Tight spaces should be temporary.

The budget for the couple’s tiny house was $125k.

One-hundred twenty-five thousand US dollars for a roughly 200 square foot living space. For comparison, if your house has a bathroom that’s 8 x 12 feet, you’ve just used up about half of that. That’s not 200 square feet to live in, that’s the entire size of the pad.

Slap in a twenty thousand-dollar kitchen and you’re eating every meal on a flip-down table with bench seats.

Hmm, now, where have I seen this layout before?

Oh yeah, in a fucking campground. In a camper, trailer, RV, or whatever you want to call it. Half the price, twice the amenities and it hooks up to your friend’s truck easier than your overpriced shoebox on wheels.

Peer television pressure

I grabbed the remote and turned the TV on.

There it was, Tiny House Nation. Ironically titled, since every tiny house on the show seems to be located as far away as possible from civilization or any nation in general. Either that or it’s parked in someone’s backyard in exchange for a sizeable rental fee.

If I wanted to live in someone’s backyard, it wouldn’t include paying rent on top of my overpriced dollhouse mortgage.

I’m going to skip right over the incoming water and outgoing sewage requirements of that configuration.

I have only one question. Why?

The wheel exists

Each year in New England when the brutal winter releases its grip on your ball sack, yes, ma’am, even yours, springtime makes way for RV owners everywhere to prepare for the upcoming camping season.

They spend an entire weekend unpacking their beast of a temporary home on wheels. The annual pilgrimage then begins. Dozens of area husbands and wives will team up for one of the two times each year that their Reece hitch will earn its place on the tail end of their well-detailed pickup truck.

The amount curse words mumbled under the breath of each spouse during the backup ritual to connect truck to trailer will test most marriages. Each can do the other’s job better and they’re not afraid to let them know it. Still, they endure and persevere for the greater good.

Once the connection is complete, the trek to the local campground within a mile or two from home commences.

It’s an exciting time and everyone can almost see and hear the crackle of the outdoor fire pit and smell the burning wood smoke.

The women imagine themselves floating on a mattress complete with a cold drink in one cup holder and their phone in the other. It all takes place in a pool full of screaming kids that they’ve mastered being able to tune out.

They shoot for more of a sunglasses and single vibe than a married and miserable persona.

The men picture themselves being men. Drinking beer, being the grill master, and pouring lighter fluid on the firewood that they brought in from home against campground regulations.

Although, their primary job is to spend the summer running to the store or back to the house to grab something that was forgotten when their significant other got out of work before heading to said summer camp.

Mosquitos be damned. This. Is. Happening.

It’s a decades-old tradition that began long before the nationalization or rationalization of any tiny house television talk.

Cause for divorce, or worse

Any experienced married couple knows that a summer of weekend-only campground stays is temporary. Two weeks in a row with rain and everyone cramped inside even the most up-to-date RV playing UNO or Go Fish and you can bet your ass someone is staying home the following weekend regardless of the weather.

Honey, let’s build a tiny house and live in it forever.

It’s the conversation starter that precedes the best six o’clock news headline.

Save your money, save your marriage. Stop at your local RV sales center. Take out a 30-year mortgage for something on wheels that you can put away each year while enjoying space in what your other 30-year mortgage pays for the rest of the year.

Plus, if you have a tiny house out in the middle of nowhere, who’s going to be able to take heed of your “If the camper’s a rockin’, don’t come a knockin’” sign?