’t happen to win the copy of the book, it can now be ordered from the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company website.)

Sustain, out of Canada, is really onto something with their innovative approach to tiny homes.  In fact, the overall end result of their work can safely be called “breakthrough.”

The miniHOME by Sustain is a series of different home concepts that really pack a lot of punch into a small space.  The concept behind their homes is that each model can stand up to extreme climates.  This is part of the reason that the miniHOME’s all have high r-values, meaning that the homes will make the most out of their heating and cooling dollars.  With those heating and cooling dollars in mind, Sustain has designed their miniHOME’s with an eye toward being off the grid.  They have incorporated high-efficiency light fixtures and appliances.  Their goal is to make their miniHOMEs energy efficient enough that they can easily be run off wind and solar.

Following this environmentally aware theme, Sustain has taken some substantial effort into making sure that they use healthy materials for all their construction materials.  These materials have an eye toward virtually eliminating indoor air pollution, as well as being highly durable and easy to maintain.  The materials employed have been used in a very stylish and hip fashion that, like all great tiny house designs, makes the space feel much larger.

The SOLO SE model incorporates all aspects of Sustain’s mission to build environmentally friendly, healthy homes that can be transported easily across North America.  This 350 square foot home uses one-tenth the water, and a truly remarkable one percent of the energy of a traditional home.  This makes the SOLO SE something of a superstar.  A home that uses one percent of the energy of a traditional home is nothing less than extraordinary. Sustain has lived up to their company name.

With the SOLO SE and the rest of its homes, Sustain has accomplished something that is rather impressive.  Reducing the energy cost of the SOLO SE down to one percent of a traditional home is a breakthrough, and hopefully hearkens to what is in store for the entire building industry.

The C3 Cabin is designed by Vandeventer + Carlander Architects.  The cabin is has a footprint of 16 x 22 feet, with 352 square feet on the main floor and 128 square feet in the loft.

The C3 makes lovely use of light and is designed with doors opening on three sides to better connect it with the outside.  Both of these features help to make the space feel much larger than it actually is.  The main floor hosts the main living space, kitchen, and bath. The sleeping loft sits over the kitchen and bath area and has a view of the floor below.  Windows are also thoughtfully positioned throughout the house to promote cross ventilation.

The C3 has also been designed with low-cost, easy-maintenance external materials (fiber cement and metal panels) and also easy construction in mind.

Plans are available for sale for $850  Additional information can be found on Vandeventer + Carlander’s website.

The fourth issue of the Small Living Journal has just been released. This issue focuses on the topic of “Do-It-Yourself”.

My contribution to the issue is a 25-minute interview with Zoey of TogtherWeAreOne.com. Zoey is a single woman who’s building her own Tumbleweed Lusby.

The issue also includes fantastic tutorial on using Google Sketch-Up by Michael Janzen, a guest article by Anne Lupton of Small-House-Building.com, a guide on travel trailers by Kevin Rose, and details on how Greg Johnson built his Mobile Hermitage.

Come check out Issue #4!

The Brightbuilt Barn is an eco-friendly 700 square feet tiny house in Rockport, Maine that was built for around $200,000.  The BrightBuilt Barn is the end result of a team of green professionals and builders that set out to see if they could build an impressive green home.  They wanted their design to be livable and affordable while having an eye towards sustainability.

There is something very unique and very special about the BrightBuilt Barn home.  This home requires no furnace even for Maine’s notoriously chilly winters.  How is this possible?  The BrightBuild Barn uses “super insulation and extreme air-tightness.”  This milestone is accomplished by creating a continuous R-40 insulated envelope, which includes the entire house, floors, walls and ceiling.   The end result is a house so well insulated that it doesn’t need a furnace.  The BrightBarn is currently on track to earn the a LEED Platinum rating.

You might be wondering how the BrightBuilt Barn can keep homeowners warm with no furnace.  It’s so well insulated that the occupants and normal use of appliances will usually be enough to warm the home.  For days that are extremely cold, a solar water heating system will kick in.

Saving energy has been factored into the design in a variety of other ways as well.  LED lighting is used extensively, and occupants are encouraged to monitor their energy usage through a real-time feedback system.  The house has a built in indicator system that tells owners as to whether or not they are on track towards being a Net-Zero home.  A Net-Zero home means that the home is generating more energy that it uses.

In terms of energy consumption, the BrightBuilt Barn has numerous solar panels to provide needed energy.  This factor combined with the very high level of insulation provides for a home that can stay warm enough in the winter that it needs no furnace.  Almost sounds like magic, doesn’t it?  Combine this fact with the BrightBuilt Barn’s potential lifespan of 200 years and you have a true winner.

Additional information on the BrightBuilt Barn can be found on their website and their Wiki.

Tiny Texas Houses has just put together a new video showing a lot of great photos of the homes they have built.   One of the things I really appreciate about this tiny home builder is their extensive use of reclaimed materials.  Not only do they make use of beautiful old materials that might otherwise find their way to a landfill but their use also results in charming, one-of-a-kind homes.

For more information on this tiny home builder, Amanda Abel has also written a fantastic article.  They also have a website.

If you’ve ever made the trip to New Zealand, you know that getting there is worth the killer plane ride.  Few, if any places can match its overall beauty.  It’s easy to imagine Andre Hodgskin’s brainchild, the iPAD, fitting in quite well in the tranquil beauty of the lush New Zealand landscape.

Imagine telling people that you live in an iPAD.  They will think that you are either insane, or simply have a strong accent.  More than likely you will have to clue more than one person in that you said “iPAD” and not “ipod.”  The iPAD is a really clever and fun concept from Auckland, New Zealand. The iPAD should be of interest for tiny house enthusiasts.

New Zealand architect Andre Hodgskin’s concept in the iPAD is to create a very flexible kit home that could be suited for a variety of purposes.  Part of its flexibility is that the iPAD can be built onsite, or it can be built elsewhere.  Because of its cargo container style design, it can be shipped to its final location.  Another aspect of this flexibility is that the iPAD has a great many color options that are available as well.  There are five finishes in all, including black, white and Red Tongue & Groove.  Of all the finishes probably Black and Red Tongue & Groove are the most appealing, but all the designs work very well and succeed in creating a great space that is attractive and livable.

One of the iPAD’s big tricks and part of its brilliance is its use of several large decks that effectively increase the usable living space considerably.  This feature makes the iPAD a good potential fit for warmer climates.  A second great feature of the iPAD is the incorporation of large floor to ceiling windows, which when combined with the decks, really add a feeling of space that is far beyond the iPAD’s 500 square feet.

The entry-level iPAD is about 500 square feet, and the kit can be purchased for around $125,000 New Zealand dollars.  Larger and more complex designs top out at $375,000 NZD.  Considering the cleverness of the sophisticated design and the iPAD’s general charm, the price tag seems very reasonable.

A quick glance at the interiors and use of additional deck space should sell most people on this very clever concept.

Additional information on the iPAD and photos can be found on their website.