I really don't like all this cold weather. I am beginning to understand the snowbird mentality. :-) Maybe a smaller place to live, like my dream "tiny house," would be better for my senior years. I don't want a mobile tiny house, my dream is "small on a foundation."
A long time ago I spent a lot of time making drawings of small house designs that might be used for Working Together communities. I made one for 15x20 and then larger versions. Every household has different needs. I was trying to find a way to meet these varied needs within a larger community.
For myself, I finally decided that what I needed was a 40' x 40' workspace on the ground floor, a 30' x 30' housing space on top of that, set into a corner so I could have a porch area, and a roof that was sturdy enough to let me build a garden space on it. Because of my aging issues, I wanted a small elevator that could go to the roof garden. That was the extent of my design vision for myself. I didn't get into the details of the building.
Making a drawing is different than living in a space.
It took me a long time to realize the square footage of my dream housing would have been the same as my son's house. That was an "ah ha" moment. A 30x30 living space is small. I based it on a small one-bedroom apartment I lived in at one time. But adding the workspace makes it into a large single-family dwelling size. Plus the garden area.
I wondered how much it would cost to build, and how this principle could be applied to community members. My design was for my needs. Other families would need different solutions.
Remember, I was thinking about building a place Christians would be able to go to as their lives were hurting from persecution. We would need to build communities and all the things communities need to survive.
Food. Shelter. Housing. and then all the things families need, but at a very basic level. That would be a doctor but may not be a comprehensive care.
Tiny houses are really great. Small housing is great. Shared housing is also important. We would have to find a way to care for each other... eventually, without any cash.
Off-grid becomes essential. I don't know if we could create a combination (a hybrid) of resources, but that would be useful.
I suppose everything would start with the property. Where the water is, what kind of animals we would need to protect ourselves from, and hunt for food, and the roads we would need. It's like becoming a city planner without the education. More like the wild west before zoning laws.
On my website I have a statement about the End Times and Christians. How many of us will there be when the Antichrist finally becomes a threat to our lives? We really don't know.
I decided we need at least one community in every country possible to start with. There won't be a lot of transportation options for those times. Horses may become the only choice, for farming and getting around.
It changes every concept of survival to think about life without money and resources we have been used to having.
Taxes become the biggest threat to living anywhere. The government becomes a tool to overcome all our efforts to live independently.
It is an impossible problem.
How all this will unfold is not known, but prophecy tells us it is coming. Our lives tell us the Antichrist is very near.
In Christ, Deborah Martin