Transcript of Jay Shafer Video
(http://vitality.yahoo.com/video-second-act-jay-shafer-20910192)
Jay Shafer: My name’s Jay Shafer. I’m 45 years old and I live in a tiny house. I named my house, “Tumbleweed” and it’s just 8 feet by 12 feet. I’m sure there are people out there who think I’m crazy for living so small but living in this little house has allowed me to totally re-invent my life. I was working as a grocery store clerk. At a certain point I decided I was going to escape the rat race and build a house from scratch. Having no construction experience, I figured I’d figure it out as I went. As a kid, I was living in 4,000 square feet with my family. Between the four of us, doing all the housework, the mortgage … it just seemed like more stuff and more burden than I really wanted. Ultimately, I wanted to focus more on the things I really wanted to do and not on working for cash so much. It’s been very liberating.
The first day of living in my tiny house felt like I was finally living with just what I needed and nothing more. It felt really natural to me. It wasn’t very long after I finished building my first house that this became a business. People seemed interested in my house so I decided to start building and designing little places.
Trathen Heckman: Jay’s small homes have a really great style. They feel more spacious than they are. My name is Trathen Heckman. I’ve been working in sustainability education for about a decade. I think Jay teaches people a lot about small living because he is living it. A man who lives in a house that is less than a tenth the size of the average American house is an incredible message by itself. But then he does it in a very graceful and elegant and inspiring way. So it really shifts people’s perception about the quality of life that can be associated with living with less.
Jay Shafer: There are a lot of advantages to living in a small house. Foremost, I suppose, not having a mortgage or rent is great. Not paying much in utilities is awfully nice – I pay less than $100 per year in utilities in this house.
I never thought I’d be an entrepreneur in anything but it’s my passion to design small houses. There is a lot of excess going on, a lot of extra waste, and I’m happy to propose the opposite.
I could never go back to living big. Living small has changed my life dramatically and I couldn’t ask for anything better.
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