The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir [Paperback]

Part how-to, part personal memoir, The Big Tiny is an utterly seductive meditation on the benefits of slowing down, scaling back, and appreciating the truly important things in life.
 
More than ten years ago, a near-death experience abruptly reminded sustainability advocate and pioneer Dee Williams that life is short. So, she sold her sprawling home and built an eighty-four-square-foot house—on her own, from the ground up. Today, Williams can list everything she owns on one sheet of paper, her monthly housekeeping bills amount to about eight dollars, and it takes her about ten minutes to clean the entire house. Adapting a new lifestyle left her with the ultimate luxury—more time to spend with friends and family—and gave her the freedom to head out for adventure at a moment’s notice, or watch the clouds and sunset while drinking a beer on her (yes, tiny) front porch.“Visitors to [Dee Williams’] property may be forgiven for thinking someone had taken up residence in a beautifully built pine-and-cedar toolshed out back….[an] affecting memoir…she writes in The Big Tiny of finding a centeredness and peace in her little house, of being less fearful, more alive. Some of the best passages are when she describes the sensory experience of being inside: smelling raw cedar and knotty pine; listening to the weather.”
—Steven Kurutz, The New York Times

“[N]o one makes the idea of living in a home the size of an area rug more appealing than Dee Williams…Williams’ inspiring memoir will resonate with anyone on a quest to downsize, de-stress, let go or feel at home…an endearing, funny writer…[The Big Tiny] is a book as intimate and draw-you-in-close as Williams' little abode. She reveals lå