Compact living in Toronto’s tiny town

from the Toronto Star:



Compact living in Toronto’s tiny town
Published On Sat May 08 2010

By Jennifer Wells Feature Writer


The whole wide world is a tiny town
Full of tiny ideas
With our tiny hearts pumpin’ up and down
Come be tiny with me
— David Byrne


It is a storybook day on Craven Road, and Alison Smith is clambering over the gate-less white picket fence that contains her eight-by-nine-foot garden.

Smith has a watering can in her hand as she reaches toward the window box of purple and lavender and butter-yellow pansies. The sun is shining, and if the birds started singing in operatic chorus it would come as no surprise.

It is a tiny perfect moment on a tiny perfect street in Tiny Town.

Jack Ridout, real estate agent, calls out a “Hi, how are ya?” with a salesman’s ease, his smile wide, his bearing erect, his graceful mien akin to that of, say, a dance-partner-for-hire on a cruise ship. He has offered a tour of the ’hood, where generations of Ridouts have built houses and sold houses, attended school, volunteered and you name it.

Smith stops, reacting brightly in recognition, and falls quickly into amiable conversation about the history of Craven Road, the epicentre of Tiny Town, dubbed as such by the Star in honour of the neighbourhood’s unusual claim. For here lies the city’s highest concentration of detached houses under 500 square feet. As if you need to be told, 500 square feet is small. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/806871--compact-living-in-toronto-s-tiny-town?bn=1

I lived in a 760 square foot single wide trailer and had plenty of space for myself, 2 floor looms, and plenty of space for guests when they came.

If I could have moved that trailer from the back and beyond to this convenient part of town, I would have. It was easy to keep, easy to maintain, and everything had a place to be put away.

The house I'm in now is just a series of boxes that were put together with no thought toward furniture arrangement, storage, or anything else. It was built in 1946 so the electrical outlets are few and far between. It's got almost twice the square footage of that little trailer and feels more cramped.

Well planned small spaces are superior, IMO, to the big, rattly open space trophy houses. The former are easy to live in. The latter require help.

The house we're living in now was built in 1952, and is 1400 sq ft of "what the hell were the builders thinking"?

Outlets few and far between....LOL...I hear you, Warpy!

t.

is that it was designed by a man.

Oh, I know there are men who cook and men who put some serious thought into what a cook needs and who do design great kitchens now, but in 1946 it was women's work and women just had to put up with whatever the great man decided he could shove into one of these houses, meaning great storage if you don't mind stepladders and no counter space and forget about a work triangle, it's all marching along one wall in military precision, stove and fridge 15 feet apart with the sink in the middle.

What they were thinking was how to slap these places up as cheaply as possible and that was it.

Yeah, that describes mine to a 'T', and I'm 5ft nothing. The pantry is actually in the mudroom, but I guess at least there's a pantry. But most of those shelves are too high for me, even on a step ladder.

Funny, but like you, my most efficient kitchen was in my first, tiny apartment. It was a tiny galley kitchen, but everything was set up for FUNCTION, which I haven't had since. There was even an ample pantry right off the kitchen, just steps away. This apartment building was probably put up in the early 60's.

Talk about cheap builders, this house (as well as this whole segment of this street) was built on a SLAB..... It's just kind of weird.