Basic Introduction to living in a Tiny House Tanzania

As many of you know from some of my earlier blogs, I am a fan of home improvement shows and the Tiny House Nation show on FYI channel with John and Zack.  I have always enjoyed seeing some of the creative ideas they came up with to get the most of the tiny houses on the show.  I have daydreamed of being able to do many of the same things in my tiny house in Tanzania.  However there are some differences between tiny houses they build in the states on the show and a tiny house in Tanzania.   Most of the differences apply to just about any home in the states versus a home built here in Tanzania, it is just more obvious when dealing with a tiny house.

Some things that may be the same would that you should not take full steps in a tiny house.  It is roughly 6 full steps between the front door and the back of my house.  When getting up in the night to go to the bathroom, you basically feel your way around the home instead of cutting on a light.  The reason is that in a tiny house even a low watt lamp will blind you when used in a small space.  Even a night light feels like a full power lamp when the walls are so close together.

Some differences about how the homes are built. 

1. The walls are made of concrete block (at least this time) so attaching things to the wall to use vertical space is a lot more difficult and can cause some serious damage to the walls as it will chip when you try to drill holes or nail something in with concrete screws.  (I will be talking  a lot about  Command Strips later.
2. A second problem with solid walls is that you cannot install hideaway storage in the walls.
3. The floors are solid concrete so not much installing hideaway storage in the floors.
4. There are no components for creating murphy beds here.
5. Beds are made of bulky materials are often much more ornate than you desire them to be (example of day bed with half wall).
   
6. When you have the floors tiled to prevent the normal thin floor topper made with sand and cement only from chipping up and to ease in cleaning, they install a baseboard along the wall.  The system here is tight and when they are  adding a cement plaster coat over the cement block and then a tile baseboard that sticks out of the wall a 1/2 inch it all adds up and reduces the space you planned on having. 

This is especially a nuisance when the thickness of many of these items is different based on what they were doing at the time.   For example in the sitting room it was supposed to be 6 feet 2 inches wall face to wall face after normal block depth and plaster coat.  After they added an additional 1/2 inch of plaster on one wall and baseboards on two walls it was only 6 feet and 1/2 inch. 

Then the welder made an ornate bed ends which were several inches larger than normal.  When the daybed frame did not fit, they chose to shorten the frame instead of removing the ornate end pieces.  So the mattress bought in town that are a normal size, are now 3 inches too long. 

7. The ceilings are higher here than normal.  More like ceilings of older homes.  The reason is that it allows the heat to rise out of the living space since there are no air conditioning systems.  This is nice but it cuts down on the amount of room in the "attic" space which I will talk about on an upcoming blog about wiring the house.
8. Another issues about using wall space to increase storage capacity is the lack of usable space to put things on.  One side of the house is 75% windows and the other side is almost 40% windows. 
   
9. They also insist on putting large doors everywhere.  I wanted to go with a curtain to separate the bathroom and the bedroom from the rest of the house.  Unfortunately they don't have barn door hangers either  I did at least get a aluminum and glass door for the bathroom at no additional charge.
10. One nice thing about this project is I did not have to go through a horrible experience reducing my stuff.  I had to do that already though it really was not that bad.  Basically everything here fit into one of three suitcases at one time.  That includes the food I bring over to help out with my diabetes that I have to store for up to six months.

I have spent most of my first week at site getting into some type of rhythm sleep wise (a very difficult process for me and one I am still working on).  I have decorated and am still working on how I want things laid out in the house.  I put pictures up on the walls to make it feel more alive and like home. 

One of the first things you do is wash everything stored since my last time living at the site.  Clothes, dishes, pans.  So you have to put up a clothesline and wash clothes every day to get the entire stored amount done.  While I have reduced on most things I have to keep a minimum of two weeks clothes available because when a team comes in I don't get a chance to do laundry while they are here.

I even bought a metal picture print this year and took it with me.  I also used the Command Strip picture bar for some pictures of family members.  I bought curtains because the ones I brought over from my house in the states were not long enough for the windows here.  I do hope to use them to cover my mattresses on the day bed, but currently just have them draped over.

I also found some nice hangers for brooms and mops that are also part of the Command Strip line up.  I hung the broom up in the hallway.  I decided to hang the mop up in the bathroom so it can drip onto a floor that moves to the drain.

Stay tuned on the house because I did do some really creative things to create storage in the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom that I will cover in future blogs.  I think Zack would be proud of my efforts at creative tiny house storage.

In addition to working on the house, I have been also trying to get back in rhythm at the school as the started back up this week from the mid-year break.  I present the singing prayer during religion class on Friday.

I have asked folks to read stories to our kids, but in the meantime I went to Storyline Online by the SAG Foundation and found some wonderful stories being read by celebrities.  The production value is a little more than I want but some of the people reading are amazing.  I am going to mix them up and show them to the kids.