House trained

Lone Veiler on fighting for the family

Tiny houses. No, not the one up one down, or two up two down old terraces or cottages we know, not camper vans, and not caravans, but dwellings built on trailers. Trailers you need a truck to haul. They are quite the maison du jour thing, especially in the United States. The idea is that you downsize everything you have, including the kitchen sink, to fit into a space that's about 2 metres by 7 metres, saving on mortgages and bills, treading more lightly on mother earth, with the bonus of being able to up sticks and tow your house off to another deliciously rural plot whenever the mood takes you.

They at best sleep two. They have bath spaces, and most proudly claim to have 'composting loos', but I choose to not dwell on that. You also need a monster of a car to pull the things about. They also aren't that cheap to buy, and frankly, are kitted out a lot less practically than a mobile home or a caravan would be. In the UK we aren't blessed with so much great outdoors that we can Tiny House quite like in the States, but the concept is growing here too. So, what has this got to do with anything?

Good question, glad you asked. On the surface it does seem like such a good idea, a no-brainer really, to live small, tread lightly, minimise your expenditure, detach yourself from belongings. I thought it was quite interesting, because I've always liked the idea of living off grid, until I started to 'unpack' (sorry!) the concept. I was thinking about what 'tiny' would actually mean in practice, were I to attempt the experiment. I could take my sewing machine, but there wouldn't be space to use it or store fabrics and materials. There might be a space to hang a keyboard on the wall, but no space for a piano. As for an exercise DVD, yes, using it? Forget it. Books? Nope. But there always seems to be enough room to fit a pet or two.

Which brings me to fur babies. Pets, I think, are a Very Good Thing, a real blessing to us. I love my dog, but my dog is not a fur baby; she is a dog, and is treated as befits her rather splendid doggy dignity. She isn't my baby. So it's with some bemusement that I see folks treating their pets as though they were tiny humans, anthropomorphising them

‘Before we were formed in the womb, the Lord knew us, he also knows our families, and how difficult family life can be’

to within an inch of their lives. Tiny house dwellers never seem to have any children that need to be fitted into their homes. Fur babies, but no children. This isn't just sad, it's tragic. The tiny house fad is about personal freedom, to take your home with you, live off grid, but it also seems to be about freedom from immediate and wider family. Couples and their couple-y friends. Dogs, cats, but no children. Alongside the freedom is a lack of any real responsibility, a potentially isolating, self-absorbed, nomadic existence accompanied by pets and possibly a Significant Other. I can see that using a tiny home to start out as a first step to hearth and home is a good idea, and minimal housework has real appeal, but the complete emphasis on self, and self-fulfilment is so horribly anti-human. As is using a dog or cat as a surrogate child. There is something wrong if grown adults sublimate or deny their obvious desire to parent, with pets, because they perceive themselves to be not old enough, not personally fulfilled enough, not yet with the right person, or not ready for the responsibility. I've seen this among my normal-home living acquaintances, and it never ends well, usually with heartache, splitting up after wasting ten years hoping for a proposal, or rounds of IVF.

Before we were formed in the womb, the Lord knew us, he also knows our families, and how difficult family life can be. Exchanging sometimes tense relationships for a fur baby and downsized escape doesn't solve anything, it puts things off. It is more evidence, if we need any more, of the devil's out and out attack on everything family; the message of Fatima is that his last desperate assault is on the family. Are we persecuted? Yes, of course we are. Home Ed is the cross hairs, faith schools are under ridiculous scrutiny, the waters of Baptism are an infringement of human rights, but dismembering that same baby a couple of months before in the womb, isn't. Logic never applies when personal (adult) fulfilment is the only criteria.

So on the face of it, innocuous TV programmes about homes on trailers are just that. But I think they are another symptom of the insular, navel gazing, Me-Myself-and-I culture, where a pet is a baby, and commitment lasts until someone better comes along. We need, as Catholics, to fight hard for the family, because the devil really is out to get us. Our Lady of Fatima, ora pro nobis.