An interview with Michael Janzen
Over the last few months, I’ve been interviewing amazing individuals about simple living, location independence, financial freedom and more. Every Thursday, a feature interview is posted on RowdyKittens. Last week I spoke with Juliet Schor, a best selling author and Professor of Sociology at Boston College.
This week the feature interview is with Michael Janzen, author of Tiny House Design. We talked about blogging, tiny homes, and the power of living a simpler lifestyle.
Enjoy the interview peeps!
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Tammy: Tell us about your blog, Tiny House Design.
Michael: When I was a kid I always wanted to be an architect. In college I studied architecture, but ended up following my bliss back into the ceramics studio. When the internet happened I jumped on and have been riding it ever since. Tiny House Design is my way of getting back to exploring architecture, while leveraging everything I’ve learned as a pro web guy over the last 15 years.
I post design concepts of my own and stories of other people making their simple living dreams come true. There is also a strong emphasis on DIY.
Tammy: What inspired you to start writing about tiny homes? And why do you think they’re so popular?
Michael: A few things came to a head in 2008 for me. The economy was taking a dump, my home’s value was dropping like a stone, and job security didn’t feel like a guarantee anymore… so I went looking for answers and backup plans. Tiny houses and simple living seemed like the ideal low-risk sustainable lifestyle.
I think other people are seeing this too, which is why they are quickly becoming an icon of freedom. I suspect we’re all in search of answers to questions we don’t know how to ask. Tiny houses are a captivating illustration of how wonderful a simple life can be.
Tammy: You’re written two ebooks, Tiny Prefab and Tiny Solar Saltbox. Tell us about your books and why you decided to write them.
Michael: Some content is blog-size. Some content is book-size. It also made financial sense to begin providing detailed plans that are focused on teaching people how to put together their own houses. I keep the prices low to make the content more accessible.
Tammy: Can you describe your Tiny Free House project?
Michael: The Tiny Free House is an experiment in exploring an extreme, in this case the financial cost of a home. Extreme examples, of anything, often have the most to teach us. So far I’ve learned a lot about the value of my time compared to the cost of materials. It’s slow going building with shipping pallets but I wouldn’t want to do it any other way for this project.
Another extreme house I will build is Nine Tiny Feet which is a nine square foot micro house. This exploration will be about building a house with the least amount of space. I’ve posted several designs online but have not settled on one or carved out the time to build it. [click to continue…]